PORT ANGELES — A Bozeman, Mont. construction company chosen last week to tear down the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams has awarded a chunk of its $26.9 million contract to a North Olympic Peninsula business.
Sean Coleman, the project manager for Bruch & Bruch Construction of Port Angeles, said Friday the company will receive an estimated $2 million to $4 million from Barnard Construction Co. Inc. to haul away concrete from the Elwha River dams as they are demolished.
About 45 people will be employed under the subcontract.
That will include 15 additional hires — truckers who will be employed during the 2 ½-year project.
“In this market, getting any contract is a great deal, but I don’t think everyone realizes what the full potential of the exposure is,” Coleman said.
“I’m glad we are going to be part of it. It will be a good thing. It’s one of the larger projects for us.”
The dams will be demolished beginning in September 2011 and ending in March 2014 as part of the $351 million Elwha River restoration project.
Officials with Barnard Construction, whose bid to tear down the dams was announced Thursday by the National Park Service, are looking forward to beginning demolition a year from now, a company official said Friday.
“We are excited to be part of it, quite frankly,” Neil VanAmburg, a Barnard vice president, said, adding the company had talked with Bruch & Bruch personnel before Thursday’s bid award was announced.
“This is a historic project,” VanAmburg said.
“Nobody has ever done anything of this magnitude.”
VanAmburg said he expects other subcontracts for the project to be awarded in the Port Angeles area and the region.
The 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam, located outside Olympic National Park, and 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam, located inside it, will be torn down to restore a river that once teemed with salmon of legendary size.
Destroying the dams will free an estimated 18 million to 20 million cubic yards of sediment behind the structures.
That sediment will coat the river bed and enrich salmon habitat for the run, which has been blocked for 98 years on 70 miles of the waterway and its tributaries.
One of the more dramatic first steps in the largest dam removal project in U.S. history begins at sundown Monday.
That’s when Lake Mills, the reservoir created behind Glines Canyon Dam, shuts down to recreational boating, fishing and swimming while the lake is drawn down 5 feet and a channel built in the lake’s delta. The channel will route the sediment down river as the dams are demolished.
Equipment will begin arriving at the Lake Mills boat launch on Tuesday, Olympic National Park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said Friday.
Workers will begin digging the channel after Labor Day.
Barnard specializes in pipeline, tunnel and dam construction but has never torn down a dam.
“It’s a project we feel very suited for because it’s the type of work we do routinely,” VanAmburg said.
“We’re just looking forward to the next couple of years on it.”
Barnard Construction has offices nationwide and in Canada and Mexico.
The company employs 140 salaried workers but, depending on the number of projects it’s engaged in, can employ hundreds to thousands of craft workers at any given time, VanAmburg said.
VanAmburg declined to comment on the company’s annual profits.
“We’re a medium-sized contractor with large capabilities,” he said.
“From year to year, revenue can fluctuate, but we’re in the several-hundred-million [dollars] per year type thing as far as work performed.”
The bid awarded to Barnard Construction came in at $13 million under the $40 million to $60 million budgeted for the dam-tear-down portion of the restoration plan.
VanAmburg said it’s not unusual for construction bids to be awarded at under budgeted amounts in the current recession.
The dam-removal portion of the restoration project will create 40 to 50 jobs.
Because this is a federal project, employees will be paid prevailing wages under the federal Davis-Bacon Act, said Samantha Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Park Service’s Denver Service Center.
Those wages, not including benefits, will include $31.97 to $35.79 for power equipment operators, $35.39 for carpenters and $40.81 for electricians.
VanAmburg said Barnard will employ “a mix” of its own employees and workers from the North Olympic Peninsula but could not give percentages, he said.
“We always try to maximize local participation with local haulers and local contractors,” he added.
“Quite frankly, we count on it, to use local talent,” he said. “We support that wholeheartedly.”
Barnard is a non-union company, but subcontractors may employ union workers, he said.
When torn down, the dams will create an estimated 150,000 yards of concrete that must be hauled somewhere, and Clallam County Public Works has offered three county gravel pits that could be used in return for the county receiving high-grade concrete roadbed created by crushing the debris.
Two of the pits also are within two miles west of the dams, so the estimated 7,500 dump-truck loads would avoid Port Angeles.
The county also could receive up to $1.5 million in roadbed material in return for Barnard Construction being able to use the pit sites for free, County Engineer Ross Tyler said.
“I would prefer to have product rather than money, because we would end up having to pay money to get product,” Tyler said Friday.
Coleman said he has discussed the proposal with Tyler.
“It’s a very viable option,” Coleman said.
“We need to sit down and see what all our scope will be and go from there,” Coleman said.
“It will be definitely be strongly considered.”
The gravel pit proposal is “a valid option,” VanAmburg said.
“That’s not our evaluation to make, solely. On the surface, it certainly seems like it’s got some real potential.”
Both the state Department of Natural Resources and the state Department of Ecology have said the pits are permitted for concrete and asphalt, Tyler said, as both substances are “inert,” Tyler said.
“They would rather they be recycled in these types of fashions rather than being thrown in a landfill,” Tyler said.
“DOE is very supportive of this type of procedure.”
VanAmburg would not comment on how the dams will be torn down until the company holds further discussions with the National Park Service.
A meeting will be set up in the next couple of weeks, then a work plan will be developed “that will set dates and expectations,” he said.
Maynes said those meetings also will determine how much access the public will have to the areas of Olympic National Park where dams are being demolished.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
