Feds justify withheld material in LNG case

BANGOR – Government lawyers have filed a detailed list of documents requested under the federal Freedom of Information Act by opponents of a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on the Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy reservation.

The list in U.S. District Court details the reasons why some material has been withheld by the U.S. Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs.

It outlines 20 documents concerning the tribe’s leasing of land to an Oklahoma developer that were requested in a lawsuit filed almost a year ago by We Protect Our Homeland.

After the lawsuit was filed in federal court in Bangor, the government released some but not all of the requested material.

The papers listed in the 26-page list filed Wednesday includes four documents that have been released in full, two that have been withheld in full and 13 from which material has been redacted or blacked out.

The documents included letters, e-mails and faxes between agencies and attorneys, and an environmental assessment of the lease.

Most of the information withheld falls under the deliberative process exception to the law that allows citizens access to government documents.

The “personal interpretations, recollections, impressions of candid discussions and sometimes the candid discussions themselves that occurred among [BIA and Interior Department employees] during the decision-making” have been eliminated from 13 of the documents.

“Release of [these] materials would have an adverse effect on the Department’s and BIA’s deliberative process by chilling the free flow of opinion that is necessary to develop policy, and it could confuse the public by revealing opinions that were not adopted by the agency,” the court document says.

Government attorneys argue in the introduction to the list that information redacted from the documents included e-mail addresses, handwritten notes and communications that fall under the attorney-client privilege – all of which are exceptions to the Freedom of Information Act.

The environmental assessment deals with the impact of tests on the proposed LNG terminal site. They include soil tests, test borings and water monitoring wells needed to complete an environment impact statement required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other agencies before Quoddy Bay could be licensed to build and operate the proposed facility.

The assessment also stated that the tests would “would not require any mitigation measures other than capping of test wells and replacement of any disturbed soils.”

Buried in a redacted e-mail describing an April 20 conference call about the proposed terminal is one sentence that may give LNG opponents some hope.

“The area where the LNG’s are going,” the e-mails stated, “was proposed 25 years ago as a site for an oil refinery. [The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] opposed and defeated it because of the effect on threatened and sensitive species.”

We Protect Our Homeland filed two lawsuits last year and a third earlier this year because members believe their viewpoints were not represented in May 2005 when the Pleasant Point Tribal Council signed a partnership agreement that included the lease with Quoddy Bay LLC of Tulsa, Okla.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock dismissed two of the lawsuits, ruling that the organization did not have standing to bring them and that they had been filed too soon.

In September, Woodcock dismissed a portion of the lawsuit seeking the documents but allowed another portion to continue.

The judge will decide whether the government agencies have complied with the law or whether some of the redacted material also should be released to the group of Pleasant Point residents who oppose the proposed LNG terminal at Split Rock.

There is no timetable under which Woodcock must issue a decision in the lawsuit.