Jay Yoo had just opened his Philly cheesesteak restaurant in a former Herfy’s Burgers when the same health inspector who had given him the green-light returned three hours later to shut him down. The City of Tacoma, he was told in February, had an issue with his grease trap.
But Philly N Smash is not in Tacoma — it’s in Fife.
Getting to the bottom of which city was actually in charge — and which legally should be — revealed a mess of bureaucratic finger-pointing on a hot topic in the Tacoma-area small business community: Who is making sure that restaurants aren’t throwing grease down their drains, and why isn’t everyone being treated equally?
As Yoo corresponded with both Tacoma and Fife officials, a beloved 1950s-era burger stand on Pacific Highway emerged unscathed from a similar predicament.
Pick Quick Drive-In was flagged by Tacoma’s fats, oil and grease (FOG) program manager, Shawn Madison, in June 2024 — when the family behind the Auburn location bought the original in Fife. Madison alerted the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, which issued a compliance order that gave the restaurant 90 days to add a utility sink and to upgrade its grease interceptor. No further action was taken until March 2025 when The News Tribune started asking questions about Fife and Tacoma’s 29-year-old wastewater relationship.
In March, the health department sought an update from Tacoma, according to emails The News Tribune received in a public records request. Tacoma had decided it would leave Pick Quick alone.
“Shawn and I had a conversation regarding the recent developments with Fife and he knows this is all in Fife’s court to handle and he is hands off,” wrote John Sunich, a manager in Tacoma’s Environmental Services Department, in an email to his superiors, Cassandra Moore and Kurt Fremont, on March 24.
Meanwhile, Yoo lost several weeks’ worth of revenue and spent $5,000 to install a second grease trap, connected to the kitchen’s utility sink. He was also required to have the grease traps cleaned every 30 days, which costs a few hundred dollars, and he could not use everyday delivery platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats. He had anticipated those orders accounting for nearly 40% of his sales.
Philly-N-Smash is located in a strip mall along Pacific Highway East in Fife, nestled between a Domino’s Pizza and a Jimmy’s John’s. Tacoma intervened in the opening of the independent cheesesteak restaurant in February, leading to questions about the city’s wastewater agreement with Fife.
Asked about the disparate handling of two Fife restaurants, both with new owners, the health department said the agency’s role focuses on the food code, which requires “approved” water and sewer connections. It’s otherwise a liaison.
“If a city informs us a water or sewer system is not approved, we suspend our permit until it is,” said spokesperson Brett Cihon in an email to The News Tribune.
The case of Philly N Smash represents more than another small restaurant caught up in Tacoma’s grease-trap gauntlet. It also exposed a rift in the city’s obligations to its smaller neighbor, including residents and business owners who pay wastewater rates approved in part by officials they don’t elect, and its legal commitments to the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency.
In the first quarter of 2025, Tacoma charged Fife $1.1 million to accept wastewater from more than 4,500 residential sewer connections and 425 commercial properties, including about 35 foodservice establishments, according to a report shared in public records. When Tacoma’s sewer and water rates increase, so do Fife’s.
Why? Fife, where 11,000 people live on 5.7 square miles directly off Interstate 5, has long relied on Tacoma to accept its dirty water. The City of Fife owns and manages the underground network of pipes that comprise its public sewer system, but it does not have a treatment plant. Tacoma has two.
So, in 1996, the two cities signed an interlocal agreement that, at its most basic level, allows Fife’s sewers to connect to Tacoma’s nearest treatment facility along the Puyallup River just north of Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge.
The agreement designates Tacoma as “lead agency for implementation and enforcement of pretreatment regulations and as control authority for issuance of industrial wastewater discharge permits.” The tradeoff for Fife is that its elected council members had to adopt Tacoma’s code for wastewater pretreatment. That language includes Tacoma’s rules for restaurants that create FOG to use and maintain grease interceptors, which help keep sewer pipes tidy.
Tacoma adjusted its pretreatment program in 2021. A News Tribune investigation found that, around that time, environmental staff hardened its approach to a policy that many in the local restaurant community and some city officials have come to see as unnecessarily expensive and potentially excessive. The resulting demands — and the city’s uneven enforcement of them — have caught several restaurants in a Catch-22. Some have since closed and others are struggling. Owners have said that city restrictions — such as denying delivery service based on the size of a grease trap, a tact that experts say is highly unusual — are in part to blame.
