The state, Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and archaeologists will hold public tours, host a community meeting and produce an interpretive video of excavation at the graving yard as part of an agreement to continue construction and excavation at the site.
The public information plan, plus other terms of an agreement among the agencies that allows for the continuation of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project, are detailed in documents obtained by the Peninsula Daily News last week under a Freedom of Information public records request to the state Department of Transportation.
The documents include the payment of about $3.4 million to the tribe by the state for mitigation costs.
State Department of Transportation officials have remained mum on the details since the agreement was signed last month.
However, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairman Dennis R. “Sully” Sullivan disclosed some of the agreement last week, before DOT made the edited agreement available to the PDN.
The tribe, DOT, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Highway Administration, and Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation signed the memorandum of agreement March 16 that outlines how work at the graving yard will continue in relation to the discovery of Klallam human remains and artifacts at the site.
The items were found last summer — three weeks into construction of the huge onshore dry dock — and work was halted Aug. 26, leading to several months of negotiations between the tribe and the state.
Since then, state, federal and tribal officials have been working on details for recovery and reburial of remains and artifacts on the property, once a Klallam village called Tse-whit-zen.
