What is Tidewater Drive today appears to have been a fast food alley long before Samuel Gorton bought Warwick from Native Americans in 1642.

“I think we have found cafeteria row,” Janine Burke, executive director of the Warwick Sewer Authority, said Tuesday when asked of the results of the ongoing archeological survey of the sub-base of the road. The road is the preferred path for a gravity-fed main sewer line that will bring service to more than 800 homes in what is being called the Bayside Project.

When preliminary digging found evidence of Native American activity in the area, even some bones, it was determined an archeological survey of more than 4,000 feet of Tidewater Drive needed to be done before the final design of the project. Alan Leveillee, principal investigator for Public Archeology Laboratory (PAL), is heading up the survey.

Leveillee said Tuesday that about 85 percent of the survey – which requires digging up the roadbed and then leveling it after being examined – has been completed. He said the remaining work should be completed in another two weeks. Assuming there are no significant findings, Burke is hopeful the sewer construction project can start next year.

Leveillee described himself as “optimistic” the project will proceed as planned. He said as of this point, between 75 and 80 “features” have been found. They largely consist of shells and a few deer bones.

“They were preparing meals and discarding shells and bones,” Leveillee said of the Native Americans, who were drawn to the area by its abundance of seafood and access to fresh water from Buckeye Brook. Leveillee believes they summered on Mill Cove as far back as 800 years ago up until about 350 years ago. He called the gatherings a “village,” although he said it was probably more like a modern day campground with families grouped together. Most, he believes, didn’t stay the year round, and as colder weather arrived moved along streams and rivers inland to more protected forests.

As Leveillee explained in a presentation Tuesday night at City Hall, Native Americans did not view life as a “one-way trip” to this Earth with the spirit ascending the heaven if that’s the way things work out. Rather, as the spirit enters the Earth and becomes part of other spirits, that over centuries give places unique power. With thousands upon thousands, if not millions, having lived in the city over the centuries, “there are many, many burials in Warwick.”

Knowing the Mill Creek Cove area was a Native American settlement, Leveillee was sensitive to Indian beliefs, and after test diggings in the road turned up archeological features, plans to extend sewers to Riverview, Bayside, and eventually Highland Beach were put on hold. Those projects became unrealistic, anyway, as funding was no longer available.

That changed after the election of Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur, who created the Council Sewer Review Commission that brought together stakeholders, including the Narragansetts, to review sewer authority regulations and system extension plans to address the issues faced by homeowners with cesspools and failing septic systems. The upshot was council passage of a $33 million bond that put the Bayside project as well as others back on the drawing board.

In addressing Bayside, the decision was made that a survey of the entire length of the project as it related to Tidewater Drive was needed.

“I’m optimistic that the project is going to move forward and the citizens of the area will be serviced by sewers … there’s nothing in the way so far,” he said.

On site yesterday were PAL archaeologists Kirk Van Dyke and Alex Flick. Van Dyke described the process of using a flat bladed backhoe to dig down two to three feet along the designated pipe trench. So far, he said, there have been a lot of shells and some animal bones, like there had been a “big clam bake and they threw away all those stinky shells.” Also unearthed are some historic features, including evidence that there were once plowed fields in the area, railroad spikes from a trolley that served the area, and cobble stones, probably from a residence.

Once all the features have been identified, Van Dyke said PAL would consult with the tribe and determine what areas, if any, should be further explored.

Also on site was Greg Stanton of the Narragansetts. He said that so far in the survey, there’s been no evidence of human burial grounds.

Should there be a significant feature that the Narragansetts would not want disturbed, the pipeline could be redesigned to go around it, or directional digging that would not alter the ground above could be used.

While directional digging will be used for connecting laterals where needed, Burke is hopeful that it wouldn’t be required for the main gravity line. Overall, the service will be a low-pressure system that will require property owners to have pumps but will reduce the amount of excavation needed.

“It’s a little more costly,” Burke said of directional drilling, “but cost wise [for the user] we’re in the ballpark.” She put assessment cost at about $25,000 per homeowner.

Burke put the cost of engineering service and preliminary design, including PAL, at $279,000. She said cultural resource monitoring by the Narragansetts is costing $66,700, and put the job of peeling back the road surface and then repaving it at $143,800.

The first phase of the Bayside project, the installation of the main sewer line on Tidewater Drive, is projected to cost $1.6 million. The second phase, which would not start until 2018 and would bring sewers to about 800 properties, is projected to cost $16.3 million, she said.