OLYMPIA — Seventeen months in the making, state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald’s report on the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard fiasco will debut Tuesday.
While not the final word on how the state spent almost $87 million on the Port Angeles waterfront without constructing any replacement components for the floating bridge, the account still should enthrall finger pointers who are looking for targets.
MacDonald will release the report at the monthly meeting of the state Transportation Commission in Olympia.
The agenda blocks out 2½ hours for his presentation. The report then will be posted to the Department of Transportation Web site, www.wsdot.wa.gov.
Governor’s request
The document is MacDonald’s response to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s request for an explanation of why his department forsook the Port Angeles site near the crook of Ediz Hook for component construction in Tacoma and Seattle.
Gregoire made the request in February 2005. MacDonald has called the report “exhaustive.”
Another probe, conducted by the state Transportation Performance Audit Board, is due June 2. It also was sought more than a year ago by legislators who included Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce.
Transportation’s general contractor, Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo, was to have employed about 100 people in Port Angeles, building giant concrete pontoons, anchors and decks to replace the crumbling east end of the bridge.
The span is the lifeline for food, fuel and tourists to the North Olympic Peninsula.
Construction of the onshore dry dock began Aug. 11, 2003, on a 22.5-acre site known to be near the location of an ancestral Native American village called Tse-whit-zen.
Work halted 15 days later after excavators found human remains.
