PORT ANGELES — All parties to the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard controversy say they want to “move forward” with the project.
But just where would they move the undertaking that’s cost $50 million already and fallen at least a year behind schedule?
And how quickly could the bridge, the east end of which is crumbling, be repaired if the work is moved out of Port Angeles?
Answers could come in meetings this week between the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and the state Department of Transportation — although dozens of meetings to date haven’t done so.
Under the state’s plan, 14 concrete pontoons to float the east end of the bridge would be built at a graving yard on Marine Drive, just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill. They would be floated to Hood Canal and assembled at the bridge site.
Would be, that is, if construction hadn’t uncovered human remains from the prehistoric Kallam village of Tse-whit-sen, which stood for at least 17 centuries before whites razed it around 1920 to build a timber mill.
Complete skeletons
In the past 16 months, complete skeletons of 265 Klallam ancestors, almost 800 isolated skeletal parts, and more than 5,000 artifacts have been found.
Late last week, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles said “enough is enough,” and urged the state to shift the graving yard to another site.
The state arguably could build the pontoons one by one at a site in Tacoma, but would have no place to store them before they could be assembled.
Another site is being considered in Texas, where huge deep sea oil rigs are constructed.
That, though, begs the question of floating the pontoons through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast.
If the pontoons and concrete anchors are built in Port Angeles, the Hood Canal Bridge retrofit and replacement project’s total cost will exceed $283.5 million, based on August estimates by the Transportation Department.
Doug MacDonald, state transportation secretary, has said the project “cannot go forward” without the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe’s approval, even though the state may argue that the state cemetery law and the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act do not apply to this case.
Likewise, Gov. Gary Locke told The Seattle Times, “It would be most difficult to continue the project with their opposition.”
Locke and MacDonald met with tribal officials in Olympia last week, and state, federal and tribal representatives say they will resume talks this week.
All sides say they want to negotiate a solution rather than go to court.
“It is really unfortunate that so much money has been spent on the project, and that the experts didn’t detect the magnitude of this historic site at the beginning,” Locke said.
“But it is also an amazing archaeological find,” said Locke, who like many state and federal representatives has visited the Marine Drive site.
“Had everyone known the magnitude of the archaeological significance when this was first proposed and when the testing for the site was done, nobody would have gone forward with it.”
