Site Assessment and Prioritization Services

The vendor is required to provide to meet this goal includes two phases: phase i – watershed restoration: site assessment and prioritization and phase ii – prioritized preliminary designs. 
- Phase i includes identifying potential restoration sites, assessing these sites, and then prioritizing the sites that will provide the greatest benefit for implementing improvements.
1. Update inventory of potential restoration sites
• Denote sites that have been restored since 2001.
• Denote sites that agency is currently restoring.
• Review stormwater-related studies for potential restoration sites to incorporate into the list. 
• Examples include, but are not limited to:  o Department public road-stream crossing map
o Department stormwater program
• Conduct a tabletop assessment to identify additional restoration sites along the woonasquatucket river.
• The tabletop assessment will use the most recent and historic GIS environmental mapping available as an efficient means to identify additional sites based on factors such as (1) their proximity to the woonasquatucket river, (2) presence of wetlands, (3) historic hydrography, and (4) proximity to drainage outfalls.
• As stated in the 2001 study, “there are far more potential riparian buffer restoration sites in the watershed than were evaluated.” 
• Incorporate sites identified from community outreach conducted by the agency. 
• Develop a comprehensive GIS database and provide shapefiles and GIS figures that summarize the findings of task 1. each town shall have its own files and figures to review with each watershed community for community engagement. 
• Pertinent metadata describing the site shall also be included.
2. Site assessment
• Riparian, wetland, hydrologic, significance;
• Wildlife and vegetative habitat functions;
• Flood and drought resilience;
• Property type (private, public, park space, etc.);
• Heat islands;
• Community demographics;
• Ease of accessing the site for purposes of construction and maintenance;
• Site visibility for purposes of demonstration, education, engagement, etc.;
• Characteristics of contributing sub watershed: land-use, imperviousness, and stormwater volume and pollutant loads;
• Regulatory concerns including consent decrees, CSOs, ms4s, TMDLs, and state regulatory requirements;
• Metrics identified through agency community engagement; and
• Other relevant data that would support restoration.  • Develop GIS shapefiles and GIS figures that summarize the findings
3. Site prioritization
• Assign a weight to each metric (it is expected that community engagement will inform this step). 
• Score each site, and rank sites based on their scores.
• Create GIS electronic shapefiles with metadata 
• Develop GIS figures that summarize the findings
• Provide technical memorandum that summarizes the methodology to prioritize restoration sites and findings
• Provide PowerPoint presentation slide deck for use by agency organized by town that summarizes findings to review with watershed communities.
- The updated watershed-wide plan to address resiliency challenges must possess the following:
• GIS software applications (with GIS licenses obtained). 
• Use of GIS spatial layers to conduct watershed-wide assessments that focus on flooding, water quality, and climate change. 
• Use of GIS data that include, but is not limited to, water resources (present and historical), FEMA mapping, land use and underlying soil characteristics to identify restoration sites. 
• Use of GIS to provide a prioritization ranking. 
• Knowledge of regulatory concerns including consent decrees, CSOs, ms4s, TMDLs, and state regulatory requirements that include department.
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: July 11, 2025