Clallam County business groups were polling their members Monday about Port Angeles’ graving yard future while citizens were e-mailing state transportation officials.
Members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe were meeting over the issue.
The tribe apparently started the exchange of opinions Friday when it urged the state to abandon its plans to build the mammoth dry dock on the site of an ancient Klallam village.
The state Transportation Commission will get a briefing on the situation when it meets Wednesday afternoon in Olympia.
The topic is the Hood Canal Bridge retrofit, for which huge pontoons and concrete anchors would be built on the Port Angeles waterfront, floated to the canal and installed at the east end of the bridge for eight weeks in 2007.
Conflict of needs
The controversy is a collision of the tribe’s reverence for the remains of its ancestors, the necessity of repairing the bridge, and the economic impact to the North Olympic Peninsula.
So far, all parties are talking quietly.