Planning that came too late and construction that sped ahead too fast doomed the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard, a legislative audit of the project says.
Today’s report to the state Transportation Performance Audit Board also lays blame for the multimillion-dollar debacle on what it calls inadequate work by an archeological consultant and on poor communications with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
Nearly 200 pages long, the long-delayed report will be released this morning in Seattle.
The Peninsula Daily News received an advance copy Thursday.
The document is in two parts:
* The first, a fiscal review of the graving yard project, concludes that the state Department of Transportation was correct when it continued work at the yard even after human remains were found there in August 2003.
* The second part analyzes how the state failed to discover that its construction site lay on top of an ancient Native American cemetery.
The state lost almost $86.9 million on the Port Angeles project after the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe asked that construction cease.
The sum is broken down to $60.5 million in construction; $11.2 million to reassemble equipment, labor and supplies at new sites; and $15.2 million to choose a new graving yard location and renegotiate its agreement with contractor Kiewit-General Construction Co. of Poulsbo.
$1.5 million still on site
An additional $1.5 million in materials remains at the site on the Port Angeles Harbor.
Still, if construction could have been completed in Port Angeles, the audit said the loss would have been $15 million less than the eventual cost of moving the project to other places.
The graving yard would have built 20 giant concrete anchors and 55 pontoons, plus highway decks, to replace the aging east end of the floating bridge.
The retrofit was budgeted at $275.8 million in 2003 but has climbed to $470.1 million as of last March.
About $15 million of the increase came from contract renegotiations and engineering changes.
The rest came from higher materials costs, project delays and separate construction sites.
Pontoon construction is under way at Concrete Technologies in Tacoma, while the draw span and decks will be constructed in Seattle and the anchors will be poured in Port Gamble.
Completion, originally scheduled for this year, now is set for 2010.
