Engineers help modernize tribes' village in Oregon

The Celilo Village project will bring a new standard of living to the native tribes who live in this village near The Dalles.

Portland's Cooper Zietz Engineers provided the civil, structural, electrical, mechanical and architectural design of new Celilo Village facilities, including on-site consultations, inspections and meetings.

The team of engineers, architects and planners developed a major facility improvement program at Celilo Village, which is approximately 10 miles east of The Dalles. Cooper Zietz's work included preparing high-level, detailed civil, mechanical and electrical engineering plans and specifications for the construction of new water supply and distribution system, sewage collection system, electrical supply and distribution, streets and parking improvements, 15 new homes and new office and classroom space for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The project included a 3,000-square-foot longhouse rebuild, replacing a longhouse that was not built to seismic code and was worth salvaging.

"The logs were in bad shape, and the structure was not built to code," said Dwight Gray, the project manager with Cooper Zietz. Initially, the design team considered trying to save some of the wood, but that proved impractical due to repair costs versus replacement. All that could be salvaged were the foundation supports for the logs. Portland architect John Kyle also helped with the longhouse design.

During charettes, tribe members asked the design team for additional space, so Cooper Zietz added 15 feet to one end of the longhouse. "That was one challenge," he said. "The other challenge was to make it culturally sensitive and incorporate all the wood we could."

Being culturally sensitive meant concealing many of the modern building systems that run through the longhouse. "We needed to comply with code and not have a lot of modern things exposed," he said. The conduits on the inside of the building were not exposed. John Kyle Architects assisted in the design of the longhouse.

Gray said the project was also satisfying because his firm could help bring modern amenities to a village where the tribes had used pit toilets and relied on bottled water or tainted well water. "They were living without indoor plumbing and water," he said. The firm designed two sewage lagoons and a 238,000-gallon storage tank for daily domestic water use and fire protection.

Construction began in early 2007 and has finished on all but the BIA buiding.

The general contactor on the project was Colville Tribal Services Corp. Cooper Zietz's client was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who funded the project. The Bureau of Indian affairs holds the land in trust for the residents.

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