Foreign steel will be going into second Narrows Bridge

Monday, July 15, 2002

By REBECCA COOK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

OLYMPIA -- More than half the steel for the second Tacoma Narrows Bridge will likely come from foreign sources, according to Department of Transportation officials and labor leaders.

The rest will likely be domestic-made, although details have not yet been completed.

Union leaders say they find the compromise acceptable, removing what could have been a last-minute barrier to the bridge's long-awaited construction.

"If we're going to have a bridge, this is the opportunity," said Ron Piksa, president of the Pacific Northwest Iron Workers District Council. "We could kill it, but long term, for the area, I don't think that serves anybody."

Designer-builder Tacoma Narrows Constructors will need about 45,000 tons of steel to build a second bridge between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula.

State DOT project communications manager Susan Reams said Tacoma Narrows Construction will probably use about 25,000 tons of foreign steel and 20,000 tons of domestic steel. Using all-domestic steel would add about $40 million over the $800 million already appropriated by the Legislature for the project, she said.

However, the details are not final until Tacoma Narrows Constructors signs a design-build agreement and a development agreement with the state tomorrow at Tacoma Community College.

Signing both agreements will allow the company to choose the overseas company to supply, fabricate and preassemble the steel.

Leaders had hoped for federal funding for the bridge at one point, but when that fell through the possibility of using entirely domestic steel was pretty much abandoned.

Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Gig Harbor, said she's disappointed that the project won't use more domestic steel.

Nippon Steel of Japan is the front-runner to build the bridge deck, Lantz said, with the work performed in South Korea. Insisting on all-domestic steel and labor would delay the project, cost too much and require higher tolls, she said.

"All bets would be off as to how firm the cap is on the cost," she said. "I guess, to use a very bad pun, it's water under the bridge."

Reams noted that regardless of where the steel originates, the bridge project will generate work for hundreds of port workers, drivers and construction workers.

Bonds to finance construction on the bridge will be sold in September. Construction will begin later in the year and is scheduled to be completed in four and a half years.

The initial round-trip toll of $3 may increase after four years.

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