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After 14 years of work costing Oregon and Washington state nearly $200 million, officials this week began “orderly archival and closeout” of the Columbia River Crossing project.

That process started Friday after the Oregon Legislature failed to take action on the estimated $2.8 billion project. Gov. John Kitzhaber had set the end of the short legislative session as the cutoff date for lawmakers to reauthorize funding for the CRC via an Oregon-only approach; otherwise, the project would be mothballed.

The project will be shut down completely by May 31, Oregon Department of Transportation Director Matt Garrett said.

“We have the fiduciary responsibility to close out the project in a systematic, retrievable manner in order to adequately preserve a decade of research, environmental reviews, community involvement and detailed engineering work for potential future use,” Garrett said in a statement.

About 30 people work at project offices in Vancouver, Wash., CRC spokeswoman Mandy Putney said. They include engineers, designers, schedulers and environmental staffers for ODOT, the Washington State Department of Transportation and TriMet, she said.

ODOT spent roughly $99.3 million on the project through the end of January; WSDOT spent $94.1 million through the same date, according to Putney.

“There’s been a bit of geotechnical exploration work done to understand the conditions under the Columbia River,” she said. “Work like that could be useful in the future.”

Other work that will be archived and cataloged includes:

• Financial analysis, including extensive documents required by the Federal Transit Administration‘s New Starts program;

• Environmental documentation required by the National Environmental Policy Act, including the draft and final environmental impact statements, the federal record of decision and re-evaluations;

• Recent cost estimates and an investment-grade analysis of the Oregon-led project;

• Draft design-build documents for the bridge and approaches;

• Documented efforts to support right-of-way plans and utility relocations; and

• Development drafts of Request for Proposal documents, including those intended to guide construction of the Columbia River bridges.

“People have invested a lot of time and energy in their work and are moving forward,” Putney said. “They’re doing the tasks that are on their plate.”