Re: A Push-Back - Fwd: Re: Research Costs #2, FOIA Req. No. 19016278

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Re: Research Costs #2, FOIA Req. No. 19016278
Date:	Fri, 24 May 2019 15:38:04 -0500
From:	Doug Albright <DudleyDevices@Aol.com>
To:	FOIA-NWP <foia-nwp@usace.army.mil>

Hi Heather,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I'm having Internet access problems. - Doug

It does not seem reasonable to me that you cannot find a current sample of the GBO data and the 3-D Cam profiles. As shown below by texts written by two of USACE's men, the GBO is an ongoing, current and active project and its data has been verified as safely stored away. The 3-D Cam profiles and fish-screen schedule are normal operational data for this system that would be available from GMT or directly from any of the projects. It seems highly unlikely that you are legitimately needing so much time for searching. Something else is going on here.

It seems more likely the data is readily available but is being hidden from you - or an attempt is being made to discourage a citizen's legitimate FOIA request by abusive fees.

I won't be paying this fee because I told my U.S. Senator's office I'd pay only $15 for digital electronic media (CD or thumb-drive) and postage but would prefer emails or upload to the Cloud over media and postage. Your demand for $168+ more money is an outrageous price gouge for what should be a simple request.

Here's why I feel this way:

The GBO field data should be readily available because Dan Patla said in the October 2015 HOT meeting that the "data has been properly collected and stored." It seems unreasonable that properly stored data would not be readily available for your access to get a sample for me. Something else is going on here.

Here's an excerpt from that HOT meeting's minutes:

Figure 1 Excerpt from Oct 28, 2015 HOT Meeting

The full minutes of that meeting are at this link: (The redaction makes a good place-finder. Scroll down till you find it.)

Can I have some of this data please? If the data has been properly collected and stored, then it shouldn't be hard to find.

Another communiqué that makes it seem unreasonable that you cannot find the data easily is that your Andrew Long wrote to us recently that the GBO is an active and ongoing project; a bit slow in development perhaps but fully active and current. It would be most unreasonable that no data from the instrument Andrew described in his email would be readily available.

Figure 2 GBO Status from Andrew Long

The information I'm looking for is the raw data from the "data collection over several years" that has been "properly collected and stored" since 2015.

If you can't find the information, you're looking in the wrong places, or they’re playing hide-and-seek with you on what you want to be my time...

Ask either Dan or Andrew to get you the data. The objective of the FOIA is "transparency."

Cheers,

Doug Albright

Actuation Test Equipment Company

p.s.

Let me change gears and recap how we got here and why I'm being such a pest about this project.

There's a history that goes back 30 years with this project that I'm sure you were not told when you came in.

Please click on the links below to see the documentation about the origin of the Index Test Box/Gate Blade Optimizer, and then go talk to someone who was there.

It's not my place to tell you the whole story, but Dan Ramirez was there and knows more than he’s saying.

I invented the Index Test Box while working at Woodward Governor Company in 1985 and was awarded U.S. Patent on it in 1988 after a successful field-test demonstration at Bull Run Dam.

1988-12-27 U.S. Patent# 4,794,544 (Albright & George Mittendorf) My name on the Patent because I made it and George because he gave me the idea.

BPA purchased the first ITB from Woodward, wanting to demonstrate it for USACE at Bonneville Dam where 18 of Woodward's new Digital Electronic 3-D Cams had been installed 5-years earlier.

1986-06-11 BPA to Corps (Myers)

This cooperative R&D project was declined by USACE. Unbeknown to BPA and Woodward at the time, USACE had devised their own in-house version of Woodward's new Digital Electronic 3-D Cam called the "Seawell" 3-D Cam and replaced all of the Woodward 3-D Cams with this new device. (This is a whole ‘nuther can-o-worms that we won’t be dealing with just now…)

BPA and Woodward moved the test to another private dam owned by Portland General Electric (PGE); the Bull Run Dam is located about 30 miles east of Portland. One of the Kaplan turbines at this dam was rented by BPA for the test along with a Sr. Staff Engineer to provide support for the test. A new Woodward 3-D Cam was installed on the unit and the known 3-D Cam surface for the turbine was installed in the 3-D Cam for reference the “As Found” 3-D Cam profile. The index-test used the new Constant Power method to index-test the turbine without the wide swings of flow and power associated with conventional index tests.

The level of success achieved was assayed by a disinterested 3^rd Party who was already familiar with index testing these particular turbines: Gary Hackett, Sr. Staff Engineer at PGE had personal experience with these turbines and no dog-in-the-fight with the index-testing so he was the most impartial to judge the ITB’s test performance and data results. Gary’s was the only assessment of the level of success by a participant to the test. 1987-09-01 PGE-PHP-2 Report (Gary Hackett)

Figure 3 Excerpt from Gary Hackett's report, an assessment of Woodward’s (my) ITB level of success.

