In its 9th binding opinion for 2026, the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (PAC) found in favor of a public body in a FOIA appeal involving a request for storm sewer infrastructure maps and records. PAC Op. 26-009.
A requester submitted a request to a city water department asking for sewer and flood control maps, GIS mapping data, engineering schematics, and other maps detailing the exact locations of all surface water drainage infrastructure for a specified area in the city. The city denied the request, citing to section 7(1)(x) of FOIA which exempts the following from disclosure:
Maps and other records
regarding the location or security of generation, transmission, distribution, storage, gathering,
treatment, or switching facilities owned by a utility, by a power generator, or by the Illinois
Power Agency.
The PAC agreed with the city that the FOIA exemption applied to the requested records, finding that the “plain language of section 7(1)(x) exempts, among other things, maps and
other records regarding the location of gathering facilities owned by a utility.” The PAC determined that the city’s water department operated as a “utility” and that the infrastructure operated by the city that was the subject of the request qualified as “facilities” under the cited FOIA exemption. The PAC rejected the requester’s argument that the city was required to demonstrate how release of the records would affect the security of the city’s utility system, finding that records that reveal “the location” of utility facilities was enough to trigger the exemption without having to show a security concern, stating as follows:
Because section 7(1)(x) is worded disjunctively, however, it
provides two independent bases for claiming the exemption: (1) the requested records regard the
location of facilities owned by a utility or (2) the requested records regard the security of
facilities owned by a utility.
In sum, the PAC determined that the requested records (consisting of atlases-detailed maps showing the location of sewers, storm mains, access points, and various other details of the city’s water infrastructure and GIS mapping data detailing the location of stormwater gathering facilities) fall squarely within the types of records exempt under section 7(1)(x). As a result, the city did not violate FOIA in denying the request in its entirety.
