Foss Maritime to appeal city determination on Terminal 5 permit 

May 8, 2015 
CONTACT: Paul Queary, (206) 334-1483, paulq@strategies360.com 

Foss Maritime plans to appeal the city of Seattle's determination that Foss's
use of the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5 is not allowed under the Port's
existing use permit. 
The appeal process will take months to complete. In the meantime, Foss
intends to provide its customer, Royal Dutch Shell, the services for which it
contracted over the next few weeks as it prepares for the summer oil
exploration season in Alaska. 
The city's position is not supported by the plain language of the permit at
issue, and will cause long-term harm to the maritime industry as a whole.
The permit for Terminal 5 allows Port customers to tie up vessels so that
goods and cargo can be stored, loaded and unloaded, which is precisely
what Foss is doing at Terminal 5. 
By taking this action so late in the day, Mayor Ed Murray is trying to stop a
lawful project that has already put 417 people to work full-time and will soon
employ hundreds more, many of them citizens of Seattle. Worse, he has
openly solicited the Port of Seattle to use the city's action as a pretext to
break a valid lease at Terminal 5, despite the separately elected Port
Commission's recent unanimous vote to uphold the lease. 
These actions are an attempt to prevent one of the city's oldest and most
prominent companies from performing marine services that it has provided
and the Port has welcomed for generations. This action is akin to the mayor
ordering Seattle City Light to cut off all electricity to Amazon on the Friday
after Thanksgiving.
If his actions simply impacted Foss, that would be bad enough. But it
jeopardizes many other business activities across the waterfront, and calls

into question the sincerity of the mayor's previous statements in support of
the maritime sector.
For example, under the city's initial determination, Alaska fishing trawlers
would not be allowed to winter over at the cruise ship docks at Terminals 90
and 91; the Seattle Fire Department's fire boats could not dock at Terminals
90 and 91 as they are currently doing; and the vessels of the U.S. Navy and
other navies that visit during Seafair would not be allowed to tie up at Port
facilities. Maritime businesses from Ballard to South Park are doubtless
nervously checking their permits and wondering whether the mayor will
deem them worthy. 
Foss believes that the permitting at Terminal 5 is appropriate for our use,
and that the city's determination is a statement of politics rather than policy.
Accordingly, we will challenge it through the appropriate channels. The
process looks like this: 
Foss will appeal the determination to the Seattle Hearing Examiner
within 14 days. Other interested parties, such as the Port, may join in
the appeal. 
The Hearing Examiner will then set a hearing date on the matter. 
The hearings officer would typically produce a ruling on the matter
within 15 days after the hearing. 
Under normal circumstances, the city would not issue a violation to
Foss or the Port of Seattle until and unless it prevailed in the hearing. 

### 

ABOUT FOSS MARITIME 
Founded in 1889, Seattle-based Foss Maritime offers a complete range of maritime services
and project management to customers across the Pacific Rim, Europe, South America and
around the globe. Foss has one of the largest fleets of tugs and barges on the American
West Coast. The company has harbor services and transportation operations in all major

U.S. West Coast ports, including the Columbia and Snake River system, Hawaii and Alaska.
Foss operates two shipyards and offers worldwide marine transportation, emphasizing
safety, environmental responsibility and high-quality service. See www.foss.com for more
information.