Environmental FOIA
A Story From the Frontlines in California and Kentucky
Infophilia, a Positive Psychology of Information | April 12, 2025 | Vol. 3, Issue 17
✨Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly letter exploring how our love of information and connections can help us all thrive, individually and collectively.
Cite as: Coleman, Anita S. (2025, April 12). Environmental FOIA: a story from the frontlines in California and Kentucky. (FOIA Libraries, Part 4). Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 3 (17).
Environmental FOIA
A Story from the Frontlines
I've been living on tenterhooks for more than 81 days now. That's how many days since Trump began his second presidency. Why? It's because I've been spending my time between two great states which are quite unlike each other. Yet, both have been experiencing unprecedented natural and human-made disasters: California and Kentucky.
This is Part 4 in our ongoing investigation of FOIA libraries. Previous installments explored FOIA journalism (Part 1), Health and Medical FOIA (Part 2), and University FOIA libraries (Part 3).
'Precarity' and 'the USA' don't seem like words that go together—but they do now. Here are the top environmental disasters I've personally seen devastate communities, family, and friends, causing unnecessary hardship, chaos, loss, and leading to a feeling of living on the edge of precarity.
California
Disaster: Southern California Wildfires
Date: Beginning January 7, 2025, and continuing through January.
Brief Description: A series of catastrophic and fast-moving wildfires erupted in Los Angeles County, primarily the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire. The Palisades Fire became the third-most destructive wildfire in California's history, and the Eaton Fire also ranked among the most destructive and deadly. The EPA was involved in a large-scale hazardous materials cleanup following the fires.
Kentucky
Disaster: Severe Storms, Straight-line Winds, Tornadoes, Flooding, Landslides, and Mudslides.
Date: Primarily February 14, 2025, through March 7, 2025, with ongoing impacts and additional severe weather from April 6 to now. Yes, even as I'm writing this we have a flood watch until tomorrow, April 12; earlier this week we had both a floodwatch and a freeze watch.
Brief Description: A prolonged period of heavy rainfall in mid-February led to widespread and severe flooding across Kentucky. Numerous rivers crested at or near record levels, causing extensive damage to infrastructure, including over 300 road closures and significant power outages. Tragically, there were multiple fatalities. The flooding also caused landslides and mudslides. Federal disaster declarations were issued for numerous counties. In early April 2025 (around April 2nd to 6th and then again starting a day or so later), Kentucky experienced another bout of severe weather, including powerful winds, tornadoes and further flooding in the lower Ohio Valley. The river Ohio crested / is cresting to unprecedented levels, similar to another historic flooding in Feb. 2018 in Louisville, KY. This resulted in additional damage and prompted another federal emergency declaration for all 120 counties in the state.
[Aside: What's notably absent in this critical conversation are American information scientists with the stature of public intellectuals who can bridge environmental information gaps between agencies, communities, and policymakers. This absence itself speaks volumes about our societal priorities. I hope to write about this too—shortly!]
Information Under Fire and Flood
After seeing flames consume homes in California and assisting both family and friends there, as well as in Kentucky, through one extreme weather event after another, I’ve learned one thing: in environmental disasters, informational power is not merely abstract. It is a condition of survival—and, ultimately, of human flourishing.
"They never told us the creek could rise that fast," my friend Elaine told me, her voice breaking as we peeled apart water-damaged family pictures. "If we'd known about the upstream dam release schedule, we would have moved everything upstairs."
Meanwhile, back in California, residents were asking why evacuation orders came so late for the Palisades Fire, despite early warnings from weather services about dangerous conditions.
In both disasters, people kept asking variations of the same question: "Why didn't we know?"
Sometimes, the answer is that the information was never shared. But just as often, the data was available—it simply wasn't accessed, understood, or believed. Whether due to poor communication, cognitive overload, or distrust in institutions, we don't always want to know. This phenomenon—what scholars call information avoidance and knowledge resistance—affects us all.
And yet, in a world of rising environmental risk, choosing not to know is a privilege few can afford. This is where infophilia becomes more than curiosity; it becomes civic action, an elevated form of civic information literacy. And when civic infophilia meets emerging AI technologies, ordinary citizens can become extraordinary information hunters, capable of uncovering environmental truths hidden in plain sight within FOIA libraries—a powerful combination that we’re only beginning to understand.