OLYMPIA — Those anxious to read the long-awaited audit of the state Department of Transportation’s Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project must wait longer.
The report that originally was scheduled to be released in January still isn’t finished, and the Transportation Performance Audit Board that must review it didn’t have a quorum for its Friday morning meeting in downtown Seattle.
“We’re trying to arrange another meeting. [The board] is no longer in existence at the end of June,” said Rep. Bev Woods, R-Poulsbo.
Woods is one the audit board’s 12 members and ranking Republican on the House Transportation Committee, which also includes 24th District Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce.
It’s Buck who pushed for the performance audit on the ill-fated graving yard project that was canceled in December 2004, the result of an unearthed Klallam village on the Port Angeles waterfront.
The graving yard — a huge on-shore dry dock — would have been used by the Department of Transportation to manufacture floating bridge components for 50 years.
Costs associated with the ill-fated graving yard have risen to $86.8 million, Transportation has said.
Construction of the pontoons and decks has been shifted to Tacoma and Seattle.
About two weeks ago, the state announced that even massive anchors used to tie down the Hood Canal Bridge won’t be built on the shoreward slice of the 22.4-acre former graving yard property.