February 21, 2005
Mr. Neil Pedersen, Administrator
Maryland State Highway Administration
707 N Calvert Street, MS-301
Baltimore MD 21202
Dear Mr. Pedersen:
On February 19, I received your CD allegedly containing the data that I had requested in my January 17 Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request.. I had requested “the street address of each of the 87 residences threatened with displacement by the ICC project, for all alternatives, as cited in the DEIS” and also “the street address of any other threatened residence not included among those 87.”
This seemed like a simple request, one that you could answer simply, straightforwardly, and quickly – especially given the stakes for my family and scores of others, and given the unduly short public comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
Yet no reasonable person would find your response adequate or responsive. I have attempted to use the data you provided to get the information I requested – the street addresses of the 87 residences threatened with displacement – but cannot.
At first glance, your response might have appeared adequate. In your cover letter, you stated that the CD contained “…a full list of potentially impacted residences...which includes potentially displaced properties…. Please note that the range of impacts could be related, but not limited, to noise increases, visual intrusion, air quality, partial property impacts and/or full property displacements.”
In reality, your response was completely inadequate and unacceptable. As SHA is certainly well aware, there is absolutely no way for me to determine which rows in the spreadsheet are due to what impact, because no column indicates the type of impact. The two spreadsheet files provided (Excel "books") are divided into 28 individual spreadsheets ("sheets") with meaningless names and no descriptive information at all.
Addresses of the homes to be destroyed (“residential displacements” in SHA parlance) by the various alignments may well be embedded in the SHA data; that information is also in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County telephone books. As delivered to me, the SHA data has no more value than a telephone book!
For instance, I attempted to analyze the data by searching for one residence (17104 Overhill Rd) known from the DEIS maps (Volume 2 Appendix A plate 6) to be destroyed by alignment Option 1C. I found this address on Sheet 2, row 1278. I then searched for a neighboring residence (17117 Overhill Rd), known to be preserved by Option 1C. I found this address on Sheet 2, row 1284. Sheet 2 has 1818 rows. The 87 displaced residences I am looking for may be among those 1818 rows, but clearly it is not possible to distinguish displaced residences from whatever else is in that sheet. By the way, you might note from the address below my signature that your agency is contemplating destroying my family’s home at 17104 Overhill Road.
Such obfuscation, if accidental, suggests SHA incompetence; if deliberate, it suggests SHA evasion and dishonesty; if necessary, because SHA hasn’t yet sorted out the information we requested, it suggests that SHA is rushing through the process and that parts of the entire DEIS could be severely flawed.
Your response to my request appeared responsive. One month to the day after I posted my simple and reasonable request, a Fedex package with a CD arrived at my door.
In reality, your response was completely inadequate and untimely. You or your staff could have sent the data the day that you received the request, or certainly within a very few days. The files on the CD that SHA provided clearly required no special preparation, as the files have creation dates of August 27, 2004.
(This suggests that these files were indeed used to create the inadequate notification that I and others received, dated September 30, 2004, which included “…a map(s) that includes a section of the proposed ICC under consideration near your property” and stated that “a DEIS… will be released to the public this fall, which will discuss how the project affects your community.” No other details. The inadequacy of this letter, and lack of specifics in the DEIS regarding real effects on real people, is exactly what lead to my FoIA request for more information in the first place.)
Instead, SHA chose to stall for 30 days and to deliver an unresponsive response less than one week prior to the current close of the public comment period. If SHA had instead responded promptly, clarifications such as those I am now requesting could have been made in a timely fashion. The original request stated, “I ask that my request receive expedited processing (less than 30 days) because it is needed to provide informed comments on the DEIS before February 15, 2005”. Only due to the fact that the comment period has been extended by a token ten days, which was not yet the case at the time of the request, do even five days remain for me to make use of SHA’s inadequate information.
Since SHA delayed rather than expedited the request, and since the information provided is inadequate, I join with the several dozen community organizations who have requested extension of the comment period to June 3rd, for a total comment period of 180 days after the agencies posted some of the technical reports on the Web. This extension is even more necessary given the fact that the SHA posted a corrupt, unreadable copy of the Socioeconomic and Land Use Technical Report on the agency’s official ICC web site for nearly two months. You posted a readable copy on the site only February, but only after others and I had alerted you several times to the problem.
