NEAH BAY — The Makah Tribal Council has proposed using 21 acres on its harbor for all or part of the state Department of Transportation’s graving yard project.
The offer was made in a Dec. 21 letter to state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald. The tribe received an application packet Wednesday.
Transportation began advertising for new graving yard project sites shortly after announcing Dec. 21 that it was abandoning its project in Port Angeles.
The site was going to be used to build anchors, pontoons and road decks for the east half of the Hood Canal Bridge as well as other floating bridges.
The Port of Port Townsend is preparing a public-private partnership with Port Townsend Paper Corp. to propose graving yard sites to the Department of Transportation.
Deadline for proposals is Jan. 10.
Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr. said the tribe will fax back the information requested in the application packet to the Department of Transportation before the deadline.
“As soon as we learned of the state’s decision to move the project, we told our staff to review our previous discussions with DOT and identify issues we would need to address,” Johnson said.
Those issues included sites large enough for the project, archaeology, environment, employment, transportation and worker housing.
Transportation officials visited Neah Bay in 2001 and explored several possible sites for the graving yard project.
The agency was required to analyze alternative sites to obtain a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for the now-abandoned Port Angeles site, which turned out to house thousands of artifacts and hundreds of remains from the ancient Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen.
The 2001 analysis concluded that Neah Bay was “small, remote, had a shallow harbor, and the rainfall is very heavy, which could greatly impact concrete pouring schedules.”
Johnson said: “We’re Plan B, I think. It wouldn’t take much to get the site ready.”