I got to write a magazine article about the experience: 1987-07-01 Little Black Box for Index Testing (Albright)

Based on this success, BPA offered to buy ITBs for every USACE powerplant on the mainstem Columbia River and update all of the governors and 3-D Cams with Woodward Governor Company quality new equipment throughout, but USACE Hydro management declined this FREE, new private sector equipment proven to work properly in a DOE test at Bull Run Dam in favor of initiating their own “in-house” effort to make something just like it at DOD expense…

Tom Thorsen resumed his earlier work on his automatic index testing device and submitted a test report on his “automatic index testing device” to BPA (Lee again) for evaluation a few years later in hopes of the same BPA project largess. 1990-03-27 Evaluation of USACE's "automatic index testing device” (Sheldon) It did not happen - but by the time BPA came back to Woodward the ITB project was dead and gone, except for the US Patent with my name on it that kept me from marketing anything similar for 15 years until the Patent expired.

The very week the Patent expired Lee Sheldon called from HDC at the behest of Rod Wittinger seeking the secret to how and why my ITB works. Lee had been brought in as a “Rehired Annuitant” to index test large Kaplan turbines on the Columbia River, and recalling our work 15 years earlier at Bull Run Dam he persuaded HDC to acquire one ITB to index test their Kaplan turbines.

Lee said that prior to my successful demonstration at Bull Run Dam, HDC had been working on similar automated index testing devices for over 25 years and had deemed it an “impossible” objective. No further DOD money would be authorized for this purpose – until they saw my ITB working at Bull Run Dam, then HDC upper management relented to more development funds.

And then nothing noteworthy happened for 15 years.

HDC bought the first Index Test Box from my Actuation Test Equipment Company under a Sole-Sourced Contract in 2004.

2003-09-06 USACE ITB Solicitation #1 (HDC)
2003-09-12 USACE ITB Solicitation #2 (HDC)

HDC wanted an updated version of my Index Test Box (ITB) that I invented in 1985 while working at Woodward Governor Company in Rockford, IL and was awarded U.S. Patent for.

1988-12-27 U.S. Patent# 4,794,544 (Albright & George Mittendorf)

After 8 months of haggling over Intellectual Property (IP) rights, we came to an agreement on a contract for one ITB with a side-deal for the software Source Code for $750,000.

2004-05-26 USACE Contract W9127N-04-D-0009 for Type-1 Optimizer (Ebner)

To protect the IP, U.S. Copyright 2004-07-19 TX 6-006-161 ITB Software Copyright (Albright) was acquired to identify the Source Code as a complete item and prove it had been written at private expense prior to signing the government contract.

A bump in the road

About 4-months into the contract's 1-year performance period GMT wouldn't allow me to connect the ITB to the GDACS, and I refused to give up the Source Code until I got the negotiated $750,000. In a meeting with Dick Nelson, Ed Miska and GMT on one side of the table and Dave Ebner, Rod Wittinger, Dan Ramirez and Lee Sheldon on the other they figured out what to do. The discussion was at loggerheads when Dave E. suggested the vendor (me) has agreed to sell the source code for $750,000, there's plenty of money in the contract to buy it so let's just buy the software and be done with it. Ed M declared that it wouldn’t be necessary to buy the vendors software, after HDC got one of the ITB instruments to look at their "Captive Supplier" could reverse engineer it and the funds could be conserved to pay for that software effort. Forewarned is forearmed.

According to Rod's field test report, My ITB was reasonably able to index-test unit 9 at McNary in December, 2005, which prompted the second test at Ice Harbor.

2005-12-12 McNary Field Test (Wittinger)

Figure 4 Rod's assessment of the level of success at McNary in December2005.

The ITB worked for the most part, a few bugs were found and fixed.

Next, Dan Ramirez personally demonstrate my ITB successfully at Ice Harbor in February 2006. Here's his assessment of the ITB's level of success.

Figure 5 Dan's assessment of my ITB after the Ice Harbor Field Test in a letter to Rod Wittinger.

http://actuationtestequipment.com/Reference_Materials/2006-02-21_Dan_Ramirez_Ice_Harbor_Report.pdf

(This last one is an email from Dan to Rod Wittinger [the Index Test Box Project Technical Lead] informally reporting on the ITB parallel correlation test at Ice Harbor.) I didn't get a copy of any formal reports, but I did get a copy of Dan's email plus a spreadsheet of data from Ice Harbor Dam testing that shows good correlation.

