"Climate change is fanning longer- and deeper-burning fires in interior Alaska, changing the area from a carbon sink -- where planet-warming gases are stored naturally in the soil -- to a carbon emitter, scientists reported on Sunday."
"A national environmental group is threatening to sue over the federal government's oil spill emergency response plan for Alaska, saying regulators violated the law by not studying whether using chemicals to disperse oil spills would harm the state's endangered and threatened marine species."
"A federal appeals court has rejected a challenge to a U.S. EPA decision allowing Alaska to administer part of the Clean Water Act."
"The extensive pipeline system that moves oil, gas and waste throughout BP's operations in Alaska is plagued by severe corrosion, according to an internal maintenance report generated four weeks ago."
"Months after the funding was approved, state legislators still haven't decided how to proceed with a study of the proposed Pebble copper and gold mine."
"In a long-running legal battle between a Hawaiian community and the U.S. Army, a federal judge today ruled that the community has a right to know how live-fire military training in a nearby valley could damage cultural sites and marine resources."
"Alaska native corporations would lose their special contracting privileges under legislation that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) intends to introduce next month, a move that will stir debate about the billions of dollars' worth of federal set-aside contracts that the companies receive."
"For many with a stake in Alaska native corporations, promise of a better life remains unfulfilled."
"Across the Far North, populations of caribou — an indispensable source of food and clothing for indigenous people — are in steep decline. Scientists point to rising temperatures and a resource-development boom as the prime culprits."
"A Valdez-based citizen watchdog group told legislators Tuesday that the state's arsenal of oil-response equipment lags behind modern technology and the state division that enforces the rules for preventing and cleaning up spills has an 'ever-worsening funding shortage.'"
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