PORT ANGELES — Mud. Awww, crud.

Heavy rains have turned earth to muck and interrupted cleanup of the Port of Port Angeles’ former KPly mill site barely three weeks before contractors hoped to finish the 19-acre tract at 439 Marine Drive.

Chris Hartman, director of engineering, told port commissioners Tuesday the work might resume in July after soaked soils dry out enough for contractors

to backfill and compact them.

He blamed heavy rains that have fallen since late October for making the ground too gooey to grade. Rainfall has been about double the average for this time of year, he said.

“Suspending work here is far from ideal,” Hartman said. “No one wanted this to happen.”

Port officials had hoped precipitation wouldn’t drown the project, but a Nov. 10 storm that dumped 2 inches of rain on the site “pretty much sunk us,” he said.

If the project had continued, soft spots eventually would develop across the site that the port is cleaning of petroleum pollution in hopes of marketing it as a marine trades industrial park.

The poisoned soil all has been excavated and hauled away, he said.

The shutdown will cost another $125,000 while contractor Engineering Remediation/Resources Group covers mounds of fill material and removes a sheet piling wall rather than rent the pilings throughout the winter.

Topping off the site will require an additional $75,000 worth of clean earth, Hartman said.

Like the doubling of the estimated $3.6 million project cost due to unexpected amounts of toxic soil, the added expense likely will be paid by the port’s insurers, he said.

Still, “we won’t be able to develop it,” said Commissioner Colleen McAleer.

“That’s a lost opportunity for another six to eight months,” lamented Commissioner John Calhoun.

The break in the action, however, according to Karen Goschen, finance director, will give port staff time to approach possible tenants for the land where it has worked since July to dig up and truck to an Oregon landfill more than 53 tons of earth polluted by previous tenants that included Rayonier, KPly and finally PenPly.

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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladaily

news.com.