The Polar Pioneer is set to return to Seattle this year and stay at Terminal 5 over the winter. The city says T5 doesnt have the right permit for that.
The Polar Pioneer is set to return to Seattle this year and stay at Terminal 5 over the winter. The city says T5 doesn't have the right permit for that. Kelly O

There's a spot on the 40th floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower where a row of chairs looks out a south-facing window. This is a calm, sunlit place where employees can read a book, make a phone call, or just stare at the mass of highways below.

It's a good thing this window exists. Otherwise, the hearing process to determine whether the Shell-contracted Arctic drilling rig, the Polar Pioneer, can legally return to the port's Terminal 5 this fall, would make me want to walk into traffic.

This hearing is so, so, horrifyingly boring. It's also really important and marks the climax of a bureaucratic soap opera that's been playing out for months.

Foss Maritime, the shipping company that's hosting Shell's equipment at the port, has a two-year lease with the port that allows Shell to park its rig at Terminal 5 in the months when it's too icy to drill in the Arctic. In May, at the height of protest against the rig's presence at the port, Mayor Ed Murray directed the Department of Planning and Development to investigate the permitting for the terminal. The DPD concluded that mooring Arctic drilling equipment did not fit the use of a cargo terminal, which is how T5 is defined. The port and Foss are appealing that decision, arguing that the city doesn't really know what a "cargo terminal" does.

The view from the Seattle Hearing Examiners office. Not too bad, right?
The view from the Seattle Hearing Examiner's office. Not too bad, right? SB

The port and Foss are concerned that if "cargo terminal" uses are defined so strictly at T5, the city could extend those standards to the rest of the port's properties under the city's shoreline permit. Moorage, they argue, can be one of a cargo terminal's many functions. If it isn't, the city's decision could threaten a number of commercial activities at other cargo terminals, like what the trawlers or tugs do at Terminal 91.

Foss and port lawyers spent several hours on Thursday grilling the DPD's Andy McKim (the author of the interpretation) about the minutiae of cargo terminal operations and various vessels. Their legal strategy seemed to be an attempt to prove McKim didn't know what the hell he was talking about—or to bore everyone else into organ failure. McKim acknowledged he isn't an expert on the vessels that use the city's cargo terminals.

Environmental groups are defending the city's interpretation. On Thursday, lawyers asked McKim if the DPD's interpretation would apply to any other kind of vessel at T91 that the port and Foss had mentioned. "No," McKim said. He also said that he understood the primary purpose of the Polar Pioneer and the rest of Shell's fleet was to drill in the Arctic—the implication being that the primary use isn't to load and unload cargo at the port.

Foss and the port aren't going to finish their case today. It'll pick up again on August 24, and three weeks later, the hearing examiner is expected to issue a decision.

This post has been updated.