PORT ANGELES — Some of the massive concrete anchors for the new Hood Canal Bridge eastern half might be built in the Port Angeles area, Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald said Monday night.
“We are making every effort we can to see if work can be done on the Peninsula,” MacDonald said after a Department of Transportation-sponsored community meeting in a Port Angeles CrabHouse banquet room ended.
“I say this with some caution: Maybe the anchors could be done here, so we have asked project contractor Kiewit-General to get engineering advice on how that might be possible,” he said.
MacDonald said DOT will be meeting with Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo — holder of the $204 million Hood Canal Bridge retrofit and replacement contract — about the entire situation and contractual issues for going ahead with the project.
Since MacDonald announced in late December that DOT was abandoning its Port Angeles graving yard project, it has received 18 responses from public and private entities to a request for proposals to relocate the graving yard — a huge onshore dry dock in which floating bridge pontoons can be constructed and floated.
The list includes the Port of Port Townsend, Port of Port Angeles, city of Port Angeles and Makah tribe, as well as private property owners near Pillar Point in Clallam County and Discovery Bay and Mats Mats Bay in Jefferson County.
Contractor asked
DOT has asked Kiewit-General to examine building anchors in Port Angeles, MacDonald said, although there would have to be a method of floating the finished 1,500-ton concrete blocks in the absence of a concrete-lined dock that would be filled with water.
The Port of Port Angeles has proposed a former wood chip yard just west of Port Angeles Yacht Club’s parking lot as a location on which the anchors could be built without digging into the ground.
Subcontractor Fred Hill Materials Inc. built a $2 million concrete batch plant on Marine Drive near the former graving yard site and provided concrete for the graving yard when the project was halted in December.
Fred Hill was to provide concrete for the anchors as well.
A total of 19 pontoons and 38 anchors are required for the east half replacement of the 1.5-mile bridge between Jefferson and Kitsap counties.
MacDonald wouldn’t name specific Port Angeles locations for anchor construction or a deadline for evaluating any Port Angeles sites, but said more than once that the former Rayonier Inc. pulp mill site at Ennis Creek wasn’t an option because of an ongoing soil cleanup project involving the state Department of Ecology.
2008 deadline maintained
DOT is trying to hold to a 2008 deadline for floating the new bridge pontoons and anchors into place, MacDonald said.
The Hood Canal Bridge is vulnerable, especially to storms, MacDonald said, but it is safe to drive on.
An anchor cable broke last summer, so all of the iron cables are being replaced this summer as an emergency precaution, he said.
MacDonald told the Transportation Commission in Olympia last month that the ancient Klallam village site of Tse-whit-zen is the reason for shutting down the graving yard project, and it appears the village extends beyond the 22.5-acre state-owned property.
The archaeological assessment will be covered in a DOT report to the governor and Legislature as well as in any audit of the project, MacDonald said.