MATS MATS BAY — A Mats Mats Bay Coalition leader expressed quiet elation Wednesday upon hearing that the nearby Glacier Northwest rock quarry was unlikely to be chosen as a construction site for floating bridge pontoons.
“Yippee!” yelled Rae Belkin, whose Olympus Boulevard home is about 200 yards away from the rock quarry.
Right now, the quarry opens only occasionally to be mined of rock for rip-rapping shorelines.
“Of course I am very relieved and I am really relieved for the people that are living even closer than I am,” said Belkin, who has headed up the Mats Mats Coalition for nearly five years.
The coalition, which represents about 150 homeowners, monitors industrial activities of Seattle-based Glacier Northwest at the mouth of the placid, protected bay north of Port Ludlow.
Belkin and others with the coalition have adamantly opposed state Department of Transportation proposals to convert the rock quarry to an industrial site.
Transportation plans to build massive concrete floating bridge pontoons and anchors for both the Hood Canal Bridge east-half replacement and now the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge replacement project east of Seattle.
But John Milton, state Department of Transportation project director for the Evergreen Point project, said on Wednesday that he doubts the Mats Mats site, will be chosen.
“It is more likely that we are not going to Mats Mats,” he said.
Mats Mats was being considered along with a site owned by the Port of Grays Harbor.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean we are going to Grays Harbor,” said Milton. “But we are going through the process and that does increase Grays Harbor’s chances.”
A site of six acres or more is needed to construct pontoons in two sizes: 75 feet by 360 feet and 75 feet by 175 feet.
Milton said it was the county’s environmental impact statement for the quarry that sank the site’s chances to be a graving yard.
“It was a reclamation site, so we would have to be going into the site and filling it in after our uses … when it changes use it needs to be reclaimed, essentially filled,” said Milton.
“We want to be able to use the site for other projects,” he said. “We have four floating bridges.”
Another point against Mats Mats, said Milton, was lack of storage for finished pontoons.