Amendment to Phase I Cultural Resources Assessment McCoy's Cut Diversion Savannah Harbor Expansion Project Savannah River, Georgia and South Carolina

A Final Phase I cultural resources assessment report for the McCoy’s Cut flow diversion project was completed in April 2013 for the Savannah District by Panamerican Consultants, Inc. (Panamerican), under a subcontract with Tetra Tech, Inc. Subsequent to the completion of the Phase I report which is presented above and which was submitted and finalized April 11, 2013, revisions to the project design were undertaken to address new information obtained from hydraulic and sediment modeling for the project, and to ensure that impacts on wetlands and other resources in the Savannah River within the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge would be minimized to the extent practicable. The design adjustments necessitated extending the area of potential effect (APE), and the associated need for a supplemental cultural resources survey, approximately 250 feet further downstream than those surveys that had been conducted in support of the initial Phase I report (Figure 1).

Subsequently, and again under subcontract to Tetra Tech, Inc. (Blair Remy Prime Contract), maritime archaeologists with Panamerican conducted supplemental submerged cultural resources investigation of the expanded area. This addendum to the Final Phase I report for the project addresses the additional surveys (low water bank line, magnetometer, sidescan sonar, subbottom profiler) conducted in the expanded APE, depicted in Figure 1.

Located in the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, the investigations were covered under the existing Archeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) permit obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the ongoing Mitigation Plan 6A work being conducted by Panamerican under a separate contract. The investigations were also covered under the existing Special Use Permit for the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, also obtained for the Mitigation Plan 6A (see original report above).