PORT ANGELES — The man hired to mediate graving yard talks between the state and Lower Elwha Klallam tribe said Friday that the first two days at the table were encouraging.
John Bickerman, a Washington, D.C.-based mediator, called the meetings between local, state, federal and tribal officials on Tuesday and Wednesday “very productive.”
The mediation meetings were held in Tacoma and were closed to the public.
“I am cautiously optimistic we will reach a resolution,” he told the PDN.
But Bickerman said there was not a set timeline for the talks to continue.
“Nope,” he said when asked if he knew when the parties would meet again for more mediation.
Bickerman was hired after Gov. Chris Gregoire and Lower Elwha Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles agreed in December to begin formal negotiations to settle the dispute that started in August 2004.
That was when workers excavating an inland dry dock to be used to build anchors and pontoons for the Hood Canal Bridge uncovered human remains from an ancestral Native American village at the 22.5-acre site on the Port Angeles waterfront.
Since then, the $86.8 million the state Department of Transportation spent on the project has gone for naught, most of the work has relocated to Tacoma and Seattle and repairs on the bridge — a major economic lifeline for the North Olympic Peninsula — won’t be finished until at least 2009.