Environmental brief ~ Alaska petroleum reserve sites opened for drilling News
Environmental brief ~ Alaska petroleum reserve sites opened for drilling

[JURIST] Leading Thursday's environmental law news, the Alaska Bureau of Land Management [official website] has issued [PDF press release] a Record of Decision [PDF text] Wednesday that will open approximately 500,000 acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve [backgrounder] in Alaska to oil and gas drilling. The RoD contains amendments to the Final Environmental Impact Statement [PDF text] including setting aside roadless areas within the area to protect goose and caribou habitat areas. AP has more.

In other environmental law news…

  • The Boeing Co. [corporate website] has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit that claimed a partial nuclear meltdown at the company's Santa Susana Field Laboratory [corporate website] in Ventura County CA caused many nearby residents to get cancer. The accident occurred in 1959, but did not create much concern until a disclosure in 1989 of continuing low-level nuclear and chemical contamination. AP has more.
  • Criminal charges have been brought against former treatment plant supervisor Robert Lee Shewell and plant engineer Joseph Edward Ambrozewicz, Jr. for conspiring to coverup a raw sewage spill at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds [official website] in Maryland. The men had worked for the Maryland Environmental Service [corporate website], an independent, quasi-state agency that had operated the wastewater plant at the base. The spill occurred when sewage overran a containment pit and went into a marsh that adjoined the nearby Gunpowder River. The men allegedly submitting reports claiming that the spill was of water that had already been treated. The Baltimore Sun has more.
THIS DAY @ LAW

Thurgood Marshall confirmed as US Supreme Court justice

On August 30, 1965, civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice by the US Senate, becoming the first African-American to be approved for the nation's highest tribunal. Learn more about Thurgood Marshall.

ICTY announces genocide charges against Slobodan Milošević

On August 30, 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) informed former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević that he would be charged with genocide in addition to other war crimes. The charges stemmed from Milošević's role in the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s in which Milošević, as President of Serbia and Yugoslavia, attempted to use force to prevent the ethnic dissolution of the Yugoslav Federation. Learn more about the trial of Slobodan Milošević and the charges filed against him from the BBC.