Opinion ID: 454902
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Instance Two

Text: 17 Zemansky's second claim stemmed from his November 27, 1981 letter to EPA requesting documents regarding planning of State of Alaska-EPA roles for the 1982 placer mining season and a meeting held November 2, 1981 to discuss EPA's role. Zemansky contends that the affidavits did not sufficiently address attempts made to locate records of this meeting. The affidavit of Ward notes that the letter was not treated as an FOIA request because it appeared to be a personal letter to the Regional Administrator. Ward also said in her affidavit that if such records existed (pertaining to inter-agency roles), they most likely would be maintained by the State-EPA Agreement (SEA) Coordinator, Julie Hagensen. In her affidavit, Hagensen reports that she was unable to locate any specific document responsive to the request for documents pertaining to the planning of interagency roles for the 1982 placer mining season. Hagensen examined the Alaska FY '81 and FY '82 SEA files as well as the general SEA files for FY '81-82 while searching for responsive documents. 18 Zemansky argues that EPA's affidavits are inadequate because neither of the two EPA employees attending the November 2, 1981 meeting was ever asked to locate records of this meeting, even though one of them, Diane Soderlund, did produce an affidavit and records concerning another meeting. The EPA notes that it did not know who had attended the meeting until Zemansky provided the information in his answering affidavit and that, at that time, EPA did inquire of Soderlund, who was able to produce some rough, handwritten notes on yellow paper that might have been responsive. Those were offered to Zemansky during a prebriefing telephone conference and, apparently, refused. 19 Zemansky recognizes that [a]ffidavits describing agency search procedures are sufficient for purposes of summary judgment only if they are relatively detailed in their description of the files searched and the search procedures, and if they are nonconclusory and not impugned by evidence of bad faith. (Citing McGehee v. CIA, 697 F.2d 1095, 1102 (D.C.Cir.1983)). The EPA affidavits meet this standard. 20