The Port Angeles Business Association will become the latest local organization to enter the Hood Canal graving yard issue when it meets Tuesday morning.
The meeting is billed as an open discussion of the issue that already has involved state transportation officials, the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, North Olympic Peninsula labor unions, Clallam County and Port Angeles politicians, state and federal elected officials, and the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
The independent Port Angeles Business Association, or PABA, meets at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at Joshua’s Restaurant, 113 DelGuzzi Drive. The meeting is open to the public.
PABA President Andrew May has suggested that a Native American cultural museum be built on the graving yard site on Marine Drive just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.
That’s where the state Department of Transportation had hoped to construct huge concrete anchors and pontoons to float to the east end of the Hood Canal Bridge.
But that was before construction excavators discovered human remains in August 2003.
1,700-year-old village
The discovery stopped most work on the project while archaeologists explored the site, location of a 1,700-year-old Klallam village called Tse-whit-zen.
Exploration continued for 16 months, uncovering hundreds of ancestral burials and Native American artifacts.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe on Dec. 10 officially urged the Transportation Department to move the operation elsewhere.
On Wednesday in Olympia, a majority of state Transportation Commission members indicated that they could not approve continuing construction without the tribe’s approval.
Since then, Clallam County commissioners, the Port Angeles City Council and Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce have written letters to transportation officials urging a compromise that would allow construction to resume.