OLYMPIA — Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign today an agreement that frames negotiations with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe over Tse-whit-zen and the former Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.
The agreement’s immediate result will be that Gregoire’s chief of staff, Tom Fitzsimmons, revisits Port Angeles on Friday and independent negotiator John Bickerman meets Monday with local government officials.
Bickerman will tour the Tse-whit-zen site and talk with tribal members Monday afternoon, according to Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles.
Bickerman, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and international negotiator, last fall mediated a water rights agreement between the city of Everett and the Tulalip Tribes of Marysville that both sides say should last 100 years.
Issues that Bickerman will negotiate regarding Tse-whit-zen include development of the Port Angeles waterfront.
In addition to the state and the tribe, parties to at least some of the discussions will include the city of Port Angeles, Port of Port Angeles and Clallam County.
In the meantime, the tribe will support building concrete anchors for the bridge on the shoreward portion of the 22.5-acre graving yard site, provided that the project avoids an ancestral village and cemetery and that the state not operate heavy machinery in those places.
Remains stopped project
Discovery of Native American remains and artifacts at the graving yard in the crook of Ediz Hook led the tribe to request a halt to construction late in December 2004.
The yard would have been the site for constructing not only the huge anchors but the even larger pontoons to float the east end of the Hood Canal span.
The pontoons instead will be built at Concrete Technologies in Tacoma.
