Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA)

Overview

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA) is one of the most consequential tools available to residents, researchers, journalists, and advocates seeking to understand how environmental decisions are made in Virginia.

VFOIA: "All public records shall be open to citizens of the Commonwealth… unless otherwise specifically provided by law."

The VFOIA establishes the legal right of the public to request and receive access to records held by state and local governments and agencies. Under the VFOIA, all public records are presumed open unless there is a specific exemption. All Virginia residents, as well as other people, can submit a VFOIA request. Agencies and offices must respond within a set timeframe.

What can you request?: You can request things like air and water permits and applications, air monitoring data, quality assurance plans, emails and other correspondence between agency staff, elected officials, and companies, inspection reports and enforcement records, contracts, grants, and funding proposals, meeting notes, presentations, and internal memoranda. You do not need to provide a reason for your request, and agencies and offices can not ask why records are being requested. Records may exist in paper or electronic form and include drafts, attachments, and metadata.

Importantly, VFOIA applies not only to final decisions but also to deliberative processes with certain exemptions. This is potentially an opportunity to learn how and why decisions are made and who influenced the process.

If a dispute arises over your access to records or the scope of exemptions, the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council provides guidance and advisory opinions. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) outlines its responsibilities and describes how to submit requests and appeal denials on their official FOIA page.

Purpose: VFOIA exists because public records are presumed open, because transparency is deemed essential to democratic governance, and because the business of government should be conducted in the open, and because the records created by public agencies belong to the public—not the institutions that hold them. In environmental governance, where technical decisions can have lasting consequences for health, land use, and racial justice, the presumption of openness is especially significant. Many of the permits, monitoring plans, agency reports, invoices, and internal communications preserved in Voices in the Dust exist only because they were obtained through VFOIA requests.

While environmental regulation is often presented to the public as a neutral, technical process, in practice it involves judgment calls, discretionary choices, and negotiations that take place largely out of public view. VFOIA requests can make it possible to trace how those decisions have been made, what information was considered or excluded, and how agencies responded when community concerns conflicted with industrial or political pressures.

Opportunity

VFOIA provides a way to move beyond official summaries and public-facing statements to examine the actual administrative record. In the context of coal dust pollution, VFOIA has made it possible to access records that are rarely published proactively. These records allow residents and researchers to reconstruct how agencies such as the VA DEQ have interpreted coal dust complaints, how risks were framed internally, and how regulatory responsibilities were understood over time.

Without VFOIA, much of this institutional history would remain inaccessible, leaving affected communities with little ability to challenge official narratives or evaluate regulatory performance.

For environmental justice, VFOIA helps counter the structural imbalance that allows institutions and industries to control information while residents are asked to accept official conclusions without access to underlying records.

Limitations

VFOIA is powerful but not without limitations. Public bodies are allowed to withhold certain categories of records when disclosure conflicts with other protected interests. Under VFOIA, agencies may withhold records that fall within specific statutory exemptions. Importantly, these exemptions are permissive, not mandatory—meaning that while agencies are allowed to withhold records, they are not always required to do so. In practice, many agencies and offices routinely invoke all applicable exemptions as a matter of institutional policy.

Exemptions commonly cited by state agencies, local governments, and the governor's office include:

• Personnel Records: To protect individual employees' files.
• Attorney-Client Privilege and Attorney Work Products: This is often invoked to withhold legal strategy or advice.
• Vendor Proprietary or Trade Secrets: Frequently used when regulated industries submit operational data.
• Contract Negotiations Prior to an Award: This limits access to draft agreements or financial terms.
• Health Records: To protect personal medical information.
• Criminal Investigation Records
• Security-Related Plans: This is invoked where a disclosure could allegedly jeopardize safety.

Some jurisdictions explicitly state that they will invoke all applicable exemptions in response to FOIA requests in order to "treat all citizens the same" and protect institutional interests such as privacy, litigation posture, or bargaining power.

These limitations do not render VFOIA meaningless. Agencies and offices must still cite the specific statutory exemptions they rely on, release non-exempt portions of records, and acknowledge the existence of withheld materials. Many of the most analytically useful records such as air permits, air monitoring data, inspection reports, and utility invoices are not covered by common exemptions. For example, the water usage records of the Dominion Terminal Associates and Kinder Morgan Bulk Terminals used to evaluate the terminals' adherence to wet dust suppression requirements fell into this category, making them a critical source of accountability even when other documents were redacted or withheld.

Finally, the limits of VFOIA are themselves part of the record. Patterns of delay, redaction, and exemption reveal how environmental governance actually operates, where institutions perceive risk, and whose interests are most protected. Voices in the Dust preserves not only what was disclosed, but how disclosure occurred, including response timelines, redactions, and exemption claims. In doing so, Voices in the Dust treats transparency not as a given, but as a contested terrain.

Relevance

VFOIA allows members of the public to request a wide range of records on coal dust-related regulation, enforcement, and politics. FOIA has been particularly important in the coal dust issue because residents' accounts continue to be dismissed as anecdotal or unproven. Through VFOIA, the Repair Lab obtained air and water permits, air monitoring proposals, internal agency emails, inspection records, and historical correspondence that reveal how coal dust concerns have been handled administratively. The documents show not only what agencies and offices ultimately decided but how those decisions evolved, stalled, or narrowed over time.

One use of VFOIA in Voices in the Dust involved requests for water usage bills and invoices associated with Dominion Terminal Associates and Kinder Morgan Bulk Terminals operations. Coal terminals routinely assert, both publicly and in regulatory contexts, that wet dust suppression is used consistently and as required to minimize coal dust emissions. These claims are often accepted by regulators as evidence of good-faith compliance. Water usage records were obtained through VFOIA requests submitted to the City of Newport News Waterworks and compared with wet dust suppression requirements and meteorological data to assess whether usage patterns were consistent with regulatory requirements.

FOIA Request Template

[Date] FOIA Officer [Agency name] [Agency mailing address or FOIA email address] Subject: Virginia Freedom of Information Act Request – Coal Dust Records Dear FOIA Officer, Pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (§ 2.2-3700 et seq.), I respectfully request access to the following public records related to coal dust emissions, monitoring, enforcement, and community complaints in [Newport News / Norfolk]: All [desired documents, communications] between [division / office / individual] and [relevant entities] regarding [relevant issues] from [start date] to [end date]. I request these records in electronic format (PDF, Excel, or Word) whenever possible. This request is made for public interest and educational purposes as part of a university research initiative related to community health disparities, and environmental justice in Virginia. Disclosure of these materials will contribute to public understanding of environmental health risks and government oversight. I respectfully request a waiver of any fees, as the information is not being sought for commercial use. If any portion of the requested records is exempt, please release all reasonably segregable non-exempt portions and cite the specific exemption applied. Please confirm receipt of this request and contact me at [email] if clarification is needed. Sincerely, [Your name], [institution / organization], email: [email address], phone: [phone number]

Documents

• VFOIA Template, Repair Lab