In conclusion, since the SHA response neither responds to my FoIA nor complies with FoIA or PIA, I demand that the SHA help me sort this out by immediately providing the following individual reports in Excel spreadsheet format:
(1) Provide a clear, concise list of the addresses of those homes, and only
those homes, that would experience full property displacements (i.e. be
destroyed) because they lie in the right of way of an ICC alignment or because
of any other reason. This list should be an Excel spreadsheet identified by
name or description as “Full Displacements,” and include (a) all the information
already provided (see Addendum) but in addition state (b) the specific
alignment option(s) that would affect each specific home.
(2) Provide a clear, concise list of the addresses of those homes, and only those homes, that would experience any other impacts (other than full destruction) because of the ICC. This list should be an Excel spreadsheet identified by name or description as “Other Impacts”, and include (a) the information already provided (see Addendum) but in addition state (b) the specific alignment option(s) that would affect each specific home; (c) the type(s) of impact – including but not limited to noise increases, visual intrusion, air pollution, and partial impacts; and (d) the quantified extent of the impact. An acceptable alternative would be separate Excel spreadsheets per type of impact that include items (a), (b) and (d).
(3) Clearly define all terms used in all spreadsheets and the meanings of all
columns. Include a definition of the non-displacement impact terms (SHA
parlance) used in your original response to me and listed in (2) above,
including but not limited to: “noise increase”, “visual intrusion”, and
“partial property impact”.
(4) Clearly define the range of impacts and units of measure, or enumerate the terms and their definitions, used to quantify (2d) above, the extent of impact.
(5) Provide an explanation of the methods used to identify and quantify the non-displacement impacts listed in (2).
(6) If multiple sheets are needed for any reason, clearly explain the contents of the individual sheets.
I ask that SHA provide me with this information in electronic form as an e-mail attachment to ebnineteen@hotmail.com, or on CD to my address (below). I ask that my request receive expedited processing because it is needed to provide informed comments on the DEIS. I ask that the DEIS comment period be extended to June 3rd so that I may make use of this information.
Sincerely,
Eve Burton
Roger Metcalf (technical advisor)
17104 Overhill Rd.
Derwood MD 20855
ADDENDUM
Two Excel spreadsheets were provided on CD, along with a cover letter. No descriptive information was in the letter or spreadsheets, and no descriptive accompanying files or other documentation was provided. Each spreadsheet “book” contains multiple sheets.
File MoCoMailing.xls is size 3,633,128 bytes, created August 27, 2004 8:14:24 AM, has 21 sheets with the following names and number of rows:
Name # Rows
Sheet 1 76
Sheet 1 & 2 395
Sheet 2 1818
Sheet 2 & 3 7
Sheet 3 1101
Sheet 3 & 4 6
Sheet 3 & 4 & 8 28
Sheet 3 & 8 4
Sheet 4 634
Sheet 4 & 5 49
Sheet 4 & 8 248
Sheet 5 994
Sheet 5 & 6 26
Sheet 5 & 8 41
Sheet 6 451
Sheet 7 6
Sheet 8 2248
Sheet 8 & 9 111
Sheet 9 2066
Sheet 9 & 10 97
Sheet 10 1704
File PGMailing.xls is size 60,416 bytes, dated August 27, 2004 8:11:56 AM, with sheets:
Name # Rows
Sheets 6 & 7 10
Sheet 7 23
Sheet 7 & 10 & 11 3
Sheet 7 & 11 3
Sheet 10 72
Sheet 10 & 11 17
Sheet 11 57
All sheets contain the same data columns with these column names:
Column Name
MapSheet
ACCTID
ADDRESS
CITY
ZIPCODE
OWNNAME1
OWNNAME2
OWNADD1
OWNADD2
OWNCITY
OWNSTATE
OWNERZIP
PREMSNUM
PREMSDIR
PREMSNAM
PREMSTYP
PREMCITY
PREMZIP