PORT ANGELES — Attorney Gabe Galanda will return to Port Angeles, his hometown, on Friday to speak about the settlement that ended the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard dispute.
He will participate in Bar Trek VIII, a day-long legal education seminar for Port Angeles attorneys that will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the City Council chambers in City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
Galanda, a senior associate in the Seattle office of the Seattle-Tacoma-Portland law firm of Williams, Kastner & Gibbs PLLC, will speak from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on the $17.2 million settlement among the state, the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and the city and the Port of Port Angeles.
Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the agreement Aug. 14, ending three years of turmoil that followed discovery of an ancient Native American cemetery and village at the graving yard site on Marine Drive.
The yard was where the state had hoped to build replacement components for the east half of the floating bridge.
They now are being constructed in Tacoma and Seattle.
The settlement granted the cemetery to the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and gave it a low- or no-cost lease of additional, adjacent land where it may build a museum.
The tribe also received $2.5 million to rebury the 337 intact burials and the thousands of fragmentary remains that were excavated from the site.
The Port of Port Angeles will receive $7.5 million and the shoreline slice of the site for industrial development.
The city likewise will receives $7.5 million for economic development, $480,000 to hire an archaeologist who will survey the harborfront for ancestral Klallam cultural sites, and up to $500,000 to attract businesses to town or to keep them in Port Angeles.
Galanda, who will speak along with Steve Oliver, the Port’s attorney, was one of the Lower Elwha’s lead lawyers in the litigation and negotiations that produced the settlement.
For details Bar Trek VIII, e-mail attorney Brian Paul Coughenour at bartrek@tenforward.com.
