DPS will again publicly post oil spill photos
Marty Schladen, El Paso Times 7:13 p.m. MDT July 5, 2016
A state photo of an oil spill on the Lower Trinity River lat year. Despite the photo, the appears to be no record of the spill in the state regulator's database. Mid-American Geospatial Center, University of Texas at Austin
(Photo: Mid-American Geospatial Center, University of Texas at Austin)
AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Public Safety has reversed itself, saying it will allow the public to view aerial photos of flood-related oil spills on a University of Texas at Austin website.
“While the original intended use of the photos and privacy concerns remain valid, the goal was never to place an undue burden on the public in being able to obtain them,” DPS Press Secretary Tom Vinger said in an email. “Texas Division of Emergency Management and UT staff have since conferred, and in the interest of convenient public access, the UT public webpage — where the photographs are maintained — will no longer require a login and password to gain access to the photos.”
In May, after the El Paso Times published a story about the photos, the DPS removed them from public view, citing privacy concerns — a claim that drew skepticism from some members of the environmental and scientific communities. The agency said members of the public could obtain the photos by making requests under the Texas Public Information Act.
“Texas Division of Emergency Management and UT staff have since conferred, and in the interest of convenient public access, the UT public webpage — where the photographs are maintained — will no longer require a login and password to gain access to the photos.”DPS Press Secretary Tom Vinger
The Times made such a request, which the DPS attempted to refer to the University of Texas.
Then, late last Friday, the DPS and other state agencies decided it wasn’t feasible to respond to the request, which was for all reconnaissance photos shot by the Texas Wing of the Civil Air Patrol since 2014.
“After reviewing the complexities and logistics involved in requesting/obtaining the disaster photos through an official public information request, it became evident that because of the sheer volume of photographs (i.e., nearly 100,000 images captured in the last year alone), it could potentially be extremely time consuming and costly for a member of the public to access them, and for an agency to review each and every photo for privacy concerns,” Vinger said.
During severe flooding, the Civil Air Patrol flies sorties over affected areas, taking photos for use in predicting where floodwaters might be headed and documenting damage.
Before they were removed from public view, the Times found scores of photos depicting large oil spills. The Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, two state agencies with responsibility for oil spills, have not shown that they have any but the sketchiest records of the spills — or that the oil and fracking fluid that escaped from production sites has been cleaned up.
With regulators apparently doing little with the photos, it’s important that they be easily available to the public, said Meredith Miller, senior program coordinator at the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos.
“I think it’s fantastic,” she said of the decision to again make them available for public view. “They were going to have to release them one way or another. This is important information that should be available to the public.”
Among the privacy concerns Vinger cited when removing the photos from public view was that images of dead bodies might appear before authorities could notify next of kin. He reiterated last week that the intent was not to keep the public from seeing them.
Charles Daughtry, a Houston-area attorney and open-records expert, has been critical of the state’s removal of the photos from public view.
When the DPS last month tried to deflect a request for the photos to the University of Texas, he said the DPS was misreading the Texas Public Information Act. Since the DPS controlled the photos, it was responsible for providing them in response to requests, Daughtry said.
On Tuesday, Daughtry again criticized the DPS, this time saying it should have conceded that it was responsible for complying with a request for the photos — especially since it was the agency that created the requirement that they be obtained that way.
“It’s a shame the agency chose to ignore the benefits of the paper’s open records request had in shining a light on this very serious public issue,” Daughtry said in a text message.