PORT ANGELES — Doug MacDonald came to Port Angeles on Monday to lay down a load of bad news about the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project, but a crowd of citizens and labor leaders refused to pick it up.
MacDonald, secretary of transportation, attended two separate meetings to explain the state Department of Transportation’s decision last month to close the site that would have built huge concrete anchors, pontoons, and decks to replace the floating bridge’s crumbling east end.
He spoke for 45 minutes to a noon audience of about 150 at a Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant, then addressed about 100 more at the Carpenters & Pile Drivers hall Monday evening.
“We really are committed to shutting down the site,” he said about the 22.5 acres just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.
“We would love to be here with a different message,” he told the unionists and community members at the First Street union hall.
‘Hard reality’
After a dozen or so citizens encouraged each other to try to revive the project, MacDonald warned them: “You’re missing the hard reality we’re seeing right now.”
But the group, which leaders said had gathered 3,500 signatures on petitions urging that the project be saved — plus 1,500 letters to the same effect — wasn’t ready to quit.
Much of the audience peppered MacDonald with questions about how Transportation had come to spend nearly $60 million on the project, only to stop after discovering hundreds of Native American burials and thousands of artifacts.
