PORT ANGELES – Did the state Department of Transportation have the legal authority to terminate Port Angeles’ graving yard project in December?
It appears so.
According to an informal opinion released Tuesday by state Attorney General Rob McKenna, the state’s top lawyer, a Memorandum of Agreement signed by the Federal Highway Administration, the state and the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe in March 2004 doesn’t require the state to complete the project it had already spent almost $60 million on.
That project, which would have built pontoons to replace the eastern half of the aging Hood Canal Bridge, was shut down in December by the state after archeologists discovered that the 22.4-acre site was home to Native American remains and artifacts beyond what anyone had initially imagined.
McKenna’s response to 13 of 22 questions posed by state Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, tackle head-on the legal ramifications of the graving yard project.
One of Buck’s questions in his March 22 letter was if the memorandum, which essentially sets conditions for archeological work to move forward simultaneously with graving yard construction, required the state to complete the project.
McKenna said that the agreement wasn’t legally binding, at least as far as the tribe or state are concerned.