The Bureau of Reclamation has awarded an $8,640,411 contract to construct nearly 6 miles of main canal tunnel and open canal on the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project about 59 miles east of Farmington, N.M., the Department of the Interior reported today. The project is being built by Reclamation for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The joint venture of Shea-Kaiser-Macco, Redding, Calif., was awarded the contract on the lowest of ten bids received under Specification No. DC-6l87.
Under the contract, the firm will do excavation work and concrete lining of approximately five miles of main canal tunnel running southwesterly from Gobernador Canyon to a point near Cutter Canyon, in Sen Juan County. At the upstream end of the tunnel, near Gobernador Canyon, 650 feet of concrete-lined canal will be built to connect the tunnel with a siphon crossing the canyon. The siphon, to be built under a later contract, will connect a two-mile section of tunnel (now being built from Navajo Reservoir to the canyon) with the second section of tunnel to be constructed under the contract just awarded.
At the Cutter Canyon end, the tunnel emerges and water then will be carried in an unlined canal for the final 3,200 feet of the contract work. From there a siphon crossing the canyon will be built under a later contract.
The tunnel and canal sections to be built under the contract just awarded will form part of a 152-mile conveyance system that will transport up to 508,000 acre-feet of water annually from Reclamation’s Navajo Reservoir to some 110,000 acres of Navajo Indian Reservation lands south of the San Juan River.
Work by Shea-Kaiser-Macco is expected to generate about 450 man-years of employment at the construction site and at least an equivalent amount elsewhere in the manufacture and furnishing of materials and equipment.
Second low bidder for the job was the joint venture of Gates &Fox Company, Inc., and Walsh Construction Company of Placerville, Calif., $9,099,881. Third, with an offer of $9,857,318, was another joint venture, Koppers Company, Inc.- Malan Construction Dept., Saliba-Kringlen Corporation, and Civil Constructors, Inc., Gardena, Calif.
