09/11/2026
How does a straightforward regulatory question become a $4,600 FOIA problem?
For months, residents have not just been asking EGLE for documents. We have also asked EGLE to explain its current regulatory position on a handful of basic questions about the Balsam/Jefferson operation.
In August, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy told Representative Amos O'Neal's office that the remaining questions were “moving into the FOIA realm and should be answered via that process.” O’Neal’s office then told us those specific questions would need to be addressed through FOIA.
So we followed that direction.
We are now sitting on three EGLE FOIA estimates totaling $4,635.85, with processing estimates stretching from weeks into months.
To be fair, not every dollar of that total is literally the cost of answering a few questions — one request included a broader historical records search.
But this is the larger problem:
When residents ask an agency a straightforward question about what the agency itself regulates, why should the answer require residents to pay thousands of dollars and reconstruct the agency’s position from public records?
That matters even more now because Carrollton Township is preparing to make a land-use decision about this property.
Before that happens, everyone should be working from the same clear answer about one basic issue:
What part of this operation is temporary, and what operation does EGLE understand will remain permanently after the finite Part 31 project is complete?
That should not take another year and another stack of FOIAs to answer.
