On 4/9/2018 11:43 AM, Quintana,
Katie wrote:
Mr. Albright,
I am in the process of reviewing
your FOIA appeal, and I need to clarify a few things with you. As I understand your
appeal, you do not object to the type or number of documents that you received,
and you do not object to the search that was performed for these documents.
Rather, you are objecting to the information, or lack thereof, contained in the
records you requested. In other words, you believe there should be
additional information contained in those records, and you are appealing on
this basis. Have I interpreted your appeal correctly?
Thank you,
Katie
Quintana
Administrative
Judge
Office
of Hearings and Appeals
HG-4/L'Enfant
Plaza
U.S.
Department of Energy
1000
Independence Ave, S.W.
Washington,
D.C. 20585-1615
E-mail:
Katie.Quintana@hq.doe.gov
Phone:
(202) 287-6972
Dear Judge Quintana,
No, that is not exactly my purpose.
The objection is that the actual information I'm looking for is conspicuous by
its absence. There is no information on the actual discussion and actions that
took place during the meeting. The rest of the information typically in a FOIA
response of this type (Meeting Agenda and Minutes) is there - let me provide a
few examples below:
A typical response of a Hydro
Optimization Team (HOT) Meeting consists of a pre-meeting Agenda listing the
proposed topics for discussion that includes old business, new business, status
reports for ongoing projects, proposals for new projects and funding status and
requests. The HOT chairman contacts the parties prior to the meeting to ask
them what they want on the Agenda.
The FOIA response also includes
post-meeting Minutes that tell what actually happened in the meeting; business
old and new, projects ongoing and proposed and new funding to be distributed
through the HOT. This is the information I am actually looking for - and it's
the only information that is missing from this response.
I believe they don't want to admit
that HDC has failed to reproduce my successful technology because of the
implication it could have in the ongoing fish-mortality lawsuit in the
Portland, Oregon Federal Court. The
suit is brought by Earthjustice and Save
our Wild Salmon has been in process since 1998 and currently is costing the
Federal Treasury $1-billion annually in fish-mortality mitigation efforts.
Let me add a bit about
the HOT and where it came from. During the first and second Gulf Wars in the
early 1990's USACE was tasked to construct infrastructure to support these
actions. DOD's funding was not adequate to cover the full cost of the war
preparations so money was drawn from all other USACE activities, leaving the
USACE Dams on the Columbia River with insufficient funds to keep up with their
normal maintenance so power outages became problematic.
DOE had plenty of
money from power sales, but all USACE funds must come down through DOD and much
of this money was being diverted to the Middle East to support the war effort.
DOE stepped up to provide low-level funding transfers to USACE to keep up with
Columbia River dam infrastructure maintenance and upgrades starting in 1995.
For expediency, this low-level transfer mechanism lacked the same oversight as
normal Cabinet-Level funding transfers, thus putting everyone on the "honor
system."
The head administrator
Steve Wright at BPA was fired for cause in the same
time frame - but information about the exact reasons are unknown to me. Whether
or not it's related to my problem is unclear. He was hired within 2 weeks at a private sector dam upriver,
however, perhaps showing that, "one hand washes the other."
After the meetings, minutes are
compiled from notes of what actually transpired and a few sentences are written
up about each topic to add to the Agenda as Minutes - and then both are made
available for public distribution. As an example, here is a typical FOIA
response from a prior meeting 6-months earlier. (The Minutes are in the front
and the Agenda is at the end of the document).
The only topic in this that I am
interested in is the GBO* project information report from USACE's Hydro Design
Center (HDC).
*The whole purpose of an "index
test" is to determine the best efficiency or optimum gate to blade relationship for the control system to
position the blades in relation to the gates under varying conditions of head
(or water level across the dam) and power, hence the name, Gate, Blade
Optimizer (GBO).
Figure 1Excerpt from HOT Minutes showing the GBO
comments.
This is not a technically informative report, but they had to say something.
"-Looked at movement at system and blades." conveys
no useful information.
"-Gross head PLC" is a Programmable Logic Computer (a dedicated
instrumentation tool) that measures the water levels in front of and behind the
dam and subtracts to find the difference, which is called "Gross
Head." This is such a simple function as to be laughable that they can't
get it to work correctly and that they think it is worth noting here.
