Archeological Site Monitoring at Site 9HY471, Henry County East Lake Road-Jackson Crrek 230 kV Transmission Line

Pursuant to an agreement between Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) and the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office reached in a meeting on October 5, 2010, we conducted monitoring of prehistoric archeological site 9HY471 in eastern Henry County last week. As you know, we discovered this late Mississippian occupation site in the summer of 2008 during the archeological survey of the East Lake Road - Jackson Creek 230 kV transmission line. We recommended that it was eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, and GTC took special measures during the clearing of the corridor and construction of the line to not affect the site. The site was not adversely affected by the construction of the line.

Subsequently, the landowner pressed to have the stumps on the site ground down below ground level and the area seeded with grass, to create a lawn similar to that on his property adjacent to the corridor. During the October 5, 2010 meeting, the GSHPO agreed that careful stump grinding and careful placement of a layer of fill dirt that would then be seeded, should not constitute an adverse effect to the site. The GSHPO requested that an archeologist be present during the process to insure site protection, and they requested that the archeologist inspect the location where the top soil would be gathered, to make sure that an important site at that location would not be disturbed. This letter and the attached set of photographs documents our monitoring of the stump grinding and grassing process.

Southeastern Archeological Services, Inc. sent senior field archeologist Ron Schoettmer, who conducted the original survey in 2008, to perform this inspection and monitoring. As you know, Mr. Schoettmer met you, GTC's Ashley Regan and the grading contractor (Charles Wells Grading) at Site 9HY471 on the morning of April 18, 2011. You went to the borrow site, where we learned that the soil to be used on the site had been hauled to the borrow site from an unknown location near Stockbridge. There were several large piles of hauled-in dirt here, all within a shallow bot1'ow pit. Thus, there was no intact soil at the borrow location in which any sort of site could have existed. The UTM coordinates of the borrow site are 16 07 64 144 Easting, 37 06 479 Northing.

In conclusion, an archeologist surveyed the borrow site and determined no archeological sites existed. He then monitored the stump grinding and the first round of depositing two layers of soil over the portion of the site within the l 00-ft wide transmission line corridor. There were no adverse impacts to the site. The stump grinding affected very small portions of the plowzone at each stump. The site area within the corridor is now covered with a ca. 6-inch layer of compacted subsoil that is overlain by an 8-10 inch layer of top soil, which has been seeded in grass.