Documents revealed from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to DC’s Department of Public Works (DPW)

Ener­gy Jus­tice & Sier­ra Club FOIA Request to DC Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works (1/3/2014)

Response Let­ter (2/11/2014) and full raw FOIA response (58 MB zip file)

  1. “All doc­u­ments and mem­o­ran­da since 1/1/2011 relat­ed to the Waste Life-cycle Study under the Sus­tain­able DC Plan, including: 
    1. The final Request for Pro­pos­al (RFP) [Solic­i­ta­tion Doc 97300]; 
    2. Bids sub­mit­ted;
    3. Bid eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria and doc­u­ments relat­ed to analy­sis of bids; 
      • [None pro­vid­ed]
    4. Con­tract award­ed to win­ning bidder; 
    5. Time­line for com­ple­tion of study; 
    6. Doc­u­ments relat­ed to plans for pub­lic hearings; 
      • [None pro­vid­ed]
    7. Cor­re­spon­dence relat­ed to the study” 
  2. “All doc­u­ments, pro­pos­als and mem­o­ran­da authored by, or addressed to, man­age­ment, staff or con­sul­tants of the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works allow­ing for any pos­si­bil­i­ty of a waste-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty (broad­ly defined to include any ther­mal treat­ment) with­in the Dis­trict as part of the ‘Waste Life-cycle Study’.” 
    • [Some answered in 1(g) above. No oth­er doc­u­ments provided.]
  3. “All RFPs, bids, bid eval­u­a­tion doc­u­ments and con­tracts from the most recent con­tract bid­ding for each type of waste that the Dis­trict of Colum­bia con­tracts with ven­dors for haul­ing and dis­pos­al.” It is our intent to obtain the con­tracts for haul­ing and dis­pos­al for each type of waste han­dled by the city includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to munic­i­pal sol­id waste, recy­cling, com­post­ing, e‑waste, haz­ardous waste, and con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion waste. 
  4. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Prince George’s Coun­ty or oth­er polit­i­cal juris­dic­tions con­sid­ered as poten­tial part­ners in a region­al waste-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty regard­ing coor­di­na­tion on region­al waste dis­pos­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly those relat­ing to study­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of locat­ing a waste-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty in the District.” 
    • [None pro­vid­ed]
  5. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of waste-to-ener­gy ven­dors, includ­ing Cov­an­ta, since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013.” 
  6. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the North­east Mary­land Waste Dis­pos­al Author­i­ty since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013.”
  7. All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and the DC May­or’s office regard­ing waste-to-ener­gy since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013.” 
    • [Doc­u­ments we know exist were not provided]
  8. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and mem­bers of DC City Coun­cil regard­ing waste-to-ener­gy since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013.” 
  9. “All records from Fis­cal Year 2008 (FY08) to Fis­cal Year 2013 (FY13) con­tain­ing sta­tis­tics, graphs and data­bas­es on the vol­ume and types of munic­i­pal sol­id waste trans­port­ed to the Ft. Tot­ten trans­fer sta­tion and des­ti­na­tion after processing.”
  10. “All records from FY08 and FY13 con­tain­ing sta­tis­tics, graphs and data­bas­es of the vol­ume and types of munic­i­pal sol­id waste trans­port­ed to the Ben­ning Road trans­fer sta­tion and des­ti­na­tion after processing.”
  11. “All records from FY08 to FY13 con­tain­ing sta­tis­tics, graphs and data­bas­es of the vol­ume and types of munic­i­pal sol­id waste trans­port­ed from Dis­trict of Colum­bia waste trans­fer sta­tions to the Cov­an­ta Fair­fax Ener­gy-from-Waste facil­i­ty (Cov­an­ta Fair­fax Facility).”
  12. “All records from the FY08 to FY13 con­tain­ing sta­tis­tics, graphs and data­bas­es of the munic­i­pal sol­id waste trans­port­ed from Dis­trict of Colum­bia waste trans­fer sta­tions to dis­pos­al facil­i­ties oth­er than the Cov­an­ta Fair­fax Ener­gy-from-Waste facil­i­ty (Cov­an­ta Fair­fax Facility).” 
    • [For Fis­cal Years 2008–2009, respon­sive doc­u­ments to items 9–12 state: “No data avail­able. Scale sys­tem was switched to a new sys­tem and data migra­tion is inac­cu­rate and incom­plete.”]

      2010–2013 data was sup­plied in numer­ous spread­sheets bro­ken out by year and inbound/outbound for each of the four cat­e­gories above. We’ve com­piled all but one of these into a sin­gle Excel work­book, added sev­er­al sum­ma­ry charts and a “Facil­i­ties” tab cor­rect­ing vague and mis­spelled facil­i­ty names and explain­ing what we know about each facil­i­ty referenced.

      Trans­fer Sta­tion Data (2010–2013)

