State faulted for bungling in bridge project

OLYMPIA – An outside investigator’s report rips the state Department of Transportation for mishandling a Hood Canal bridge project that cost taxpayers $87 million.

The state and tribal leaders allowed a massive dock project to be sited on Port Angeles waterfront land that turned out to be the long-forgotten site of an ancient tribal village and burial ground.

The latest study is the second that faults the department and the other players in the expensive miscalculation. The new report, released Friday by the Joint Legislative Audit Review Committee, was conducted by independent investigators, Foth and Van Dyke, a Green Bay, Wis., firm.

The Department of Transportation issued its own critical internal review last month. Transportation chief Doug MacDonald called the whole project a “nightmare” and “a very expensive misadventure.”

The site, called a “graving dock” for construction of new bridge pontoons, was shut down in late 2004 at the insistence of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe after hundreds of ancient remains and thousands of artifacts were found as the site of the Tse-whit-zen village was unearthed.

The waterfront village, at present-day Port Angeles, was razed and buried in the 1920s to make way for a sawmill. Archaeologists say the Indian village is the largest ever discovered in Washington.

Selecting, partially developing and then abandoning the Port Angeles site added nearly $87 million to the soaring price tag for replacing the eastern half of the floating bridge that links the Olympic Peninsula with the Kitsap Peninsula.

The new total is more than $470 million. The delay also added three years to construction. Rather than opening next summer, the rebuilt span won’t open until summer 2010.

The eastern span is open for traffic, but engineers warn that it could sink in a storm, as the western half did in 1979.