Hi Dick,

I am routing this request to you for processing. Let me know if it turns
out another office needs to search for responsive records.

As usual I've cc'd the requester so they know who will be handling their
request.

Thanks,

C.

____________________

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
npsfoia@nps.gov <charis_wilson@nps.gov>

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: <requests@muckrock.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 1:38 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Freedom of Information Act Request: NPS Glacier Bay
applications from cruise lines
To: <npsfoia@nps.gov>

National Park Service
FOIA Office
P.O. Box 25287
12795 West Alameda Parkway
Denver, CO 80225

June 7, 2019

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following
records:

- All submitted proposals by cruise line companies to operate in Glacier
Bay National Park as part of the park's solicitation for cruise ship
services issued May 31, 2018.
- Any communications between January 1, 2018 and June 7, 2019 to or from
NPS and Princess Cruise Lines Ltd, Holland America Line Inc., NCL (Bahamas)
Ltd, Carnival plc (Cunard Line), Seabourn Cruise Line Limited, Viking
Cruises Ltd and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. regarding permitting to
operate in Glacier Bay.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and
this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform
me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer
the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or
CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I
look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business
days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

CJ Ciaramella

Filed via MuckRock.com
E-mail (Preferred): requests@muckrock.com
Upload documents directly:
https://www.muckrock.com/
Is this email coming to the wrong contact? Something else wrong? Use the
above link to let us know.

For mailed responses, please address (see note):
MuckRock News
DEPT MR 74995
411A Highland Ave
Somerville, MA 02144-2516

PLEASE NOTE: This request is not filed by a MuckRock staff member, but is
being sent through MuckRock by the above in order to better track, share,
and manage public records requests. Also note that improperly addressed
(i.e., with the requester's name rather than "MuckRock News" and the
department number) requests might be returned as undeliverable.

CJ Ciaramella:

We received your FOIA request dated June 7, 2019 and assigned it the
tracking number NPS-FOIA-2019-01089.

You requested :
1. - *All submitted proposals by cruise line companies to operate in
Glacier Bay National Park as part of the park's solicitation for cruise
ship services issued May 31, 2018*.
2. - *Any communications between January 1, 2018 and June 7, 2019 to or
from NPS and Princess Cruise Lines Ltd, Holland America Line Inc., NCL
(Bahamas) Ltd, Carnival plc (Cunard Line), Seabourn Cruise Line Limited,
Viking Cruises Ltd and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. regarding permitting to
operate in Glacier Bay*.

In response to the first item, we are denying your request for proposals by
the cruise line companies to the NPS. We do not release concession
contract proposals. The proposals are protected from release under FOIA
Exception 4 for "trade secrets and commercial or financial information
obtained from a person and privileged or confidential." We will release
the contracts once they have been awarded and executed but the cruise line
contracts have not been awarded and executed.

In response to the second item, we are conducting an electronic search for
responsive emails between NPS and the cruise line companies. I don't know
how long that search will take. It is taking place in Denver or Washington
DC, not here in the Alaska Regional Office. I also do not know how many
responsive records the search will yield or how long it will take to review
them all for redactions of Exempted content under the FOIA (such as
personal information).

At this time I will need to extend our response time for processing your
FOIA request from 20 working days, by adding another 10 working days under
43 CFR 2.19. We therefore expect to send you a determination *by July 19,
2019*.

If you have any questions please contact me. Thank you.

Richard L. Anderson
FOIA Officer
National Park Service, Alaska Region
240 W 5th Ave
Anchorage AK 99501
richard_anderson@nps.gov
907-644-3525
*... to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the
wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such
manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations. *-- NPS Organic Act 1916

CJ Ciaramella:

Thank you for your email of July 16, 2019 regarding our response to your
FOIA request. Your FOIA request was for 1) cruise line contract proposals
and 2) NPS communications with the cruise line companies.

Contract proposals are not public documents, however awarded contracts are
public.

The contracts have not yet been awarded. We issued a News Release on March
22, 2019 that correctly said that the companies had been "selected" but
incorrectly said that the contracts had been "awarded." I apologize for
the error.

