A little FOIA story: Last October, when Trump was talking about “cities going to hell” in California, he made a strange comment that San Francisco was "in total violation” of some sort of waste rule and “we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.”
Sure enough, on Oct. 2, one of Trump’s EPA appointees sent a notice of violation to a San Francisco official, claiming the city was improperly discharging wastewater and sewage. I filed a FOIA for all EPA docs and comms related to the violation. epa.gov/ca/city-and-co…
I got the FOIA response back today. EPA is withholding 86 (!) records in full. That’s a lot of withheld documents for what I thought was a narrow request! 
The New York Times reported last year that these EPA actions targeting California were engineered by the EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, AGAINST the objections of California EPA staff. nytimes.com/2019/10/15/cli…
So what’s in those 86 withheld documents that EPA won’t give me? It’s reasonable to think they show the involvement of political appointees in using the agency’s power to go after California. Possibly also emails showing the disagreement and displeasure of local EPA staff.
A lot of the materials they did give me on this request are redacted. It’s a lot of this.
But check this out — and FOIA nerds, please tell me if you’ve seen this before. One email they gave me is 3 pages of redactions. Then, suddenly, this text: “STOP: Do Not Begin Work on This FOIA. We’ll Set Up a Kick-Off Meeting First.” And then it quotes my FOIA request.
I’ve never seen a note like that in a FOIA response. Maybe it’s normal? Are there often warnings to FOIA staff to working on FOIA responses and then “kick-off” meetings with multiple EPA staffers and attorneys to discuss how to provide documents on a FOIA request?
Anyway, now I really want to see these documents. #FOIAFriday
for those curious, here’s the entry for the request in the public FOIAonline system, w/ the original request and responsive docs foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/act…
*Trump’s comments were in September, not October washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09…
