The Walla Walla Conservation District proposes to construct a pipeline and/or install a lining to reduce water wastage due to seepage and evaporation in the Gardena Farms Irrigation District’s unimproved open ditch conveyance system.  It is anticipated that project construction will be funded by multiple state and federal agencies, including BPA, and completed in 3-4 stages over the course of several years.  

This contract will prepare for project construction by providing cultural resource inventory of approximately 22.9 miles of existing mainline and lateral ditch, which will either be piped or upgraded with a ditch liner plus corridors that could be utilized to realign the new pipeline/ditch.  The inventory will also include 50 pump stations that will be upgraded.  Installation of the pipeline or ditch liner will require either digging a trench and burying pipe or reshaping the existing ditch to install a lining material, which would most likely be concrete.  The alignment of the pipeline would follow the existing ditch for the most part although there would be some reaches where a different alignment is necessary.  Installation of a ditch liner would follow the existing alignment of the ditch.  Any abandoned ditch would be filled in with spoil.  Spoil from past canal maintenance is, for the most part, located in berms adjacent to the ditch.  Where spoil is not adequate to fill the abandoned ditch, material would be trucked in from borrow areas.  Pump stations will require a concrete pad and excavation to connect pumps to the new buried pipeline or lined ditch.  A date for construction has not been set.  This project connects to the Gardena South Lateral pipeline project which was funded in part by BPA and was previously surveyed by EWU personnel in 2009.  

The purpose of this contract is to conduct cultural resource background research and literature review, followed by a cultural resources inventory with limited subsurface testing and historical research (as necessary) in order to assist BPA and other federal funding agencies in complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and state funding agencies in complying with Executive Order 05-05.  Four tasks will be completed and reported on for this contract:
1) Background research, literature review.
2) Intensive pedestrian survey
3) Subsurface testing in high probability areas and/or areas subject to relatively greater intensity of project impacts throughout the project areas of potential effects (APE).
4) Historical research.  Historic irrigation systems will be evaluated for eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).  Historical research may be necessary in addition to fieldwork in order to make recommendations of eligibility.