PORT ANGELES — It’s anchors away — as in anchors for the Hood Canal Bridge and away from Port Angeles.
The chance that the city might build at least some bridge components all but vanished Thursday when the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe said the anchors must be joined to other issues in dispute over Tse-whit-zen, the ancestral village that is buried beneath the former bridge graving yard site off Marine Drive.
State Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald said that stipulation probably sank the anchor project for the city.
“If we don’t do the anchors in Port Angeles now, then we will do the anchors someplace else,” he said in response to the tribe’s announcement.
“We aren’t in a position to spend weeks, months, who knows how much longer working out a large number of issues.
“If we know that Port Angeles is not going to be an option, we’ll make other plans.”
Another Peninsula site?
MacDonald said the huge concrete anchors could be built at another location on the Olympic Peninsula but would not pinpoint a site.
The Port Ludlow Quarry on Mats Mats Bay in Jefferson County was considered for pontoon construction earlier this year as an alternative to Port Angeles.
The anchors would be 46 to 60 feet wide and as tall as 25 feet.
The state last month quietly began preparations to build concrete pontoons for the bridge at Concrete Technology Corp. in Tacoma and finish them at shipyards in Seattle.
In the meantime, the tribe has requested formal negotiations with the state Department of Transportation as an alternative to a lawsuit the tribe has filed against the state.
The Lower Elwha’s aim in both actions is the return to Tse-whit-zen of 20,000 cubic yards of dirt removed from the graving yard and the reburial of remains the tribe has stored in handmade cedar boxes.
State Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, assailed the tribe’s position on the anchors as an attempt to retrieve land they ceded in 1855.
“The tribe does not dictate what takes place on Department of Transportation property,” Buck said.
“Under no circumstances are we going to acknowledge that the tribe has veto power over what we do.
“The tribe gave up all right and title to what they ceded to us in 1855, and that’s our position.
“We will not allow a precedent to be set where a tribe has the ability to go back on what they did in 1855.”
Told of MacDonald’s conclusion that the anchors must be built elsewhere, Buck said, “The attorney general may have another opinion.”
Buck’s 24th District includes all of Jefferson and Clallam counties.
