On May 2, 2014, I received a release of information from the U.S.
Coast Guard related to STORIS and my Freedom of Information Request from Nov. 4, 2013. Not counting the already described “partial
release’ from the Coast Guard of dubious integrity that I received on Feb. 27,
it took just shy of six months to get a response. Even then, it falls short in
many ways.
In many ways, however, some
of the information that was turned over is revealing and revolting. There is no
doubt that anger will be shared by many. The GSA release is yet to come. As
this information gathering continues, it is clear that we never had a chance to
save STORIS for preservation, even before she was illegally excessed, illegally
sold and illegally exported to Mexico for scrapping.
This is another long series
of posts, but if you care about STORIS, I urge you to read this as there are
details that need to be known. Encourage your shipmates, family, friends and
others to read, too.
The documents from the Coast
Guard were accompanied by a cover letter that indicated that information was
redacted for privacy issues following established procedures in the FOIA laws.
While it is understood for various documents that were generated because of
private citizens inquiries to Congressional offices on behalf of the ship,
there are some serious questions as to the validity of redacting other names
from the documents. Many of the redacted segments involved the names of various
Coast Guard officers/officials who would be considered public officials. As
such, they would have no expectation of privacy. The pursuit of this
information is related to their actions and decisions made in an official
capacity as members of the Coast Guard associated with the handling and
disposition of STORIS. Their names should be public as well as their roles in
the ship’s disrespectful disposal. The names of several other officers, with
ranks as high as RADM, are not redacted. Why?
This goes back to the
previous discussions about President Obama’s directive for Open Government and
Atty General Eric Holder’s subsequent memo: “While recognizing that the
"disclosure obligation under the FOIA is not absolute," and that the
FOIA contains exemptions to protect, for example, national security, personal
privacy, privileged records, and law enforcement interests, the Guidelines
stress that the President has directed agencies not to withhold information
merely to prevent embarrassment, or because "errors and failures might be
revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears."
I had to go through to
redact MY personal information from a couple pages before posting to the
Internet. It’s swell that the Coast Guard officers involved try to keep their
hands clean in this issue, but it’s okay to release personal information from
private citizens. As a result, the original 70 pages, while released in one PDF
document, have been broken into five documents. The only changes made were to
redact my contact information so I could post the information. The cover letter
points out that my request fell below the $14 minimum for payment requirements,
so the FOIA was released at no charge. (Of course, then you have EPA, which was
going to charge $767.75 for one FOIA request at one point and then GSA who
demanded $10,266 for its FOIA…) Click here to read the cover letter.
The first few pages are
letters from Congressional representatives supporting the ship’s donation for
museum use.
Page 6 lays out the
excessing process through GSA. We have subsequently learned that STORIS should
not have been excessed through GSA as her displacement exceeded 1,500 tons (40
U.S.C. 548). The process of excessing and selling STORIS was a violation of
Federal Law. There are strong suspicions that STORIS also contained
undocumented materials that contained regulated levels of PCBs, which would
also have made the “distribution in commerce” of the ship from the Coast Guard
a violation of Federal Law. This was discussed in the review of the
Environmental Assessment performed on the ship (and ACUSHNET) prior to her
decommissioning and elsewhere within other posts.
Pages 12 generally outlines
the circumstances through which the ship was disposed. The Coast Guard claims
that the ship was free of regulated PCBs based on a memo from Jan. 17, 2007 that was a simple cover sheet for a 2000 Hazardous
Material survey conducted on the ship. The legitimacy of this PCB abatement
process is highly suspect as has been discussed in other posts. There has been
serious concern about the 2000 Haz-Mat survey and its obvious avoidance of the
areas of the ship where PCBs would most likely be found. Other than a short
PowerPoint presentation and a brief mention on a Jan. 17, 2007 cover letter, there is no supporting documentation
to prove that ALL of the encapsulated PCBs were removed from the ship. More on
that cover letter in a moment… The letter also lays the determination of the
bidder and timetable for the removal squarely with GSA. However, it is our
understanding that the Coast Guard was not pleased with the timetable and may
have even requested through GSA that the sale be nullified because the ship was
to be removed by early July and instead, remained at the Suisun Bay Reserve
Fleet until Oct. 25. The Coast Guard was in a position to have to continue
paying for mooring costs at the SBRF. This was later revealed in the
documentation to be around $51,000. So that would mean that three, possibly
four months of rent at the SBRF would come to $12,750 to $17,000. Who paid
that, the CG or the buyer, U.S. Metals Recovery? The GSA documentation is crucial to
understanding a lot of these issues.
The remainder of Part 1 is
the questionable Haz-Mat survey from 2000, with the last document being the
cover letter from Jan. 17, 2007. Strangely and suspiciously, the first line of the
cover letter has been redacted out. WHY? The redacted paragraph serves as the
whole foundation upon which rests the Coast Guard’s whole argument for the ship
being free of regulated PCBs.
We have copies of the cover
letter from other sources, so I can report that the redacted paragraph reads:
“1. Please be advised that
the CGC STORIS is free of PCBs. All material that is above 50 ppm and not
defined as totally enclosed are considered PCB containing for regulatory
purposes.”
Why would the Coast Guard
redact that paragraph, again especially considering those few words form the
basis for their defense that the ship was free of regulated PCBs and therefore not
in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act and other Federal laws that regulate/prohibit
the transfer and export of PCB-containing ships through the Federal Government?
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