Seven years after floodwaters gouged out a stretch of Dosewallips Road, U.S. Forest Service officials have decided to reroute traffic around the washout, building retaining walls and minimizing the acreage that must be cleared.
The decision will not be final until it is published in the record of decision, which is expected — along with the final environmental impact statement — by the end of the year.
The forest service’s preferred alternative — Alternative C in the draft environmental impact study — would clear about 6.5 acres of trees instead of the 7.1 acres proposed by Alternative B.
It would reroute Forest Service Road 2610 past the washout in a project estimated to cost $3.76 million, according to a statement from Olympic National Forest Supervisor Dale Hom released Tuesday.
Once the decision is finalized, the route would take about three years to construct.
The Dosewallips Road is Jefferson County’s only vehicular road to Olympic National Park and one of two vehicular access routes to the park on the east side.
Washed out in 2002
It passes through Olympic National Forest territory before entering the national park and the Dosewallips campground with 87 sites for tents and 40 recreational vehicle campsites.
In 2002, a storm washed out a section of it, which has since widened to about 500 feet.
The washout barred access to the park’s Dosewallips recreation facilities and the 21 sites at Olympic National Forest’s Elkhorn Campground, accessible to those in wheelchairs.
Single lane
The forest service’s preferred alternative — one of four made available for public review last June — would construct a 0.84 mile single lane road along the slope above and to the north of the washout.
The 14-foot-wide road, which would include turnouts, would use retaining walls — some up to 33 feet high.
It would have reinforced fills and use other measures to minimize clearing and excavation.
Alternative B would have cleared a larger area to build a road of the same size without the large retaining walls.
The other two alternatives were to build a 14-foot-wide single-lane bridge, about 700 feet long, spanning the washout or to do nothing and allow the popular campgrounds to remain cut off from vehicular traffic.
When the public comment period on the draft environmental impact statement closed in August, the more than 400 comments were running 2 to 1 in favor of not re-establishing road access, said Tim Davis, U.S. Forest Service forest planner, then.
Those writing letters against the project included the Olympic Forest Coalition, Olympic Park Associates and three Native American tribes, Jamestown S’Klallam, Lower Elwha Klallam and the Port Gamble S’Klallam.
Supporters of rerouting the road included Jefferson County Commissioners John Austin and Phil Johnson and the Quilcene-Brinnon Chamber of Commerce.
Among the concerns raised by opponents was possible disruption of salmon habitat.
Community leaders in Brinnon argued that closing the road would be a devastating economic blow to the area.Austin and Johnson both supported a narrower road that would avoid about 10 older trees left by loggers over the years.
Now at the road is a temporary trail from a berm at the east end of the washout up over the ridge it created to the west side of the washout.
For more information, see www.fs.fed.us/r6/olympic.
