PORT ANGELES — After lengthy negotiations, state Department Transportation officials and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe have reached an agreement allowing some work to resume at the $17 million Hood Canal Bridge graving yard on Marine Drive.
Installation of a stormwater drainage system is scheduled to begin by Wednesday.
Construction was halted on the huge dry dock project Aug. 26 after initial work revealed Klallam remains.
State, federal and tribal officials have been negotiating on how to handle recovery and reburial of the remains and artifacts found on the property, once a tribal village called Tse-whit-zen.
The remains of 12 adults and one infant have been recovered.
Many of the bones had been dismembered when they were used as backfill in excavations and pipe trenches when the village’s burial sites were desecrated during the construction of a mill on the site in 1915.
On Friday, the tribal council and Transportation signed an agreement to partially end the shutdown that has cost the state $30,000 a day.
————–
The rest of the story appears in Sunday’s Peninsula Daily News.