BRINNON — A bipartisan group of nine state legislators has come out in support of rebuilding the washed out Dosewallips Road.
The letter urging reconstruction was sent to the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, this week.
A 300-foot section of road leading to the U.S. Forest Service’s Elkhorn campground and Olympic National Park washed out during flooding on the Dosewallips River in January 2002.
Since then, access to campgrounds and Dosewallips Falls has been closed eight miles west of U.S. Highway 101.
The Forest Service announced last month it will rebuild the road.
An opposition group has vowed to appeal the decision.
The economic impact of the closure on Brinnon is what drove the legislative effort to support the road construction, state Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, said Thursday.
The letter was signed by the local 24th District representatives — Buck; Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam; and Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam — and the legislators of the 19th and 35th districts.
The three districts together cover the entire Olympic Peninsula and Pacific Coast.
“We call ourselves the ‘coastal caucus,”‘ Buck said.
“When we run into things like this, we generally work as a group to get the problem solved.
“We’ve all got similar economic development problems, and we’re very familiar with what happens to a little tiny town when something like this goes wrong.”