The contracts must still go through the National Park Service (NPS) Alaska
Regional Director, to the NPS Washington Office, to the cruise line
companies, and to a Congressional Committee on the Hill for 60 days, before
final execution by the Regional Director.

There was a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision of FOIA Exemption 4
(attached). I will ask our Solicitor and our National FOIA Office about
your request to see how this new direction might affect release of the
proposals. I will let you know as soon as possible.

As I mentioned in my email of July 15, 2019, we currently are searching for
responsive records on your request 2).

Please let me know if you have any questions about your FOIA request.

Thank you.

Richard L. Anderson
FOIA Officer
National Park Service, Alaska Region
240 W 5th Ave
Anchorage AK 99501
richard_anderson@nps.gov
907-644-3525
*... to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the
wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such
manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations. *-- NPS Organic Act 1916

CJ Ciaramella:

We are continuing to process your FOIA request of 7/16/19 for 1)
cruise line contract proposals and 2) NPS communications with the cruise
line companies.

Our processing had been under the Normal Track, that is 20 working days,
plus a 10 day extension, however we find that the gathering of information
will take longer because 1) we need to contact to information providers of
the contract proposals to inquire about confidentiality of their
submissions, and 2) we have requested email searches through our national
office that will take some time to accomplish.

Because of this, we are changing the processing track to Complex and we
estimate another 30 working days until we can get our reply to you *by
August 23, 2019*.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Thank you.

Richard L. Anderson
FOIA Officer
National Park Service, Alaska Region
240 W 5th Ave
Anchorage AK 99501
richard_anderson@nps.gov
907-644-3525
*... to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the
wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such
manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations. *-- NPS Organic Act 1916

CJ Ciaramella:

We are continuing to process your FOIA request of 7/16/19 for cruise line
contract proposals and NPS communications with cruise line companies.

Our initial email search yielded 3,727 results. We are narrowing those
down to eliminate duplicates.

Your FOIA request has been placed in the Complex processing track and we
process FOIA requests within their track and in the order in which they
were received. There are 5 other Complex or Voluminous FOIA requests ahead
of yours. We therefore need to revise our estimated date of response
to *December
23, 2019*.

You may limit the scope of your request, which may enable us to process it
more quickly.

You may agree to an alternative time period for processing by communicating
with us, or you may communicate with our FOIA Public Liaison:

Ms. Charis Wilson, PhD, CRM
NPS FOIA Officer
12795 W. Alameda Parkway
PO Box 25287
Denver, CO 80225-0287
303-969-2959
Fax: 303-969-2557
1-855-NPS-FOIA
charis_wilson@nps.gov

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Thank you.

Richard L. Anderson
FOIA Officer
National Park Service, Alaska Region
240 W 5th Ave
Anchorage AK 99501
richard_anderson@nps.gov
907-644-3525
*... to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the
wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such
manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations. *-- NPS Organic Act 1916

Greetings. On June 7, we received a FOIA Online submission from CJ Ciaramella MudRock News at Muckrock.com. You requested:

"All submitted proposals by cruise line companies to operate in Glacier Bay National Park as part of the park's solicitation for cruise ship services issued May 31, 2018. Any communications between January 1, 2018 and June 7, 2019 to or from NPS and Princess Cruise Lines Ltd, Holland America Line Inc., NCL (Bahamas) Ltd, Carnival plc (Cunard Line), Seabourn Cruise Line Limited, Viking Cruises Ltd and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. regarding permitting to operate in Glacier Bay."

The FOIA was assigned a tracking number: DOI-NPS-2019-000966. Due to issues related to the pandemic, this FOIA was not processed in a timely fashion. Apologies for the delay in responding to this request. We are checking in with you now to determine if you are still interested in processing this request?

