PORT ANGELES — An emissary from Gov. Christine Gregoire visited Port Angeles Thursday to begin building a framework for negotiations over Tse-whit-zen and the former Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.
As he promised last month, Tom Fitzsimmons, Gregoire’s chief of staff, met with members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe at the Tribal Center east of Port Angeles to plan the talks that will include the state, local governments, tribe and federal agencies.
Fitzsimmons also viewed the 335 hand-crafted cedar boxes in which the Lower Elwha have stored intact remains from Tse-whit-zen, the ancestral village that dates back at least 2,700 years.
Describing the sight, he said, “For anyone, it would be a pretty strong and powerful call to try to find a way to resolve this issue, all of the issues.”
More talks planned today
Fitzsimmons is scheduled to talk by telephone today with officials of the city of Port Angeles, Port of Port Angeles and Clallam County.
According to Gregoire spokeswoman Holly Armstrong, Fitzsimmons next week will release a “process memo” describing how the negotiations will progress.
The first fruits of the talks may be huge concrete anchors for the bridge being built on the shoreward edge of Tse-whit-zen.
The original graving yard was to have built anchors, pontoons and decks for the east end of the decaying bridge — a lifeline for the North Olympic Peninsula that connects Jefferson and Kitsap counties — but the pontoons now will be built in Tacoma and outfitted in Seattle.
A joint statement released Thursday by the tribe and Fitzsimmons said, “The tribe reiterated its commitment to moving the anchor facility project forward.”
The state delegation also paid the tribe more than $600,000 for wages that 108 tribal members earned assisting archaeologists at Tse-whit-zen before work on the graving yard was shut down in December 2004.
Fitzsimmons was accompanied by representatives of the state Department of Transportation, the Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.
The visit was the first face-to-face meeting in an agreement reached by phone last month by Gregoire and Frances Charles, chairwoman of the Lower Elwha.
On Dec. 22, the two women agreed on formal negotiations among all parties to the graving yard fiasco, in which the state spent almost $60 million with little to show but a huge steel-walled, concrete-floored hole.