Traces of Shawomet village has city ‘rethinking’ sewer project

By John Howell
Posted 12/17/15

One thing that Alan Leveillee, principal investigator for Public Archeology Laboratory (PAL), is certain about is that at the time Samuel Gorton settled Warwick in the 1640s, a Native American …

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Traces of Shawomet village has city ‘rethinking’ sewer project

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One thing that Alan Leveillee, principal investigator for Public Archeology Laboratory (PAL), is certain about is that at the time Samuel Gorton settled Warwick in the 1640s, a Native American village comprised of wigwams existed on the hills overlooking Mill Cove and Narragansett Bay.

One thing that the mayor and the Warwick Sewer Authority are not so certain about is how to proceed in bringing sewers to a neighborhood so rich with history.

And one thing Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur is certain about is that sewers have to come to the area.

Leveillee has found a lot of evidence over the last several months indicating the neighborhood known today as Riverview was the site of a significant level of activity that may even date back 1,000 years. The telltales of Warwick’s past come from a 10-foot wide trench running nearly 4,000 feet down Tidewater Drive. That is where the Warwick Sewer Authority plans to install a gravity-fed main sewer line to bring service to an estimated 800 homes in what has been named the Bayside Sewer Project. 

Leveillee said Tuesday that “scores” of archeological features from piles of quahog shells to the remnants of fire pits, food storage pits, broken tools and deer bones have been identified along the path of the sewer line.

“Shawomet village was there,” says Leveillee.

It was there when Gorton came here in 1642 and Ponham was sachem. What’s not known is the size of the village or how long it was there before the colonials arrived. The question of age may be answered by carbon dating of charcoal found during the fieldwork of the last months.

Following preliminary surveys of the road subsurface earlier this year, Leveillee didn’t see anything that would interrupt the sewer project. With the fieldwork completed, however, Leveillee isn’t as emphatic.

“Now we are rethinking it,” he said.

Mayor Scott Avedisian has been briefed on the matter and said options are being developed.

Ladouceur, who has been committed to the project since winning election, said yesterday the job “has become a little more complicated. It means doing some adjustments.”

Asked what that is, Ladouceur answered, “the only option is to get it done.” He added that cost is a concern and he would look to do the work the least expensive way possible.

“All archeological sites are nonrenewable resources,” Leveillee said.

How the project will proceed, he said, would require a “balance” between what the mayor, sewer authority, residents and the Narragansett Indians want. The preferred course of action is “to preserve as much as you can” and “to preserve in place.”

Have they found any human remains and is there any evidence of an Indian burial site?

Leveillee said they are operating at the highest level of caution for that eventuality. He said there are mechanisms such as directional digging, where pipes are tunneled so as to leave archeological features undisturbed, that can be used.

The system is designed for low-pressure lines that would require homeowners to have pumps to feed into laterals connecting to the main line on Tidewater Drive. The low-pressure lines require less excavation and can be installed through directional digging.

In an October interview, sewer authority executive director Janine Burke-Wells called directional drilling more costly but said the homeowner assessment would remain in the ballpark of $25,000. She put the cost of engineering service and preliminary design, including PAL, at $279,000. Cultural resource monitoring by the Narragansetts is costing $66,700, and 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, was projected to cost $1.6 million. The second phase, which would not start until 2018, is projected to cost $16.3 million, Burke-Wells said in October. Those costs and time frames may now be changing.

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  • davebarry109

    $25,000 per home for sewers? You've got to be kidding. What a crime.

    Saturday, December 19, 2015 Report this

  • JohnStark

    "Cultural resource monitoring by the Narragansetts is costing $66,700..." I travel on Tidewater everyday and have yet to see a Narragansett "monitoring" anything, much less a "cultural resource". This is absurd.

    Sunday, December 20, 2015 Report this

  • RISchadenfreude

    It seems every time a contractor hits a pile of 300-year-old clamshells, the natives show up with their hands out for "Cultural Resource Monitoring"- laughable.

    As far as finding remains is concerned, logic would dictate that they would be buried deeper than the items that are being uncovered now.

    Tuesday, December 22, 2015 Report this