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Our watchdog reporting needs your help and here’s why

| September 9, 2024

Editor’s note: This is a version of a FREE newsletter from Delaware Currents, which is delivered to subscribers periodically. If you'd like to get this directly to your inbox, please subscribe.

This week’s newsletter is about the investigative piece that we ran on Tuesday by Chris Mele:

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

But really this newsletter is all about how — even when relying on the federal Freedom of Information Act and state public records laws —getting this information required diligence and persistence.

Luckily, the spill didn’t affect the drinking water of residents of the watershed below the spill.
Also luckily, the Philadelphia Water Department’s Delaware Valley Early Warning System performed well.

But … botched communications turned the grade for the response to the event and its aftermath from a B+ to a D.

Chris has been investigating this for months. It’s been like pulling teeth. A pity, because there’s so much to learn about how we, as a community, respond when there’s a problem.

Classic example? The dance we did with the City of Philadelphia. Here’s the timeline:

Nov. 21, 2023: Requested after-action report and contemporaneous emails about the response to the spill.
Dec. 27, 2023: City seeks additional time to process request.
Jan. 17, 2024: City requests additional time to process request.
Jan. 31, 2024: We’re told the requested after-action report exists only as a draft and was being withheld as a record of “internal predecisional deliberations.” The city releases 63 pages of emails that shed little light.
March 14, 2024: Re-file a Right-to-Know request for the now-completed after-action report.
April 18, 2024: City requests additional time.
April 25, 2024: We get an executive summary of the report but that’s it.
June 26, 2024: Mediation with state Office of Open Records.
July 31, 2024: We get the report but with critical sections redacted.

That report on the spill from Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management — dated March 4, 2024 — included 51 pages of recommendations to improve.

BUT those 51 pages were redacted by the city, which cited arcane exemptions to state’s Right-to-Know Law as grounds for blacking them out.

51 pages?!!

We have agencies whose job it is to protect us. If they have a problem in responding to a spill, shouldn’t recommendations to improve that response be wide open?

Bad enough is the foot-dragging but the lack of any response at all to repeated requests for information is also alarming. Take the U.S. Coast Guard, for example.

The response to a spill like this requires a cohesive command structure, called a unified command. There were five public agencies involved in the unified command, though there were many others that responded to the spill.

The U.S. Coast Guard was the lead agency, which makes its reluctance to provide information all the more alarming. The Coast Guard has been contacted several times and only recently responded to our requests by saying, “Later, baby.”

What they’ve said is that our request for records “is currently pending with Coast Guard headquarters due to its significance.”

Damn skippy it’s significant!

We never got a response from the manufacturer Trinseo, whose pipes caused the spill. We also never heard back from Bucks County Emergency Management.

You get the idea.

I’m convinced that because our journalism ecosystem has been weakening over time, that many agencies think they don’t have to bother with answering to the public.

That will not happen on our watch.

I need to thank the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, which provided guidance in negotiating the ins and outs of the state’s Right-to-Know Law.

PNA did that, bless ’em, even though we’re not a member — because it costs $500, which is a lot for this tiny (but mighty) nonprofit newsroom.

But YOU can say thank you to them and to us and rush us $500 (or $50, or $5) so that we can become a member of PNA and keep them (and us) afloat so we can continue doing this vital watchdog work!!

Please donate now!

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