Presented as a draft of procedures to implement the National Environmental Policy Act, the DHS Management Directive 5100.1, Environmental Planning Program outlines responsibilities for performing environmental impact analyses, with “special considerations for intergovernmental coordination, public involvement, dispute resolution, handling of sensitive information, and emergency procedures in department decision making.”
ALA specifically questioned the proposal’s Section 6.2, which addresses classified or protected information exempted from disclosure. “The scope of information that would be withheld from disclosure under this directive is striking and well beyond the statutory authority of the department,” ALA said its statement.
“The DHS is proposing to use a regulatory directive to change the law, which is really not allowed,” ALA Washington Office Executive Director Emily Sheketoff told American Libraries. Noting that the proposal includes “no mechanism for the public to appeal their lack of ability to access information,” Sheketoff pointed out it also does not address “the very real problem of ’how do you even know what you’re not seeing?’”
Among other organizations and individuals responding to the DHS’s call for public comment on its proposal was a coalition of environmental protection groups that included the National Resources Defense Council, the Audubon Society, and the Sierra Club. Those groups pointed to potential problems with the directive’s “overly broad use of categorical exclusions” that allow the Department of Homeland Security to withhold “information now routinely available to the public through the NEPA process.”
Posted August 20, 2004.