Yet none of the previously reported scenarios proved as administratively complex as the one Yoo encountered this year.
Tacoma v. Fife
Tacoma told The News Tribune that only Fife could help Yoo with a potential exception to grease-trap regulations. In emailed answers to specific questions in March, Tacoma spokesperson Maria Lee said that “enforcement and grease device inspection within Fife city boundaries are handled by Fife staff.”
The trouble: Fife thought Tacoma was in charge.
Community development manager Chris Larson, who was referred to The News Tribune as the main point of contact for this topic, said his employer — the City of Fife — was “beholden” to Tacoma. Because of the interlocal agreement, the thinking went, Fife had to abide by Tacoma’s rules, and Tacoma wrote the rules.
The City of Tacoma’s Central Wastewater Treatment Plant, shown on Sept. 22 from the Tideflats, is situated along the Puyallup River. It accepts wastewater from more than 20,000 customers in Tacoma, Fife, Fircrest and parts of unincorporated Pierce County.
A restaurant owner would apply for a plumbing permit to add or adjust a grease interceptor through Fife’s building department, explained Larson, but staff would not issue the permit until Tacoma’s Madison approved the setup. Then Fife building inspectors would visit to ensure the machine was properly installed. Additionally, Fife has its own public works crews, which routinely repair sewer pipes and pump stations. But Tacoma, in order to meet permit requirements with the state, controlled pretreatment — what happens before wastewater reaches Tacoma’s plant and ultimately Puget Sound.
“We do not inspect and enforce grease devices,” said Larson in March. “The rest is on the City of Tacoma for reports, inspections and inspection activities.”
Emails about other Fife businesses in recent years, received in a records request, corroborated Larson’s assessment.
In 2022, an Emerald City Smoothie was sent to Tacoma for grease-trap approval. In 2023, Fife staff told the owner of a proposed eatertainment concept: “The City of Tacoma … is the responsible party for grease interceptors.”
Fife’s dirty water needs Tacoma’s help
The sewage-to-treatment partnership between Tacoma and Fife is not unusual. Dirty water has to go somewhere. Tacoma is one of 18 municipalities with treatment plants permitted by the state Department of Ecology to flush treated wastewater into public waterways. In addition to Fife, the city has had interlocal agreements with Fircrest since 2014 and Ruston since 2021, both of which were also re-approved in 2022.
There is one difference, though: In the other two cities, Tacoma technically owns some sections of those sewer pipes. Lee confirmed this spring that inspectors in Environmental Services visit businesses, including restaurants, in Fircrest and Ruston. But Tacoma contended that it did not inspect such businesses in Fife.
It wasn’t always that way.
In 2012, Madison inspected around 30 businesses in Fife with grease-prevention devices, email records show. Tacoma considered those numbers as it was building a new “Pretreatment User Inventory,” to be updated every five years per EPA regulations under the Clean Water Act. Restaurants with a grease interceptor — as well as car shops, veterinarian offices and dry cleaners — were categorized as “minor industrial users,” per the emails. Industrial facilities such as a gas station or manufacturing facility with heavy chemical use, which require a separate environmental permit, were deemed Tacoma’s “top priority” at the time.
In response to additional questions in September, Lee did not refute the reported inspections. As to why or when Tacoma stopped checking Fife grease traps, Lee said by email that “current staff are unable to find any records that provide specific program directives from the leadership of either city from that time.”
Grease interceptors are plumbing devices that sit between sinks and public sewers. They aim to keep fats, oil and grease from entering public sewers, and most restaurants are required to have one, but the size and type can vary.
Who should be responsible for FOG inspections in Fife?
Brittny Goodsell, communications manager for Ecology’s southwest regional office, said in an email that the agency has a State Waste Discharge permit with Tacoma, not Fife.
Ecology would expect the owner of the treatment facility — in this case, Tacoma — to handle inspections of any business with pretreatment devices, “since the inspection works to protect Tacoma’s treatment plant and make sure there aren’t discharges (such as grease) to the POTW [publicly owned treatment works].” Tacoma then submits that data to Ecology in its annual reports, as required by federal law.
According to those reports, reviewed by The News Tribune, Tacoma is inspecting industrial users in Fife. Just maybe not restaurants.