      FY 2009 Com­bustible Tons

  13. “List of all pri­vate licensed haulers who are allowed to take waste from com­mer­cial and mul­ti-ten­ant hous­ing of four or more units in the city.” 
    • [DPW claims to have no respon­sive doc­u­ments and sug­gests that the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs (“DCRA”), Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment (“DDOE”), or the Office of Plan­ning (“DCOP”) may have respon­sive documents.]
  14. “All records con­tain­ing lists of dis­pos­al facil­i­ties that pri­vate haulers of com­mer­cial and mul­ti-ten­ant hous­ing of four or more units are allowed to use or have used in FY12.” 
    • [DPW claims to have no respon­sive doc­u­ments and sug­gests that the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs (“DCRA”), Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment (“DDOE”), or the Office of Plan­ning (“DCOP”) may have respon­sive documents.]
  15. “The study ref­er­enced by Hal­lie Clemm at the Jan­u­ary 3rd 2013 DC Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work pan­el, demon­strat­ing that the max­i­mum pos­si­ble recy­cling rate for D.C. is around 35 per­cent.” She ref­er­ences the study at 4:00–4:30 in this video doc­u­men­ta­tion of her talk on the pan­el: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rms_iaSBDU”
  16. “Any doc­u­ments that con­tain fig­ures or data that sup­port state­ments made by Hal­lie Clemm and/or William How­land that incin­er­a­tion is less expen­sive than coal for ener­gy production.” 
    • [None pro­vid­ed]
  17. “Any doc­u­ments that con­tain fig­ures or data that sup­port state­ments made by Hal­lie Clemm and/or William How­land that incin­er­a­tion is less expen­sive than land­fills for waste disposal.” 
    • [None pro­vid­ed]
  18. “Any doc­u­ments that con­tain fig­ures or data that sup­port state­ments made by Hal­lie Clemm and/or William How­land that incin­er­a­tion is less pol­lut­ing than coal for ener­gy production.”
  19. “Any doc­u­ments that con­tain fig­ures or data that sup­port state­ments made by Hal­lie Clemm and/or William How­land that incin­er­a­tion is less pol­lut­ing than land­fills for waste disposal.” 
    • GBB White Paper Excerpts

      [Note: GBB is the nation’s lead­ing pro-incin­er­a­tor con­sult­ing out­fit, and their white paper includes false com­par­isons designed to make incin­er­a­tion look good, such as com­par­ing mer­cury emis­sions to coal pow­er plants with­out adjust­ing for the size of facil­i­ties, mak­ing incin­er­a­tors look like they went from being a larg­er total source than coal (true) to a much small­er source once the incin­er­a­tors installed pol­lu­tion con­trols, with­out acknowl­edg­ing that incin­er­a­tors are still 6–14 times worse than coal per unit of ener­gy pro­duced.]

  20. “Any doc­u­ments that con­tain fig­ures or data that doc­u­ment the fig­ure in the Sus­tain­able DC Plan show­ing that DC gen­er­ates 800,000 tons/year of waste.” 
    • [No spe­cif­ic doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed, but Tech­ni­cal Mem­os sup­plied in email attach­ments under item 1(g) above show that the city gen­er­ates about 900,000 tons/year.]
  21. “Any doc­u­ments and cor­re­spon­dences relat­ed to the Waste Action Plan pro­posed under the Sus­tain­able DC Plan, includ­ing time­line for devel­op­ment and oppor­tu­ni­ties for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and participation.” 
    • [DPW claims to have no respon­sive doc­u­ments and sug­gests that the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs (“DCRA”), Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment (“DDOE”), or the Office of Plan­ning (“DCOP”) may have respon­sive documents.]
  22. Any doc­u­ments and cor­re­spon­dences relat­ed to sta­tus of the com­post site pilot projects ini­ti­at­ed as part of the Sus­tain­able DC Plan.” 
    • [DPW claims to have no respon­sive doc­u­ments and sug­gests that the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Reg­u­la­to­ry Affairs (“DCRA”), Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment (“DDOE”), or the Office of Plan­ning (“DCOP”) may have respon­sive documents.]

Ener­gy Jus­tice FOIA Request to DC Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works (4/20/2013)

Priv­i­lege Log (list of what they redact­ed and why)

  1. “All doc­u­ments and mem­o­ran­da since 1/1/2011 relat­ing to DPW’s time­line for issu­ing a Request for Pro­pos­als to study waste-to-energy.” 
    • “The Depart­ment has no respon­sive documents.”
    • NOTE: they’re play­ing games, pre­tend­ing that the RPF isn’t “to study waste-to-ener­gy.” How­ev­er, the Final Solic­i­ta­tion is on their web­site. It was pub­lished on the city’s web­site on 2/28/2013 and bids were due by 4/4/2013. To get to it direct­ly, click here then click on “Elec­tron­ic Oppor­tu­ni­ties.” Click on the arrow beside – Sta­tus: Pend­ing Selec­tion, then click the “ID” col­umn label twice to sort from high to low num­bers. ID Num­ber for the solic­i­ta­tion is Doc97300 (“Request For Pro­pos­als — Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment or Engi­neer­ing Con­sult­ing Ser­vices”). Click that, then click “Down­load Con­tent” to get all of the documents.
  2. “All doc­u­ments relat­ing to DPW’s Request for Pro­pos­als to study waste-to-energy.” 
    • “The Depart­ment has no respon­sive doc­u­ments.” (same games as above)
  3. “All active con­tracts between the Cov­an­ta Fair­fax Facil­i­ty and the Dis­trict of Columbia.” 
  4. “All bids and bid eval­u­a­tion doc­u­ments from the most recent con­tract bid­ding for the Dis­trict of Columbi­a’s munic­i­pal sol­id waste disposal.” 
  5. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Prince George’s Coun­ty or oth­er polit­i­cal juris­dic­tions con­sid­ered as poten­tial part­ners in a region­al waste-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty since 1/1/2009 regard­ing coor­di­na­tion on region­al waste dis­pos­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly those relat­ing to study­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of locat­ing a waste-to-ener­gy facil­i­ty in the District.” 
  6. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of waste-to-ener­gy ven­dors, includ­ing Cov­an­ta, since 1/1/2009.”
  7. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and employ­ees or rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the North­east Mary­land Waste Dis­pos­al Author­i­ty since 1/1/2009.”
  8. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and the DC May­or’s office regard­ing waste-to-energy.” 
  9. “All com­mu­ni­ca­tions between DPW and mem­bers of DC City Coun­cil regard­ing waste-to-energy.” 
  10. “The study iden­ti­fy­ing the Ben­ning Road, Fort Tot­ten and Blue Plains sites as the most suit­ed sites in the city for a trans­fer station.” 

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