PORT ANGELES – Hood Canal Bridge contractor Kiewit-General has signed deals with Todd Pacific Shipyards of Seattle and Concrete Tech of Tacoma to build pontoons for replacing the eastern half of the floating span.
The pontoons are to be built in Tacoma and floated to Todd Pacific’s shipyard on Seattle’s Harbor Island.
The initial site for the pontoon project – a 22.4-acre parcel on the Port Angeles waterfront – was dropped after it was found to cover a centuries-old village of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
Work stopped there in December 2004, after artifacts and human remains were found.
The first pontoon is expected to arrive at Harbor Island in July 2007, and the last pontoon is to be delivered to Hood Canal in early 2009.
Todd Pacific has estimated the lease will bring in $2.5 million in rental income over three years. AML/Duwamish Shipyard, an early partner with Todd Pacific and Concrete Tech, was not included in the final agreement.
A week after construction at Port Angeles began in August 2003, workers unearthed human remains – the first of thousands of intact burials and fragments that would be uncovered over the next 15 months.
The discoveries were troublesome to the state but traumatizing for tribal members, who saw their ancestors’ remains desecrated by pipes and pilings from industries that had built atop the village of Tse-whit-zen.
The state paid the Lower Elwha $3.4 million to preserve artifacts and purchase a reburial site.
By late 2004 it was apparent that the excavation would unearth a major Indian cemetery. On Dec. 10, 2004, as tribal members stored 335 handmade cedar boxes containing ancestral remains, Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles called for an end to construction.
Eleven days later, the state agreed and shut down the project.
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