In 2024, Tacoma reported to Ecology that city staff inspected 35 businesses in Fife and 13 wastewater assets, which could include grease interceptors. In 2023, staff inspected 39 Fife businesses, including “the inspection of pretreatment devices, water used in manufacturing/industrial activities, and any other discharges which may fall under federally regulated categories,” according to the report. It adds that “the inter-local agreement states that Fife and Tacoma shall work cooperatively together to ensure users meet the requirements” of Tacoma’s municipal code as it pertains to wastewater and surface-water regulations.
Fremont, a compliance manager in Tacoma’s Environmental Services, confirmed in an April email that none of the 2023 or 2024 inspections were foodservice. In response to three additional questions, including whether staff skipped restaurants on purpose or by happenstance, he responded with the same statement three times: “Tacoma staff has been acting in accordance with what it understood to be the agreed upon approach between Tacoma/Fife staff.”
Fremont declined an interview and, via Lee, did not respond to requests for further explanation of what precisely the “agreed upon approach” was, who created it and when.
Tacoma’s Central Wastewater Plant uses “high-purity oxygen and ‘good’ bacteria to remove organics from wastewater,” according to the city. During big storms it can process more than 130 million gallons of wastewater per day.
‘There is some kind of misunderstanding’
Philly N Smash was closed for weeks as the owner navigated the multi-municipal plumbing pickle.
The county health inspector told him to email Madison in Tacoma. So he did. Madison insisted that, to reopen his business, Yoo needed to upgrade the building’s existing grease interceptor to an expensive, in-ground tank — which can cost $50,000 to $100,000 to purchase and install. If he skipped the expensive option, he couldn’t offer delivery. Distraught, Yoo, for whom English is a second language, pleaded for grace and a practical solution.
“There is some kind of misunderstanding between City of Fife, Tacoma sewer, and health department,” he wrote on Feb. 24, according to emails reviewed by The News Tribune. “We didn’t do any remodeling before we opened the store … Only things we changed are the ownership and business name.”
The health department, he added, considered the switch a simple “change in ownership” with no significant adjustments to the floor plan or menu.
Madison replied, “Fife can make their own decision on how they want to handle this,” but, “per code” the current system would not suffice.
A few days later, Madison visited the restaurant with Perry Fegley, a Fife building official. They worked out a solution — there was no way Yoo could afford the tank. He applied for the necessary permits (through Fife) to install a second, small grease interceptor. Madison and Fegley then told the health department the restaurant could reopen March 18 — without delivery.
By April 10, Yoo knew it was unsustainable. Sales were “extremely low,” he emailed Madison, seeking help to apply for an exception, a possible alternative he learned about through a News Tribune reporter, not the city employee.
Madison replied, copying Larson, that only Fife could approve an exception. Yet he also explained that Philly N Smash would need to prove — to Tacoma — that its grease catchers were sufficient and cleaned at regular intervals.
“I can help you with how we would want you to request an exception to us if in Tacoma, and then you could submit the request to Fife. Note Fife might want more information than we do,” he wrote, “and it’s possible they will not even accept the request for an exception.”
Philly-N-Smash took over a Herfy’s Burger. The menu offers a limited number of smashburgers and cheesesteaks.
Tacoma and Fife hash out grease trap management
Tacoma defended its pretreatment program in Fife as implemented “in the manner necessary to stay in compliance with state and federal requirements,” according to a March 13 email from Lee. She added that “regulatory wise there are no specific inspection requirements” for foodservice and FOG.
“Tacoma prioritizes inspections and enforcement in the collection areas that it is responsible for maintaining,” she said. The city would assist Fife “when requested” and “could offer technical assistance” for an exception, but Fife hasn’t asked in “several years,” according to Lee.
Larson, Fife’s community development manager, disagreed.
“If somebody were to come to me tomorrow and ask for an exception, I would say, ‘We have an interlocal.’ You need to get an approval from Tacoma,” said Larson in a phone call at the time. “It’s pretty clear, in my opinion, that … we need to issue their requirements. I don’t know what authority I have to violate what Tacoma’s requirements are.”
The Central Wastewater Plant is considered state-of-the-art. The complex system also recycles collected biosolids into TAGRO soil. Tacoma is one of 18 cities in Washington that is permitted by the Department of Ecology to flush treated water into public waterways.
