Herring River Restoration Project

Herring River Technical Team Secrecy

The town of Wellfleet and the Cape Cod National Seashore intended that the planning for the Herring River Restoration Project would be secret starting in 2019. Previously, a diverse group of scientists and ecologists called the Herring River Technical Committee planned the project in meetings that were compliant with the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law and the Public Records Act. In June 2019, however, the town and the Seashore signed a revision of their memorandum of understanding regarding the Herring River project (MOU IV) that changed the name of the planning group to the Herring River Technical Team and specified the following:

For the next four years, the deliberations of the Herring River Technical Team remained secret. In 2023, however, I reconsidered the above declaration and concluded that neither Wellfleet nor the National Seashore had the authority to create an organization that was not required to adhere to federal or state laws. Accordingly, I used Massachusetts Public Records Requests (PRR) and the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to xxxx records documenting the Technical Team's deliberations from the time of its inception (June 2019).

The path was not straightforward, because the name "Technical Team" was not used in communications regarding deliberations of the scientists planning the project. Rather, the name Coordinating Committee was used as an alias for Technical Team. The use of an alias thwarted my FOIA and public records requests until I discovered the deterrent strategy.

Records documenting the deliberations of the Herring River Technical Team (aka, Coordinating Committee) are available on this website at HRTT Records.

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