PORT ANGELES — A clearing in the cloudy future of the former Hood Canal Bridge graving yard and its relocation could come as early as this week.
Tim Thompson, the Tacoma negotiator who has mediated the issue between the state and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, last week said progress has been made.
“We’ve made a lot of progress at the table considering issues between the state and the tribe,” Thompson said.
“From my vantage point, it’s been slow, but we’re making a lot of progress.”
He declined to discuss specifics but said, “I don’t see challenge in the details.”
Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald said a choice of a new graving yard location could come in the same time frame.
“Within a week or so, we may be in position to make an announcement,” MacDonald said.
“I think the thing that’s tying it up is getting a sufficiently clear handle on the costs.”
He cautioned, however, that “next week” was “an operating target, not a milestone.”
Six-month anniversary
Tuesday will mark the sixth month that the former yard has been inactive, its work force departed, its earth-moving machines trucked away and its fate undecided.
On Marine Drive just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill, it’s a huge hole with a concrete floor, buttressed with massive steel sheet piling, into which the state poured $58.8 million.
Thompson, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, was named by the state Department of Transportation to negotiate a settlement between it and the Lower Elwha.
The tribe called for a halt to construction at the yard on Dec. 10, 2004. Eleven days later, the state complied.
Since then, the Transportation Department has faced two quandaries:
* What will it do with the empty yard?
* Where will it build the concrete pontoons and anchors to refurbish the crumbling east end of the Hood Canal bridge?
Until Thompson and MacDonald made their optimistic assessments, no answer was in sight for either question.
