EPHRATA — Work on 914 archeology sites within Grant County PUD’s Priest Rapids Project begins this month.

The efforts are required by the utility’s federal license to own and operate its Columbia River dams.

Three contracts totaling $7.5 million were approved in December for archeology services and last through 2012.

“I think the point of the contracts is to make sure recreation isn’t impacted, so sensitive sites can be identified and mitigate, if need be,” explained Dorothy Harris, a utility spokesperson, on Monday.

The contact work will be completed by Rainshadow Research, Cultural Resources Consulting and Archeology Historic Services, which is a business unit within Eastern Washington University.

“Each of them has their own expertise,” she says.

Part of the site testing process entails completing a walking inventory of the area and a shovel test, Harris said.

The area is considered a superhighway of prehistoric cultural activity, as it contained significant agate resources and was the former sites of major villages and transportation routes, according to a presentation given by Brett Lenz, a cultural resource manager with Grant County PUD.

The work is being done to determine eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places.

The criteria to have a site listed is as follows: the property must be “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or that embody the distinctive characteristics of type, period, or method of construction; or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values …”or that has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history,” according to Lenz’s presentation.