Asked for a response to Fife’s assessment that it did not have the ability to supercede Tacoma’s authority, Lee wrote in late March that Tacoma had nothing further to add. Contact Fife, she said.
“There’s some questions about roles and responsibilities both presumed and explicitly spelled out in the interlocal, and what historically has been going on since before 2022,” said Fife’s Larson when The News Tribune shared Tacoma’s reply. “What you’re hearing from Tacoma is Fife has authority on foodservice establishments, but what was adopted in 2022 was something different.”
‘FOG isn’t significant’
Amid the back-and-forth, Tacoma and Fife officials met in March and again in April to discuss the details of the agreement, which both cities confirmed.
In emails reviewed by The News Tribune, Tacoma’s Sunich explained that city staff could provide a “courtesy plan review” to ensure that restaurants had grease traps that met Tacoma’s sizing regulations, but because Fife owns the actual pipes, “Fife is responsible for any inspection of the FOG devices in their collection system.”
“We are on the same page for roles and responsibilities (i.e. Tacoma is NOT responsible for FOG inspections and enforcement in Fife); however the ILA does have some confusing language in that area,” Tacoma’s Fremont wrote to colleagues after their first meeting with Fife staff.
A few weeks later, as The News Tribune sought additional clarity on Philly N Smash’s situation and Tacoma’s role in Fife restaurants, Fremont took issue with the idea that the interlocal agreement should be amended.
“I am absolutely not in agreement that there is a ‘clear need and opportunity … on refining our Pretreatment interlocal agreement,’” Fremont wrote to colleagues and Geoffrey Smyth, director of the environmental services department, on April 10. “The ILA may be fine as written. We are meeting with Fife next week to see if we need to consider any clarifications but that is not decided thus far.”
Tacoma argued that Fife should be inspecting grease traps because FOG would impact Fife’s pipes. Fife believed the interlocal agreement meant that the authority to make rules and enforce them was ultimately up to Tacoma.
Staff from both cities and their attorneys met again on April 15, according to email records.
Handwritten notes from Fife staff at that meeting, received in a public records request, reveal what Tacoma did not say to The News Tribune: “Tacoma position — FOG isn’t significant and doesn’t impact treatment facility.”
Tacoma, the notes continue, doesn’t “want to inspect in Fife,” and believes the agreement was intended to allow oversight of “significant industrial users,” not grease-producing restaurants.
Does the ‘immediate Band-Aid’ need official review?
On April 17, Lee told The News Tribune that Tacoma’s environmental services staff was “actively working” with Fife on the topic. “Both cities remain committed to supporting a smooth, consistent experience for local foodservice establishments, and we hope to have more clarity on a collaborative path forward soon.”
As summer waned, that path had become clearer: The City of Fife would be in charge of grease traps at restaurants in Fife.
In a September phone call, Larson described the municipal schism as a “hiccup” and Fife’s new process as “an immediate Band-Aid.” Now a team of three people in public works and permitting, led by the sewer lead, have been reviewing cleaning records and communicating with resaturant owners. Tacoma’s staff is available for technical assistance, “but it’s ultimately Fife’s decision,” he said.
Tacoma’s FOG manager had also flagged Pick-Quick Drive In to upgrade its grease interceptor system when it changed owners. As Philly-N-Smash navigated the debacle, Tacoma decided it would leave the beloved burger stand’s fate in Fife’s hands. Now all restaurants are in Fife’s court, according to updates from both cities.
For Philly N Smash, that meant successfully completing a three-month cleaning and monitoring period that ended in July. Yoo said the machines were consistently at or below the 25% capacity threshold after a full 30 days of use. To offer delivery, which Fife approved, they must be cleaned every 15 days. Another business, Sunny’s Donuts, is currently in a similar trial period, according to Larson.
At Pick Quick, the health department had extended its Tacoma-requested grease-trap compliance order to July 30. It remains outstanding, but it might not matter.
“We have a little bit of a different view of when improvements get triggered,” said Larson. Outside of a drastic change to the business model and grease output, he added, “from Fife’s perspective, simply buying” a restaurant is not reason enough to demand major structural upgrades.
Whether the interlocal agreement — and Fife’s own city code — will be amended to reflect the new reality remains to be seen.