PORT ANGELES — They’re not exactly singing “Anchors Aweigh.”
Fresh news that Port Angeles might build replacement anchors for the Hood Canal Bridge received tepid reactions from critics of the state’s pullout from a larger graving yard project.
State transportation officials said Monday they might use part of the original 22.5-acre site on Marine Drive where they’d hoped to build both anchors and pontoons for the floating span.
Anchors would be built on top of what they hope is fill dirt north of Tse-whit-zen, the ancestral Klallam village where archaeologists found hundreds of burials and thousands of artifacts.
“That’s nice” was Rep. Jim Buck’s reaction from Olympia on Tuesday.
Buck, R-Joyce, has called successfully for a legislative performance audit and an independent investigation of how the Department of Transportation handled the graving yard.
The state has spent $58.8 million there without building any anchors or pontoons.
“It will provide some work,” Buck said of the anchor possibility, “but it doesn’t address the overall problem of what we’re going to do with the whole area there, whether it’s building parts for floating bridges or modular piers.”
Original concept
The original graving yard — which now must be built elsewhere — would have made components for the Evergreen Point floating bridge in Seattle after finishing work for the Hood Canal span.
Proponents said it also could have built replacement piers for Navy bases around the world.
“It makes good sense to me,” Port Angeles City Councilman Larry Williams said about the possibility of manufacturing anchors on the “waterward” side of the graving yard property.
“That’s a good place to start.”
Russ Veenema, executive director of the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce, said he has a wait-and-see philosophy.
“We’ll just have to rely on them,” he said, referring to transportation officials. “They said in a few weeks they’d have some kind of an announcement.”