PORT ANGELES — The state Department of Transportation says it will make no changes to plans for a waterfront graving yard despite lobbying efforts by Todd Pacific Shipyards to curtail the commercial potential of the dry dock.
The Seattle-based shipyard has been lobbying lawmakers and Transportation to restrict commercial uses of the graving yard after pontoons and anchors for the 2006 eastern replacement of the Hood Canal Bridge are built and floated away.
One of Todd’s lobbying goals reportedly includes redesigning the graving yard — a big pit that functions like an onshore dry dock and fills with water to float the product into the harbor — to make it shallower.
Less depth would limit its use as a shipyard between floating bridge projects.
But no changes will be made to the project design, Transportation’s Project Manager John Callahan said.
————–
The rest of the story appears in the Thursday Peninsula Daily News. Click on SUBSCRIBE, above, to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.