"-PPEI Subagreement is a funding channel that is
drying up as if the "powers that be" have become reluctant to fund
this illegitimate activity anymore.
"-HDC continues to ass(ess) and improve GBO
performance” is simple blather.
Here is another example from the previous Nov 9 2016 HOT Meeting:
http://actuationtestequipment.com/USACE_Docs/2017-05-03_2016-11-09_HOT_Meeting-DRAFT-SUMMARY.pdf
This first excerpt on “INDEX TESTING AT THE DALLES” is
relevant because index testing is the objective of the Index Test Box and the Gate Blade Optimizer, and “T1”
is just another name for index testing to optimize Kaplan turbine gate to blade
relationships.
Figure 2 Excerpts from2016-09-11 HOT Meeting.
Funding is still problematic for their index testing/Gate
Blade Optimizer projects, in addition to their insurmountable head sensing technical problems. The Agenda was not
appended to these November 2016 bi-annual meeting minutes, so I’ve linked to it
separately here:
Going back another 6-months to the
May 2016 bi-annual meeting, the technical and financial problems are the same.
For this FOIA response, the cover
letter, Agenda and Minutes were all concatenated into one document:
http://actuationtestequipment.com/USACE_Docs/2016-05-16_BPA_FOIA.pdf
Figure 3 Excerpts from 2016-05-16 HOT Meeting Minutes.
Funding was becoming an issue 2
years ago, but they were still able to buy a lot of expensive hardware to
deploy. The question is whether or not it really works. While we’re looking at
this one, I’d like to know what information was redacted at (b)(7)(F) from this
FOIA response. Here is their reasoning for this redaction:
Figure 4 Excerpt from 2016-06-20 Redaction Appeal Denial
Reasons.
Law Enforcement? Security purposes?
Do they really think I’m going to attack their dam? I appealed this redaction
and it was upheld.
http://actuationtestequipment.com/USACE_Docs/2016-06-20_FOIA_Appeal_Denial.pdf
The only thing I want to know is
whether or not they’ve been able to successfully index test a turbine with
their Gate Blade Optimizer. If not, I’m going to use this information to tell
this story in a magazine article and to challenge HDC to a side-by-side
comparison to index test a typical Kaplan turbine – winner take all.
DOE needs to index-test these
turbines on a nationwide scale in order to maximize generated revenue, extend
turbine working lifespans and minimize mortality rates of downstream migrant
aquatic life at turbine-passage in Kaplan turbines everywhere, and has purchased
my Index Test Box twice and gotten it rejected by USACE HDC personnel in favor
of their cockamamie schemes to duplicate my successful private sector
technology with their own government developed systems.
I believe they have not been
successful with their GBO because if they had, they’d be shouting it from the
rooftops and publishing about it in every hydropower magazine on the planet –
instead, mum’s the word from them.
My belief is they’ve failed yet
again to duplicate my technology that DOE has purchased twice and demonstrated
thrice yet they still persist at it and now DOE higher-ups have gotten wise and
refused to play-along anymore.
The excuse they’re using this time
is that the Minutes are “inchoate,” so I can’t see them. This belies the
“Transparency in Government” objective of the Freedom of Information Act.
Thank you for your attention to this
matter.
Best regards,
Doug Albright
Actuation Test Equipment Company
On 4/9/2018 11:43 AM, Quintana,
Katie wrote:
Mr. Albright,
I am in the process of reviewing
your FOIA appeal, and I need to clarify a few things with you. As I understand
your appeal, you do not object to the type or number of documents that you
received, and you do not object to the search that was performed for these
documents. Rather, you are objecting to the information, or lack thereof,
contained in the records you requested. In other words, you believe there
should be additional information contained in those records, and you are
appealing on this basis. Have I interpreted your appeal correctly?
Thank you,
Katie Quintana
Administrative
Judge
Office
of Hearings and Appeals
HG-4/L'Enfant
Plaza
U.S.
Department of Energy
1000
Independence Ave, S.W.
Washington,
D.C. 20585-1615
E-mail:
Katie.Quintana@hq.doe.gov
Phone:
(202) 287-6972