PORT ANGELES — Keeping the graving yard project here is important not just for Port Angeles and the North Olympic Peninsula, but the entire state.

That’s the message more than 60 people heard during a Thursday night meeting at the Carpenters & Pile Drivers Local 1303 meeting hall

The meeting included union carpenters and piledrivers who stand to lose their jobs if the state Department of Transportation graving yard project moves out of Port Angeles.

Mayor Richard Headrick and City Council members Karen Rogers and Jack Pittis also attended the meeting at the union hall at 416 E. First St.

“There’s more at stake here. There’s a chance the project could leave the state,” said Grant Alexander, a former union representative who traveled to the meeting from Poulsbo.

“It’s not just a North Olympic Peninsula issue — it’s a state issue,” he said.

Alternative sites

Alternative sites in Tacoma and Texas have been mentioned if the graving yard project must relocate.

Alexander told the crowd that if the graving yard was a cemetery with their relatives interred, they would have concerns like the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe has at the Marine Drive construction site that once was home to the village of Tse-whit-zen.

But he also urged the crowd to pack any public meetings on the topic to show the politicians — local, state and federal — how important keeping the project and its jobs in Port Angeles is to them.

Daren Konopaski, field representative from the Operating Engineers union, said, “We must take the high road about how to keep the graving yard and its jobs here.

“This thing’s got to stay here. There should be 1,000 people here.

“This project is a perfect replacement for the Rayonier mill,” he said.

The Rayonier Inc. pulp mill at the foot of Ennis Creek closed in 1997, putting 365 employees out of work.