AP today reported that California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that seeks to beef up dam inspections following a near disaster that caused the evacuation of almost 200,000 people living downstream from the tallest U.S. dam. The measure sets standards for inspections and requires periodic review of dams’ original design and construction records. It also requires inspectors to consult periodically with independent experts and makes inspection reports public.
This site does not ordinarily cover state information policies, but the story brought to mind a FOIA case—from 2003 in the height of the ‘terrorists are going to get your information’ scare(-mongering) from the George W. Bush administration. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press wrote1 about in 2004, and I covered it in my 2007 book:
Glen Canyon Dam. In September 2001, a small environmental group filed a FOIA request for the federal government’s projections as to where the waters would go if the dam burst. The Bureau of Reclamation, which creates the “inundation maps” projecting what might happen, denied the request. In March 2003, the federal district court in Salt Lake City upheld2 the denial, ruling that the government could withhold the unclassified maps under an exemption to the FOIA for “law enforcement” records. One component of the law enforcement exemption protects against release of information that might help anyone circumvent the law—and the judge said that terrorists might make use of the information. The ruling included an oblique reference to “a dam failure as [seeking] a ‘weapon of mass destruction.’ ”3
Today’s story from California reminds us how far we have come—at least at the level of that state—but also what is at risk when allegations of potential threats by terrorists to Homeland Security are backed up by the courts and the Justice Department.
To this day, DHS considers information about dam safety to be “sensitive but unclassified”4 and keeps it behind a locked portal:
The HSIN-CS [Homeland Security Information Network-Critical Sectors] Dams Portal, managed by the Dams Sector-Specific Agency (SSA) within the Office of Infrastructure Protection/DHS, provides trusted and vetted public and private sector partners, including owners and operators…
https://www.rcfp.org/sites/default/files/homefront-confidential.pdf
2 Living Rivers, Inc. v. United States Bureau of Reclamation, 272 F. Supp. 2d 1313 (D. Utah 2003). [March 2003]
U.S. Department of Justice. “Exemption 7f,”Item 14. https://www.justice.gov/oip/foia-guide-2004-edition-exemption-7f
4 A marking for withholding information that is utilized with widely divergent ‘meanings’ by agencies. While it is (and has been since 2010) targeted for removal as an approved/recognized control designation, regrettably NARA has ceded to the agencies and “Existing agency policy for all sensitive unclassified information remains in effect until your agency implements the CUI program.”