SEATTLE — 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 bridge.

Pontoons are to be built in Tacoma and floated to Todd Pacific’s shipyard on Harbor Island.

The bridge project was forced to find new pontoon construction site after its original 22.4-acre site in Port Angeles was found to sit atop an ancient Lower Elwha Klallam village.

Work ceased on the Port Angeles location in December 2004.

$2.5 million lease

The first pontoon is expected to arrive at Harbor Island in July 2007, with the last pontoon floated 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.

Barely a week after construction started in August 2003 on the graving yard site in Port Angeles, excavators 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 to tribal members who saw their ancestors’ remains desecrated by pipes and pilings from industries that had built atop Tse-whit-zen.

The state paid the Lower Elwha $3.4 million to preserve artifacts and purchase a reburial site.

But by late 2004 it became apparent that the graving yard excavation would unearth a major Native American 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 graving yard operations.