PORT ANGELES — Ediz Hook will be closed to motorized traffic for a period of 24 hours at some point within the next several weeks while the city repairs a tiny bridge that provides the only vehicle access to the area.
An exact date for the work is still to be determined as the work is in the planning stages, but it is expected to take place by June 30.
Nippon Paper Industries USA, Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles and the Puget Sound Pilots station are all situated beyond the bridge.
City officials are still discussing Hook-access issues with affected parties, including a rowing club and other organizations that tie up at a city-owned boat ramp on the Hook, Public Works Director Craig Fulton said Monday.
The Hook, beloved by pedestrians, bicyclists and beach walkers, will continue to be accessible to cyclists and walkers.
The 25-foot-long, 27-foot-wide bridge is “absolutely” safe, Fulton said.
It straddles a former log canal that snakes from Port Angeles Harbor to a former log pond.
But the structure is being undermined by soil erosion under the approach on the north side of the span, closest to Nippon.
As a precaution, steel plates have been placed on the roadway across a concrete slab on the approach to the bridge and the abutment.
The eroded portion will backfilled as a temporary fix until 2016, when the abutments would be rebuilt under a $600,000 project in the city’s proposed capital facilities plan.
“With the steel plates down, there is no urgency to expedite this in the coming days,” Fulton said.
“We were looking at various alternatives on how we can speed this up.
“We looked at closing one lane of the bridge, but the bridge is so narrow that we wouldn’t be able to do the work and keep one lane open at the same time.”
The bridge was installed by the mill’s previous owner, Crown Zellarbach Corp., as a part of a new channel that was constructed between the harbor and log pond.
The bridge is next to Nippon and about 2-3 miles west of the Coast Guard station at 1 Ediz Hook Road.
The station is staffed by 290 personnel, none of whom live on-site, said Lt. Dana Warr, spokesman for the 13th Coast Guard District in Seattle.
The closure has raised concerns that don’t appear insurmountable, Warr said Monday.
“We expressed our concerns on closing it for a 24-hour period, but we are going to let that communication continue and come up with a solution,” he said.
Nippon’s 160 hourly and salaried workers park their cars south of the bridge and take a pedestrian walkway around the span and to the mill.
The bridge is the only access for the trucks that deliver supplies and other goods to the plant, which manufactures paper for telephone books and newsprint for newspapers including the Peninsula Daily News.
“We will plan our operations accordingly to have minimal impact and continue running,” mill Manager Steve Johnson said Monday in an email.
Johnson said in a later interview that the city has given company officials enough time to prepare for the disruption.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
Seattle-based Puget Sound Pilots, which operates the only pilot station on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is located just outside the Coast Guard station.
David Grobschmit, president of the organization, said Monday he was unaware of the project.
He said pilot station personnel should be able to have a vehicle on the north side of the bridge that would take them to the station or, if need be, they could get picked up at Port Angeles Boat Haven by a pilot-station boat.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
