OLYMPIA — The state Department of Transportation has picked the Aberdeen Log Yard as its preferred site for building state Highway 520 bridge pontoons. State officials had also considered sites in Grays Harbor and Hoquiam for bridge construction.
What will be built is a graving yard — a huge onshore dry dock — similar to the one that was to have been built in Port Angeles earlier this decade.
The Port Angeles graving yard, which was to be operated by the Department of Transportation, was to be used for building components of the Hood Canal Bridge east-half replacement.
But the project was scuttled when burials and artifacts of the 2,400-year-old Klallam village known as Tse-whit-zen were found.
The pontoons and concrete anchors for the Hood Canal Bridge span — completed enough to reopen to traffic in June — were built at private dry docks in Tacoma and Seattle.
Now the Department of Transportation is looking to build components for replacing the 45-year-old 520 bridge across Lake Washington east of Seattle.
Department officials hope to begin construction in 2010 and finish the new bridge by 2014.
Transportation picked the Aberdeen Log Yard because it seems to have the fewest economic and ecological challenges of the sites considered.
The state plans to issue a request for proposals on Aug. 24 from contractors. The design-build contract for pontoons will be worth between $300 million and $500 million.
