By Pepper Fisher

SEQUIM – By all appearances, paving the section of Towne Road atop the new levee at the Dungeness River floodplain is moving ahead, but there is one holdup.

Clallam County officials put out a call for bids and, pending approval from County Commissioners, Nordland Construction Northwest won with a bid of $1.8 million. The design includes two lanes of traffic and a walking trail. In order to make that fit on top of the existing levee, county engineers altered their original design from a road that gently slopes from the center line toward both shoulders, to a road that slopes to only one shoulder, away from the floodplain.

That alteration required the County to submit modification requests to the Department of Ecology and the Army Corps of Engineers. Ecology approved the new design last week. But the Army Corps has not signed off on the modification request and, according to the Corps’ spokesman Bill Dowell, there is no timeline on when they will approve the County’s permit.

Meanwhile, there is still a raging debate among those who want the levee paved and those who want to stop it. Not even the three County Commissioners agreed when they voted to approve the paving project, with Commissioner Mark Ozias asking for more time to study the potential effects the road might have on the restored floodplain.

A group of local residents have formed the non-profit Dungeness Levee Trail Advocates (DLTA) and have hired a law firm that is currently requesting the County produce an updated Environmental Impact Statement and stop the plan to pave the road.

On the other side of the issue, there are at least two factors playing into the decision to get the road paved sooner rather than later. There seems to be a consensus among first responders to get the road opened for speedier response times to area neighborhoods, and there’s a $1.6 million grant from the State Department of Ecology that is set expire at the end of this year if it isn’t used on the road.

County Road Engineer Joe Donisi did not respond to our request for comment.

(Photo of levee trail courtesy of DLTA website)