Riverkeeper, NRDC sue federal agency for withholding records
Riverkeeper and the Natural Resources Defense Council have sued the federal Office of Management and Budget for the second time in four years, accusing the agency of violating the Freedom of Information Act.
Last August, the two New York-based environmental groups filed a request for documents pertaining to new requirements for cooling water intake structures, like those that have been proposed for the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan. The federal agency is required by law to respond within 20 business days about whether the request has been granted or denied.
The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. District Court in White Plains, stated the federal agency has failed to produce all of the documents requested and has not responded as to why it has not complied.
Seventy-one pages were received in March, a lawyer for the groups said, adding that 28 of those documents were files the group already had from previous FOIA requests in recent years.
The request outlined five areas of documentation from the Office of Management and Budget: communication with nongovernmental entities, communication with federal government entities, drafts or recommendations pertaining to the new rule, all records related to the final regulation, and communication with the Office of the Federal Register.
“We don”™t have a vast majority of the documents that we”™re entitled to in full or redacted form, nor have they said when they”™re going to respond,” said Reed W. Super, a lawyer with Brooklyn-based Super Law Group LLC who is representing the environmental groups.
The federal agency did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The nature of the request, Super said, relates to proposed Clean Water Act regulations in 2011 about water cooling systems. In May 2014, the federal Environmental Protection Agency administrator signed a final version of the rule, known as 316(b), about water cooling towers, and it was published in the Federal Register in August.
According to the complaint filed by Riverkeeper and the NRDC, the new regulation was finalized by the EPA after an interagency review process led by the Office of Management and Budget was concluded.
The changes made following the agency reviews “altered or deleted technical and scientific conclusions reached by EPA”™s and the services”™ expert staffs in a manner that severely weakened the 316(b) Rule,” the complaint reads.
In 2011, Riverkeeper and the National Resources Defense Council sued the federal agency for similar reasons about not producing records until after the groups went to court. A year later, the environmental groups threatened another lawsuit if a Freedom of Information request was not kept, but negotiated an agreement with the federal agency”™s legal team.
“I expect they”™ll provide the documents because they really have no defense,” Super said. “The only question is how quickly, and they”™ve already dragged it out a long time.”