Four and a half months after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for all communications that led to the controversial and later reversed decision to sharply reduce scallop allocations, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang was informed that Federal administrators would not fully comply with the request.
The New Bedford Standard Times reports that four boxes containing almost 11,000 pages of documentation from NOAA arrived at New Bedford City Hall, but Mayor Scott Lang feels the Feds may be withholding the most revealing and crucial information.
In a cover letter accompanying the documents, Eric Schwaab, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that 2,880 pages were withheld pursuant to federal laws that protect agency memorandums or letters that would "not be available to a party in litigation with the agency." Another 80 pages are specifically protected under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the letter said.
But Lang said that such a decision is typically made by a judge, not by one of the parties in a dispute, and that Commerce is overstepping by denying them to the city.
Mayor Lang described the Department's response as containing "everything they want us to see and nothing they don't." He said Commerce is treating those documents like top secret information about nuclear weapons or CIA operatives when they are about shellfish.
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