PORT ANGELES — The specially trained dogs that will search the waterfront for evidence of bones and other archaeological Native American remains beginning today won’t set paw on the abandoned Rayonier Inc. pulp mill property, the former site of the ancient and densely populated Klallam village of Y’Innis.
Rayonier denied the city of Port Angeles access to the 75-acre waterfront site, which is two miles east of downtown, said Derek Beery, the city’s archaeologist.
“It’s private property owned by a private firm,” Beery said. “We don’t, without permission, have the ability to be on that site.”
Rayonier Inc. company lawyer Don Schwendiman of Silverdale would not comment last week, saying he was not authorized to do so.
Rayonier officials were not available for comment.
Tank project
The refusal means that the city has one less tool to determine the extent of archaeological remains on the site if and when a 5-million-gallon Rayonier tank is made available to accommodate the city’s sewer overflow, Beery said.
That project would involve laying pipe connected to the tank.
The discovery of artifacts and remains during site development could prompt extensive studies and delays under state and federal regulations.
Though much of the Rayonier property is covered with concrete, making what lies beneath undetectable by the dogs, the importance of them sniffing around there “was tied to the combined sewer overflow project,” Beery said last week.
“We have to do the archaeology for state and federal regulations for the project. We’ll still get the archaeology done for that, but it was something that had the potential to be added in because the dogs are here for the rest of the waterfront.”
If acquired by Harbor-Works Development Authority, the tank would store untreated sewage and storm water laden with oil and other street-borne pollutants that would otherwise spill into the harbor during and following heavy rainfall.
Harbor-Works, a public development authority, was created in May 2008 to acquire Rayonier’s 75-acre former mill site and redevelop the property, as well as assist in the environmental cleanup of the land.
The Rayonier property is contaminated with pockets of PCBs, dioxin, arsenic and other toxins left by the pulp mill, which operated there for 68 years before closing in 1997.
Under the authority of the state Department of Ecology and with monitoring by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, Rayonier is cleaning the site.
Rayonier officials have said they would transfer the tank to public ownership only as part of the public development authority’s overall purchase of the property.
Graving yard shutdown
The survey of archaeological resources is being conducted under a settlement agreement that resulted from the archaeologically related shutdown of the state Department of Transportation graving yard on Marine Drive in 2004, Beery said.
Rayonier is not part of the survey area covered by the settlement agreement, though existing archaeological information being gathered by Harbor-Works about the site will be included in the survey summary, Beery said.
City Attorney Bill Bloor negotiated with Rayonier in hopes of getting the company’s permission to allow the dogs to trot the abandoned 75-acre site, Bloor said last week.
“The city did make a request for permission from Rayonier to go on the property, and Rayonier denied it,” Bloor said.
Grounds for refusal
Bloor cited two grounds for its refusal.
First, the company is involved in negotiations with Ecology, he said.
Second, Rayonier is negotiating with the Harbor-Works .
Harbor-Works Executive Director Jeff Lincoln said last week that a development authority consultant team is combing through existing archaeological data to assess the presence of remains at the site.
Digging and other hands-on archaeological work will occur only “when we would do individual development projects,” Lincoln said.
“My assumption is that we can expect to find artifacts,” he said, adding that “protocols” are in place to deal with that eventuality.
“What is most important to me is to deal with what we discover when we discover it. The general preference of the Lower Elwha tribe is to not conduct archaeological discovery exercises in terms of physical digs.”
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
