| Jefferson County's OTHER graving yard proposed sites -- at
Mats Mats and Discovery Bay 2005-01-14 by
JEFF CHEW Port Townsend, WA - State officials are examining two other Jefferson County locations for a Hood Canal Bridge reconstruction dry dock besides a joint proposal from the Port of Port Townsend and Port Townsend Paper Corp. Mats Mats rock quarry, north of Port Ludlow on Hood Canal, owned by Seattle-based Glacier Northwest, and Security Services Northwest's Fort Discovery location, owned by company president Joe D'Amico, are two of 18 proposals from around Puget Sound and the North Olympic Peninsula. After a committee of national and regional representatives reviews the 18 proposals -- including four from Clallam County -- the state Department of Transportation is expected to decide on a new graving yard site in March. ``Mats Mats rock quarry has been open since the 1930s and the state has looked at it in the past, in the early '90s, as graving yard for I-90 (floating bridge),'' said Ron Summers, Glacier Northwest vice president and general manager in Seattle. ``With their new interest in the graving yard, they came back to us.'' With slow market conditions closing the rock quarry for nearly a year, Summers said the company hopes to bring back jobs lost at the quarry. ``When we had to shut the plant down, there were 11 people we had to let go,'' said Summers. ``It would be nice to get jobs back in that area.'' Consequently, he said, Glacier Northwest submitted a letter of interest to the state. Although Security Services Northwest Inc. president and CEO D'Amico was not available Thursday, the company's Web site describes in fair detail the general location where a graving yard could be developed. ``Located on Discovery Bay between Sequim and Port Townsend, Fort Discovery offers 3,700 unrestricted acres of waterfront and uplands. ``This site rising from sea level to 1,850 feet offers a full mission
profile training environment from sea to high ground,'' the Web site
states.
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