nuclear-news

A federal court judge has declined to permanently block the release of Kitsap County documents about response plans to a nuclear emergency at the Navy Kitsap-Bangor base or other Navy facilities.

U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton on Dec. 15 had issued a temporary injunction restricting the release of what was termed “sensitive and protected national security information” contained in these federal government documents.

Since then, public-records requests to access the documents have been withdrawn, and the judge has found that most of the issues involved in the case have now been rendered moot.

“Because no request is pending … a live case or controversy regarding the County’s potential disclosure does not exist,” Leighton wrote in a ruling he signed Thursday.

The unusual case was filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, and resulted from a dispute between the Navy and Kitsap County over what information could be released under state public-records laws.

“From our perspective, we have the state laws — the public-records act — to comply with, so we were a little bit caught in the middle in this,” said Shelly Kneip, senior deputy prosecuting attorney for Kitsap County.

The case centers on a public-records request made bypeace activist Glen Milner in January 2015. He asked Kitsap County to release documents about the consequences of a nuclear incident at Kitsap County Navy facilities, and also information about emergency response.

By the summer, that public-records request had yielded nearly 6,000 pages of documents from Kitsap County.

But Kitsap County and federal officials were at odds about what information in additional documents could be released, including details about a county exercise that simulated the response to a nuclear incident.

At one point, the county was warned the release of protected information would expose their employees to the risk of criminal prosecution, according to a footnote in a brief filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle, which represents the Navy in the case………http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/puget-sound/judge-wont-block-release-of-navy-nuclear-data-in-kitsap-county-after-records-requests-withdrawn/