PORT ANGELES — A city project in which 400,000 cubic yards of closed city landfill trash has been moved away from an eroding Strait of Juan de Fuca bluff, where it was in danger of falling more than 100 feet to the beach below, is nearly completed.
But the cost of the project, in which the garbage was moved to another portion of the landfill, remains in dispute — so much so that the Port Angeles City Council unanimously agreed Tuesday to hire a Seattle lawyer for up to $150,000 to resolve a $2.1 million dispute with the project contractor.
The rub: The city had estimated there were 10 cubic yards of asbestos and asbestos-riddled trash at the shuttered landfill at the end of West 18th Street, Craig Fulton, public works and utilities director, said Thursday.
The reality: The contractor discovered 7,283 cubic yards of the toxic material, or 728 times the estimated amount.
When the contract was originally awarded July 9, 2014, it was for $13 million.
Several change orders increased it to its present total of $14.4 million.
The contractor, Sacramento, Calif.-area-based Magnus Pacific Corp., said its additional asbestos-related costs totaled $3.1 million.
The city offered $1 million.
Mediation did not bridge the gap, City Attorney Bill Bloor told the City Council on Tuesday.
Now, it’s in the lawyers’ court.
Council members Tuesday unanimously approved hiring attorney Stanton Beck of Lane Powell PC in Seattle — a construction claims specialist — to resolve the impasse.
He’s the same person who initially mediated on the city’s behalf under a $24,500 agreement.
The mediation did result in Magnus “staying on the job and prosecuting the work diligently,” Bloor said.
“Mr. Beck was instrumental in obtaining those results.”
Fulton said no one expected what Magnus would find.
“There were pockets of large quantities of what appear to be asbestos from some kind of industrial demolition project,” Fulton said.
The decades-old landfill was closed in 2007.
“Back decades ago, a lot of these types of materials weren’t tracked as they are now,” Fulton said.
“We were looking at bags of asbestos and not an industrial demolition project there.”
Magnus is expected to finish laying a cap liner over the newly moved garbage “in the next few months,” Mark Wiltse, Magnus program manager, said Thursday.
All that will remain is surface-grading and vegetation-planting of the now-empty cell near the bluff lip and reinforcing a retaining wall and the bluff’s base, city Engineering Manager Kathryn Neal said Thursday.
The garbage was moved from a 5.7-acre cell to a 16-acre cell south of the bluff.
Moving the garbage has cut the height of the bluff top from 130 feet above sea level to between 70 and 100 feet, Neal said.
City and company officials would not comment directly on the dispute.
“We have a point of view, and they have a point of view,” Neal said.
Bloor said Tuesday the discovery of a quantity of asbestos that was “exponentially greater than the amount anticipated in the contract documents” slowed down work “considerably” on the project.
City engineering staff believed that Magnus’ claim that the company should receive more than $3 million for the extra work “was substantially overstated,” Bloor said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
