PORT TOWNSEND — Still hopeful that multimillion-dollar Hood Canal Bridge work comes to Jefferson County, county commissioners and a Port of Port Townsend administrator want state Transportation officials to reconsider Port Townsend Paper Corp.’s mill property as a project site.
Port Executive Director Larry Crockett told the commissioners Monday morning that negotiations between the state Department of Transportation could sour with other graving yard site finalists.
That could leave the mill site in the running, he said.
“The door isn’t locked shut,” said Crockett.
“It’s pretty darn close to being closed.”
Seeing the mill site as a preferred permanent location for a state graving yard, the county commissioners told County Administrator John Fischbach to work with Crockett to craft a letter playing up the mill site’s strengths to state Transportation officials.
“This community was so willing to step up,” County Commissioner David Sullivan, D-Cape George, said of local support for the graving yard at the mill site.
“I think they are minimizing the use of the site.”
The proposal
Two weeks ago, state officials rejected the Port and mill proposal, which proposed more than 20 acres of Port Townsend Paper property for the project and some of the Port’s Boat Haven property as an ancillary project storage site.
Instead, state officials named Port Ludlow Quarry at Mats Mats Bay as one of three front-runner sites for the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.
Besides the rock quarry owned by Seattle-based Glacier Northwest north of Port Ludlow, the two other preferred sites are the Port of Everett’s South Terminal and properties owned by the FCB Facilities Team, a partnership involving the Concrete Technology graving dock on the Blair Waterway in Tacoma, Todd Shipyards located on Terminal Island in Seattle, and the AML/Duwamish Shipyard on the Duwamish Waterway.
Since the state’s announcement, Mats Mats Coalition, a group of about 150 residents in that community north of Port Ludlow, has come out against the proposed quarry location.
North Peninsula proposals
The state’s three preferred sites followed review of 18 proposals, three of which came from Jefferson County and four from Clallam.
The graving yard is a huge onshore dry dock in which components for the Hood Canal Bridge’s aging east half would be built.
It could also be used in the future for pontoon and anchor construction for floating bridges in the Seattle area.
A new site is sought after the Department of Transportation canceled the partially completed graving yard on 22.5 waterfront acres in Port Angeles in December.
The action followed a request by the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe to stop all construction and archaeological digging on the property, site of the former Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen.
Mats Mats opposition
Rae Belkin, who leads the Mats Mats Coalition, went before the county commissioners Monday, reiterating her arguments against using the black basalt quarry as a graving yard site.
Agreeing with Port and county officials that the mill site was more appropriate for the graving yard, Belkin said: “The state created their own bureaucratic mess, and I don’t think the state has done due diligence.”
Belkin was referring to the original Port Angeles graving yard site, which has become what’s believed to be the Northwest’s largest archaeological discovery.
Belkin compared the proposal at Mats Mats to one proposed in the early 1990s for state Highway 520 floating bridge components, which nearby residents opposed.
“The only thing that has changed is more people have since moved to around the site,” Belkin said.
With the Hood Canal Bridge’s eastern-half project delayed nearly two years after the Port Angeles site was shut down, time is of the essence, Transportation officials say.
The final site selection would mainly be based on where work could start the soonest.
Belkin said she will be meeting with state officials on Wednesday to discuss community concerns about 24-hour operation, noise and traffic that the project could generate.
The graving dock would be used to build massive concrete pontoons for the Hood Canal Bridge’s eastern-half replacement project, how scheduled for as late as 2009.
Port Townsend proposal
The Port and mill’s nearly 44-acre proposal, which called for locating the actual dock on about 20 acres adjacent to the mill’s shoreline, was called “high risk” by state Transportation evaluators in a report
The state concluded that the Port Townsend sites were not large enough to build both pontoons and anchors for the bridge replacement.
“This reality would increase construction time substantially or require affecting wetlands to maintain the original schedule,” the evaluation said.
“Other than a 600-foot pier, the combined sites would require complete development and a full graving dock design.
“Wetlands and eelgrass beds would be affected, which could make it difficult to obtain environmental permits.”
The sites’ location would also require a cultural resource assessment for tribal artifacts and remains, the report states.
Crockett on Monday argued that the closest known tribal village was located near the mouth of Chimacum Creek.
Al Scalf, Jefferson County community development director, circulated county zoning prohibited uses information to commissioners Monday showing that heavy industrial uses, such as the graving yard, would not normally be permitted at Mats Mats or Discovery Bay, also ranked high on the state’s preferred list.
“The mill site already has intense industrial use,” Scalf said.
Discovery Bay site
Joseph D’Amico, president and CEO of Security Services Northwest, has proposed a graving dock site on 3,700 acres he leases from the Gunstone family on the western shores of Discovery Bay, a site the state rated No. 4 of 18 proposals considered.
The site, which the state concluded was “acceptable” for the project, has about 100 acres near the water, and state Transportation officials noted that the timberland had never been developed for industrial purposes.
D’Amico, in a March 3 letter to the commissioners, asked them if they would support the Discovery Bay site and expedite the permitting process to locate the graving dock there.
The commissioners on Monday did not discuss the letter or the Discovery Bay site.
