ML20206C110
| ML20206C110 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Palo Verde  |
| Issue date: | 04/08/1987 |
| From: | Chilk S NRC OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY (SECY) |
| To: | Garde B GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20204G557 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-86-183, FOIA-87-A-3 NUDOCS 8704130001 | |
| Download: ML20206C110 (3) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES PT t
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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W ASHINGTON,0.C. 20555
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OFFICE OF THE April 8, 1987 SECRETARY Ms. Billie Pirner Garde, Director Environmental Whistleblower Clinic Government Accountability Project l
Midwest Office 3424 Marcos Lane IN RESPONSE REFER I
Appleton, Wisconsin 54911 TO 87-A-3(86-183)
Dear Ms. Garde:
This letter is a partial response to your January 13, 1987 Freedom of Information Act (F0IA) Appeal 87-A-3CE (86-183). On December 10, 1986, Donnie Grimsley, Director of the Division of Rules and Records, notified you
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that you were being denied certain of the allegation management documents you had requested on March 6, 1986 under F0IA.
Several agency officials were i
responsible for the initial denials, and therefore, under 10 C.F.R. 6 9.15(a),
responses to your appeal are due you from both my Office and the Office of the Executive Director for Operations. The latter office responded to you on March 11, 1987. This le_tter completes the agency's response to your January 13, 1987 appeal and covers documents which are the primary concern of Comission-level offices. These documents were among the documents listed in Appendix E of Mr. Grimsley's December 10 response to you. For the Appendix E numbers of the documents covered by this letter, see the Attachment.
In response to your appeal, the documents which are listed in the Attachment have been reviewed. On the basis of that review, we are releasing certain documents in their entirety, but we are affirming the initial decisions to withhold the remaining documents.
We are releasing the documents with the Appendix E numbers 21, 30, 33, 97, 100
{with all attachments), and 141. We are also releasing certain attachments to the documents with Appendix E numbers 57 and 109. The document numbered 97 and the attachments to the documents numbered 100 and 109 are already publicly available.
In our initial F0IA response, these attachments were apparently inadvertently overlooked because they were attached to items deemed exempt from disclosure. The rest of the material we are releasing consists of short i
documents which, though closely linked to revisions of the allegation management system, on closer examination prove not to have been part of any deliberative process leading to those revisions and are not otherwise exempt from release.
We affirm the initial decisions to withhold the remaining documents. They are all either recommendations for change, notes for drafts, drafts of various intraagency documents, or coments on drafts, all dealing with various aspects of the NRC's system for management of allegations, and all leading up to a revision of that system. Therefore,theseitems"compris[e]partofthe process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated." See 8704130001 870408 PDR FOIA GARDEB7-A-3 PDR
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i Ms. Billie Pirner Garde, Director 2
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NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 150 (1975). Release of these documents could " stifle honest and frank comunication within the agency", see Coastal States Gas Cor). v. Department of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, 866 (D.C. Cir.
1980), and thus "injur,e] the quality of agency decisions"'. See NLRB v.
Sears, 421 U.S. at 151. Therefore, under Exemption 5 of 5 U.T C. 9 552(b) and 10 C.F.R. 0 9.5(a), these documents are exempt from disclosure.
These documents do not contain any reasonably segregable portions which could be released, since the few portions which discuss publicly known facts or paraphrase established law and policy are either inextricably intertwined with exempt portions, see Neufeld v. IRS, 646 F.2d 661, 665-66 (D.C. Cir. 1981), or so "relatively smaTT" in proportion, and "so interspersed with exempt material that separation by the agency and policing by the courts would impose an inordinate burden." Lead Industries Association v. OSHA, 610 F.2d 70, 86 (2nd Cir.1979); see also Doherty v. United States Department of Justice, 775 F.2d 49, 53 (2nd Cir.35) (existence of some exempt material in documents largely exempt does not require district court to undertake burdensome task of analyzing some 300 pages of documents line-by-line).
The material being released to you is also being placed in the Commission's Public Document Room at 1717 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20555.
This letter represents final agency action on your January 13, 1987 F0IA Appeal of the denials of the documents listed in the Attachment. Judicial review of the denial of documents is available in Federal district court in the district in which you reside or have your principal place of business, or in the District of Columbia.
Sincerely, Sa 1 J.
h1 S
etary of the Commission
Enclosure:
Material released
Attachment Appendix E Numbers of the Documents Covered by This Response 7
107 10 109 20 110 21 125 27 131 30 132 33 133 35 136 47 141 57 142 71 143 77 146 82 149 83 153 84 156 86 157 87 158 90 159 91 168 97 169 100 183 102 185
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