2006-02-01 Ice Harbor data spreadsheet (Ramirez)

After Dan’s ITB field-test at Ice Harbor Dam he and Rod Wittinger reported on the ITB “Proof of Concept” testing to BPA HOT: 2006-03-03_HOT_Meeting_PowerPoint_(HDC).htm

Figure 6 Excerpt from 2006-03-03 PowerPoint Presentation on ITB Status

According to this PowerPoint slide shown to BPA HOT by HDC engineers my ITB provides virtually identical results to COE’s normal data acquisition system and is ready for unattended, automated data collection.

Every indication was that my ITB was accepted for further use, and HDC had put in an order for 2 more ITBs, one for Chief Joseph and another for Dworshak. They didn’t provide a P.O. officially, but encouraged me to get started building them right away so as to have them ready in a month when the next HOT meeting would occur and they could get the $50,000 to buy them. But that’s not what was really happening. A fallacious claim that I had written the software at government expense and was refusing to give it over was made. The U.S. Copyright proved that the software was written at private expense prior to signing the contract, and a quick review of all invoicing showed no charges for working on the software programming showed the Copyright had not been weakened in this way.

Over a year later a series of emails between my Contracting Officer, Dave Ebner, and the rest of the HDC personnel working on this project arrived in a FOIA response. The emails explained a few things. 2006-01-26_Ed_Has_Conflict_of_Interest

The emails discuss how Ed Miska had a Conflict of Interest because he had been telling folks he wanted to cancel my contract and take the Index Test Box away from me to work on himself personally – and this at the same time as I was busy getting ready for the final field test demonstration at Ice Harbor.

What Ed was espousing was precisely what happened, however. It was said that what happened, happened not because Ed wanted It to happen, but because Dick Nelson wanted it to happen. Dick was a wily manager who always stayed out of sight. I rarely saw him past Ed Miska and his other henchmen.

A few weeks later BPA HOT Chairman Tom Murphy started writing checks against my ITB contract payable to Automated Control Systems Incorporated (ACSI) for a new project there to reverse-engineer my ITB. Much to my chagrin, my first ITB unit delivered to HDC was provided to ACSI as a study-model for their reverse-engineering project.

This Bait and Switch ruse to commandeer my ITB project, Contract and its funds was done by simply saying the ITB was developed by Government engineers and transferring it all over to (ACSI) to be duplicated using my contract’s funds to pay for it.

Everyone involved in the ITB project on the government side (both BPA and HDC) were in on the scam so it was easy to make the switch.

I reported this to DOE IG who brought in OMB to investigate my allegations of Diversion of Funds. DOE IG Hotline contact said it’s a common offence by low-level managers when they get the power of the purse and think that no-one’s watching… I never got anything from OMB - but an email from Tom Murphy came my way in which he apologizes to his cohorts in the Bait-and-Switch scam that the ACSI project was out…

http://actuationtestequipment.com/USACE_Docs/2006-06-08_Contract_In-House_for_ITB.html

While supposedly working with me to setup and execute the two demonstration field tests called for in my Contract (with and without fish screens) Tom Murphy and others in this crew were making presentations to Walla Walla District executives claiming that the Index Test Box was a component of GDACS.

Several attendees to the IEEE meeting in Chattanooga TN who know Ed Miska, me and this story told me that Ed had put-on a “stand-up” formal presentation on the ITB developed by government engineers. When he was questioned about my involvement later by Dave Kornegay (who worked with me at Woodward in 1984), Ed said that my role in the government’s Index Test Box project was only to do a small bit of prototyping. He went on to say that if I was offering ITB technology, it was stolen from HDC. That’s exactly backwards of what really happened.

That wasn’t the only time they misrepresented what happened.

A couple of years later I was negotiating for an index-test to be run as part of a $12-Million grant that Oak Ridge National Laboratory was going to receive. We were haggling over a $200,000 project to index test a Kaplan turbine at Kentucky Dam that was very similar to the two turbines we index tested at McNary and Ice Harbor. Two weeks before the funds arrived Brennan Smith Ph.D. head of the ORNL Wind and Waterpower Group was directed by DOE HQ to contact HDC about their HydroAMP program so as to avoid too much duplication of effort in his new endeavor. While speaking to HDC Engineers, Ed Miska gave Brennan a pitch for the Index Test Box that HDC was developing. Ed also gave Brennan a hand-bill for a job-opening at HDC to work on the Index Test Box project. 2007-01-04_HDC_Job_Solicitation.pdf

Figure 7 Excerpt from HDC Job Posting for ITB project

When Ed told this story to Brennan, Brennan immediately recognized the connection to my ITB that he and I had been discussing earlier that day. When Brennan mentioned the connection to Ed, Ed responded that the ITB had been developed as a government project at HDC under a prior contract and that I (my Actuation Test Equipment Company) had only done a minor bit of prototyping work for HDC on the government’s ITB project – instead of truthfully stating that HDC bought one and only one ITB from me as a complete, turnkey, end-item product from my Actuation Test Equipment Company for index testing Kaplan turbines. When Brennan asked about the legitimacy of my product, Ed responded that whatever I was offering was stolen government tech so Brennan (ORNL) shouldn’t buy into it. Brennan never spoke to me again.

