PORT ANGELES — Imagine a 4-foot-high sea wall around the Olympic Peninsula. That’s how much concrete Fred Hill Materials Inc. planned to produce at its batch plant at 720 Marine Drive.
The plant was built to produce 70,000 cubic yards of concrete for the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard and the anchors and pontoons that would have been poured there.
Instead, the plant is being disassembled for shipment to the city of Ontario in Southern California.
Its dismantling will remove one reminder of the canceled graving yard.
Other reminders of the $87 million loss — the graving yard’s huge concrete slab and the sheet steel pilings surrounding it — are due to disappear in 2007 or 2008 under a settlement between the state and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
The batch plant itself cost $2 million.
Three years ago, as Fred Hill Materials of Pouslbo began building the 60-foot-high facility, project manager Dan Baskins said, “We plan to gear up and have a steady presence in Port Angeles forever.”
This week, Doug Weese, director of communication for Fred Hill Materials, said the company was “disappointed we couldn’t establish a long-term industrial presence near the waterfront in Port Angeles.
“We were very impressed and truly appreciative of the welcome extended by Port Angeles citizens and the business community.
“However, we’ve been serving Port Angeles customers from our Sequim operation for 4½ years, and have enjoyed becoming more and more involved with all the Northern Peninsula communities.”
Construction of the graving yard — a huge onshore dry dock intended to build parts for bridges in Washington state — halted when excavators dug their way into Tse-whit-zen, an ancient Native American village, and its cemetery.
