OLYMPIA — From the air, the Port Angeles graving yard site looks like a rectangle, not a 22.5-acre question mark.

What can be done with the site on the Port Angeles waterfront if it won’t be used to build pontoons for the Hood Canal Bridge?

“That is really a very complicated question,” replied Doug MacDonald, state transportation secretary, on Thursday.

MacDonald said there are questions within the question, such as what will be done with Klallam tribal ancestral burials and artifacts that have been unearthed at a 1,700-year-old village called Tse-whit-zen that lies beneath the graving yard.

“The responsibility is to protect the site from looting or scavenging,” he said.

He added, however, that he couldn’t pin that responsibility on any particular agency.

Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles could not be reached for comment.

Ancestral burials

Most work on the $17 million yard stopped in the summer of 2003 after ancestral burials were found there.

Had construction gone ahead full speed, about 100 workers would have been employed at the completed onshore dry dock by now and at least through spring 2006.

But after 16 months of archeological work and negotiations between the state and the tribe, the Lower Elwha Klallam said Dec. 10 they wanted all excavation stopped permanently.

At a state Transportation Commission, meeting in Olympia on Wednesday, four of seven commissioners told the PDN they’d respect the tribe’s wishes and seek a new place to build the bridge pontoons.

One of the commissioners was absent, and two left the meeting before they could be polled.