It took several FOIA requests to get a resolution from HDC. The prior contract was with my Actuation Test Equipment Company, but the claim that the ITB was developed under that contract was false, the one and only ITB delivered to HDC was only purchased under that contract. Big difference, No?

Figure 8 Prior Contract was with my Actuation Test Equipment Company

At this point Dick Nelson, Ed Miska, the rest of GMT and ACSI felt they had enough of a grasp on my ITB technology to figure out how to duplicate it as a government project so they didn’t need me anymore. It’s been over 13 years and they’ve tried numerous times to create something workable, but now they’ve all retired; except for Dan Ramirez. So then, the operative question is, did they succeed? Methinks not. I’m ready to call their bluff on this.

The new crew in place now got left to deal with the mess that was made of this - and it seems their first line of defense was, “What Index Test Box? GBO? Never heard of it…”

The Index Test Box became my Life’s Work in 1995. I spent my evenings and weekends working on it until it was ready in 2004 when HDC called the very same week the Patent expired. In short order my ITB was demonstrated at McNary and Ice Harbor and then the project was wrested away from me by HDC engineers who thought they could make it work without me. When they came for my Source Code however, the U.S. Copyright on it protected my Intellectual Property so they had to write their own programming.

Today, it looks like they were wrong - they can’t figure out how to duplicate my ITB technology, all of their promises were empty and now they’re hiding the evidence of it, hoping people just forget it and go away. In hopes of covering-up their errors and wrongdoings, HDC relegated the GBOs (all 10 of them) to the Dalles for a Potemkin Village continuation of the project - until everyone forgets about it and they can just quietly move all of the old computers away.

Now they’re hiding it from you in hopes you and it will just go away.

Trust me, it won’t go away. I won’t be going away.

For more information and a clearer insight into this issue, you might call Lee Sheldon, P.E. (503-356-8302) who worked with me through all of this.

Last year we index tested a vertical Kaplan turbine at Dorena Dam, located about 90 minutes south of Portland near Cottage Grove, Oregon using my ITB.

Ask Lee how well it worked.

Best regards,

Doug

On 5/23/2019 2:01 PM, FOIA-NWP wrote:

Mr. Albright:

We have not received a response from you to our email dated May 14, 2019 regarding your willingness to pay reasonable fees and the costs to date for research.

As a reminder, in accordance with 5 USC § 552(a)(6)(A)(ii)(I), your request has been put on hold until we receive a written response from you.

Best Regards,
Heather

______________________
Heather Hall
District FOIA Officer
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Northwestern Division, Portland District Counsel

Email: FOIA-NWP@usace.army.mil

From: FOIA-NWP
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 9:27 AM
To: dudleydevices@aol.com
Cc: FOIA-NWP <foia-nwp@usace.army.mil>
Subject: Research Costs, FOIA Req. No. 19016278

Mr. Albright:

The FOIA allows fees to be charged to certain types of requestors who are placed in one of three categories: commercial, news media, and "other".

Requesters who do not qualify in another category are considered “other” requestors and ordinarily request agency records for their personal use. Based on the information contained in your request, you are considered an “other” requestor and shall receive two hours search and all review efforts at no cost. Search efforts exceeding two hours are charged at a rate of $48 per hour (see Fee Schedule, 32 C.F.R. § 286.12).

Please be advised that search efforts have exceeded two hours (currently, 2.5 hrs). The Corps estimates an additional 3 hours will be necessary to compile all the documents before this office may review. As indicated above, all review efforts are at no cost to you, search efforts here forward will be charged; we estimate approximately $168. Please note, this is an estimate and we cannot guarantee the costs will be more/less.

Please reply to this email acknowledging costs associated and willingness to pay those costs. Also, please be aware that, in accordance with 5 USC § 552(a)(6)(A)(ii)(I), your request has been put on hold until we receive a written response from you.

Regards,
Heather
………………………………..
Heather Hall
District FOIA Officer
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Northwestern Division

Portland District Counsel, CENWP-OC
333 SW First Avenue
Portland, OR 97204-3495
(503) 808-4521 | FOIA-NWP@usace.army.mil
http://www.nwp.usace.army.mil/About/FOIA.aspx