Editorial: Philadelphia’s secrets are not in the public interest

Credit to Philadelphia, specifically its Office of Emergency Management, for taking the time to do a critical analysis of what went right — and what went wrong — in the city’s response to a spill of 8,100 gallons of latex product into the Delaware River in March 2023.

While the spill was a bona fide emergency, it turned out ultimately (and thankfully!) not to pose a serious risk to the Delaware River or the city’s drinking water supply.

So what lessons were learned about the city’s response to the spill? Delaware Currents set to find out. We made federal Freedom of Information Act and Pennsylvania Right to Know public records requests to various agencies and what we discovered was not reassuring.

You can read more about our findings here but what we learned was that, among other things, intra- and inter-agency communications were plagued by a variety of breakdowns and messaging to the public during the emergency response was a mess.

Read more: Response to 2023 Trinseo spill into the Delaware was slow and marked by botched communications, records show

We know that from one-sentence summaries of 36 “areas for improvement” in a 200-page post-mortem, formally known as an “after-action report,” led by Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management.

But that list was a skeletonized version of the report’s more detailed findings. What about the muscle, fat and sinew of the recommendations?

Oh, that? The city said we could have those 51 pages — all of them entirely blacked out like the abyss of a coal mine at midnight.

The section on “Analysis, Findings and Recommendations”?

Can’t have that.

The section labeled “Conclusion”?

Nope, not that either.

How about “Improvement Plan”?

Get lost, pal.

In its decision, the city cited exemptions under the state’s Right to Know Law to support its total redactions: internal predecisional deliberations, the records contain information regarding a noncriminal investigation, and disclosure would threaten public safety and the security of public infrastructure.

The utter and complete withholding of entire sections about how the city can better serve the public is, at best, a government overreach or an overly generous interpretation of the state’s public records law.

At worst, it falls well short of open government. The outcome is as transparent as frosted glass. It does nothing to engender public trust.

Dear Philadelphia, just because you can withhold requested public records doesn’t mean you have to. And it certainly does not mean you should withhold every last bit of information.

Not 51 pages in their entirety.

There was nothing in the recommendations that could have been made public without jeopardizing public safety or critical infrastructure? Really? Nothing at all?

We get the “we-don’t-want-to-the-bad guys-to-find-out” important operational details of the workings of a public drinking system but considering that more than half of the areas in need of improvement were related to communications issues — including to the public — wouldn’t it behoove the city to let the public know what it learned and how it plans to remedy the shortcomings?

Delaware Currents will press its request for these withheld sections because it’s part of our watchdog and accountability mission.

It’s also worth pointing out that the exemptions that Philadelphia cited (hid behind?) are flaws baked into the state’s Right to Know Law, which is sorely in need of revisiting by state lawmakers.

As Melissa Bevan Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, noted that the exemptions cited by the city are the broadest in the Right to Know Law and frequently stymie the public’s ability to learn about government decisions and investigations.

She noted that the investigations exemption “creates a significant barrier to access even basic oversight records like health and safety inspections that exist to protect the public.”

“So, the public has no right to access these investigation records, even though they are conducted on their behalf, with public money and illustrate significant areas of public interest,” she added.

Meanwhile, what happens the next time there is some kind of contamination of the Delaware, which supplies nearly 60 percent of the drinking water to Philadelphia and is overall a source of drinking water to more than 14 million people?

Let’s face it, there will almost assuredly be a next time because no manufacturing or industrial protection systems are full-proof.

The environmental group Environment America recently cited a 2022 Government Accountability Office study found that between 2010-19 there were an average of 190 “accidental chemical releases” to air, water or land per year — about one every other day — from more than 11,000 facilities that store large volumes of toxic chemicals.

So, what about the next time?

The public may never know. Because, to borrow a phrase from Philadelphia’s after-action report, transparency is one of those “areas for improvement.”

Read the After-Action Report here: