PORT ANGELES — Federal Highway Administration officials say they should make their decision Wednesday about how much longer the archaeological excavation of the graving yard should last.
The agency’s Washington Division administrator, Dan Mathis, said he will notify the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Council and state Department of Transportation officials by letter of the agency’s determination.
“It is in everyone’s best interest to reach a decision soon,” Mathis said during a telephone interview with Peninsula Daily News on Wednesday.
The tribe and the Department of Transportation are at an impasse, in effect, over how much longer Transportation should wait for the tribe-supervised archeological dig of the former Klallam village Tse-whit-zen.
The depth of the graving yard construction excavation also has the tribe concerned.
The state wants to finish construction of the graving yard — a huge concrete-lined dry dock in which pontoons and anchors are built for the Hood Canal Bridge — to keep the 2007 replacement of the floating bridge’s east half on schedule.
Mathis said the need to replace the east half of the bridge, which engineers say is reaching the end of its structural life, has not diminished.