Sincerely,

Peter Christian
FOIA Coordinator, Region 11 Alaska

IN REPLY REFER TO:
DOI-NPS-2019-000966

05/12/2023

Via Electronic Mail
Ms. Kierstan L. Carlson
BlankRome
1825 Eye Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006

Dear Ms. Carlson:
This communication is in response to your August 9, 2022, emails objecting on behalf of your clients: Cunard Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruise Lines, Ltd., and Seabourn Cruise Line Limited, to the release of certain information in response to FOIA request DOI-NPS-2019-000966.
After reviewing your request that we withhold your clients’ proposal materials in their entirety we have decided that some of the information your clients submitted should be redacted, but that withholding all of it is not supported. Other similar cruise businesses operating in the same market and industry agreed that some information from their proposals could be released. Thus, it would not appear that the entirety of your clients’ proposal materials qualify as “confidential” under the first part of the test established in Food Mktg. Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, 139 S. Ct. 2356 (2019).
In addition, NPS did not provide any assurances that the entirety of proposal materials submitted in response to the prospectus for Concession Contract No. CC-GLBAXXX-19 would remain secret. The proposal instructions for this solicitation notified submitters that “All proposals submitted in response to this Prospectus may be disclosed by the Service to any person, upon request, to the extent required or authorized by the Freedom of Information Act.” Concession Contract No. CC-GLBAXXX-19, Proposal Instructions, at 2. These instructions allowed responders to mark specific information that they believed to be confidential but did not guarantee that such markings would be conclusive. So, the entirety of your client’s proposal materials also do not meet the second part of the Argus Leader test. Accordingly, we conclude that some of the information in your clients’ proposal materials is not confidential and should be released.
Federal agencies responding to FOIA requests are required to “take reasonable steps necessary to segregate and release nonexempt information.” 5 USC 552(a)(8)(A)(ii). Because it appears to be the industry standard that only some proposal information be kept confidential, our intention is to segregate and release nonexempt information. We prefer that your clients identify this information by submitting proposed redactions to us that we could then review. If your clients choose not to propose any redactions, we will review your clients’ proposal materials and redact information that appears to us to be confidential. If your clients wish to submit proposed redactions for our consideration, they should do so within 20 days of this letter.
Please note that 20 workdays after delivery of this communication we will redact and then release the records to the requester and, under 43 C.F.R. § 2.33(c)<http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=0fc3ab3499768eebc2e3691c8cf88dec&rgn=div5&view=text&node=43:1.1.1.1.2&idno=43#43:1.1.1.1.2.6.5.8>, this communication serves as notice of this intention. A courtesy copy of the records will be emailed to you in a separate email.
If you have any questions, you may contact me by phone at 907-707-9738, by email at peter_christian@nps.gov, or by mail at National Park Service, 240 West 5th Avenue, Anchorage, AK 99501.

Sincerely,

Peter Christian

National Park Service

FOIA Coordinator, Alaska

cc: CJ Ciaramella MudRock News, without enclosure

Dear CJ Ciaramella,

Your FOIA request has been completed. There are several files that are too large to transmit easily by email. Do you have a sharepoint site, or something similar that will facilitate a larger transfer of files?

Dear CJ Ciaramella,

We are responding to your FOIA Request DOI-NPS-2019-000966. You are receiving the requested documents, consisting of 2,908 pages, which are being released to you in their entirety and a formal letter explaining your appeal rights. Please cite the above control number in any future communications with our office regarding your request.

To access your files, please visit this site: [https://res-h3.public.cdn.office.net/assets/mail/file-icon/png/folder_16x16.png] FOIA-DOI-NPS-2019-000966 MuckRock<https://doimspp.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/nps-nps-akr-foia/ErKbDz-dR7xJs857iFHopwMBuajtDWBpKHxHmjFkvLW3oQ>.

We consider FOIA request DOI-NPS-2019-000966 closed. Records will be available to you through October 27, 2023, at which point we will remove them from the site. Please confirm receipt of this email.

Let us know if you have any questions.

With respect,
Bella Furr
AKR FOIA Team

Correction to previous email: The provided records are being released to you in part. Reference the formal letter for an explanation of applicable exemptions.

Thank you!