 | |  | | March 24, 2011 FindLaw.com Environment Law Newsletter |
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ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: WHICH US NUCLEAR PLANTS MOST AT RISK OF QUAKE?
(FindLaw's Law & Daily Life) - The world is watching as Japan tries to keep its nuclear plant from entering meltdown mode. Already leaking radiation, the nuclear plant would cause severe damage if the situation were to get any worse. For U.S. energy activists and officials, the situation with the Japanese nuclear reactor raises a lot of questions. With local plants built in a similar fashion, there's a lot of speculation about whether the United States is destined for the same fate. If you're wondering the same thing, consider the following: the government actually knows which of the country's 104 reactors are the least safe.
| NUCLEAR CRISIS MAY AFFECT PLACEMENT OF US REACTORS
(AP) - Energy Secretary Steven Chu suggested Sunday that Japan's nuclear crisis might make it less likely that new nuclear reactors are built near large American cities, just one of many safety changes that could be forthcoming as U.S. officials review reactor safety. "Certainly where you site reactors and where we site reactors going forward will be different than where we might have sited them in the past," Chu said in response to questions about the Indian Point nuclear plant near New York City. "Any time there is a serious accident, we have to learn from those accidents and go forward."
| APPEALS COURT CONSIDERS SITE FOR NUCLEAR DISPOSAL
(AP) - Federal appeals court judges are considering whether the Obama administration had the authority to stop plans to bury the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada. South Carolina and Washington state are among those suing the president and other federal officials to try to restart plans to ship their radioactive spent nuclear fuel to a repository 90 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain.
| JAPAN QUAKE SERVES AS REMINDER FOR CALIFORNIANS
(AP) - The devastating earthquake in Japan is serving as a painful reminder that California has struggled to protect the state from the next big one, namely when it comes to bolstering at-risk buildings. California's five-year-old program for helping cash-strapped public schools seismically retrofit their most vulnerable buildings has disbursed only a tiny portion of the $200 million set aside. Even though billions of dollars have been spent on retrofitting thousands of unreinforced brick buildings, roads, bridges and university buildings, experts say thousands of concrete school buildings, high-rise apartments and hospitals built before California changed its building code in 1976 have not even been identified.
| TEXAS AGENCY: GAS DRILLER DIDN'T CONTAMINATE WATER
(AP) - Texas regulators say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was wrong when it concluded that a gas driller contaminated water wells in North Texas. The Railroad Commission of Texas voted 3-0 Tuesday in Austin to approve its examiners' conclusions that gas wells drilled and operated by Range Resources of Fort Worth did not contaminate two water wells. The gas production and water wells are in Parker County, just west of Dallas.
| JUDGE SUSPENDS CALIF.'S 'CAP-AND-TRADE' PROGRAM
(AP) - A judge has temporarily halted California's ambitious program to provide financial incentives for the state's largest polluters to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith ruled Friday that the state failed to properly consider alternatives to its so-called cap-and-trade program. Goldsmith says the failure to consider alternatives violated state environmental law, so the California Air Resources Board must conduct further review before implementing the key piece of AB32, the state's landmark global warming law.
| LEAD, OTHER CHEMICALS TAINT SOME URBAN GARDENS
(AP) - Soil researchers say the growing number of urban farmers and community gardeners in the U.S. need to test their dirt for lead and chemicals and take steps to make sure it's safe. They point to cities like Indianapolis, where nine out of 10 urban gardens tested by one researcher had problems with lead in the soil. And the Boston area, where a recent study suggests even clean, trucked-in dirt can end up contaminated in a few years.
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ANIMALS: ALBATROSS' RETURN DISPELS FEAR IT DIED IN TSUNAMI
(AP) - The oldest known wild bird in the U.S. has returned to a remote atoll northwest of the main Hawaiian islands after surviving this month's tsunami. Officials at the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which includes Midway Atoll, said Monday they are thrilled that the Laysan albatross survived the March 11 tsunami. The albatross, named Wisdom, is more than 60 years old.
| NECROPSY BEING PERFORMED ON CELEBRITY POLAR BEAR
(AP) - Experts are performing a necropsy on Berlin zoo's celebrity polar bear Knut, who died suddenly over the weekend. The four-year-old polar bear died Saturday afternoon in front of visitors, turning around several times and then dropping to the ground, and falling into the water in his enclosure. Polar bears usually live 15 to 20 years in the wild, and even longer in captivity, and the zoo is hoping the investigation Monday may help clarify what happened.
| ATLANTIC OIL SPILL THREATENS ENDANGERED PENGUINS
(AP) - Conservationists say an oil slick from a wrecked ship is threatening endangered penguins on a remote British South Atlantic territory. The cargo vessel MS Olivia ran aground on Nightingale Island in Tristan da Cunha last week and later broke up. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says hundreds of penguins have been coming ashore coated in oil. The territory's conservation officer, Trevor Glass, said oil was encircling Nightingale Island and called the situation a disaster.
| RECENT CASE SUMMARIES: INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES, INC. V. PENN AMERICA INSURANCE CO., 09-2346
(U.S. 4th Cir.) - In an insurance dispute involving whether liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) falls within a general liability provision, summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff is reversed because liability under CERCLA is not liability for property damage, but rather regulatory liability for response costs.
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