Except for rainwater, the large waterfall at Talking Water Gardens was dry Saturday as the wetlands has been indefinitely shut down.
Talking Water Gardens once was hailed as an environmental success. But now, as a system to further treat already treated wastewater, it has been shut down.
The news came late Friday in the weekly report that Albany City Manager Peter Troedsson sends to the city council and others.
Here’s Troedsson’s announcement regarding Talking Water Gardens or TWG:
“Our compliance case with DEQ over discharges from TWG is closed. We have stopped sending treated effluent from the WRF [the Albany-Millersburg sewage treatment plant] to TWG in order to solve the compliance problem. We have not physically disabled any infrastructure; if we can find a way to get the effluent permitted, we can resume discharging to TWG. However, at this point we don’t know what DEQ would require for this to happen. We’re continuing to ask DEQ for language in our permit that would describe allowable discharges to TWG.”
In 2019, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality fined Albany $5,400 over underground seepage from the wetlands and demanded the city come up with a plan to stop the leaks.
Since then the city has tried to find a solution. Evidently, one solution acceptable to the DEQ was to stop operating the wetlands.
Talking Water Gardens was completed in 2012 at a cost of $13-14 million, including $8 million in federal funds.
The goal was to cool and further clean already treated wastewater from Albany, Millersburg and Wah Chang (now ATI), before pumping it into the Willamette River through the treatment plant’s two authorized diffusers on the river bottom. The DEQ insisted that seepage from the wetlands into First Lake amounted to an unauthorized and thus illegal discharge.
The site has been variously reported as 30-50 acres. The actual tax lot containing the constructed wetlands, located in Millersburg but owned by the City of Albany, measures about 60 acres.
In May 2011, a year before Talking Waters started operating, the federal Environmental Protection Agency gave the project an award for “performance and innovation creating environmental success.”
Anticipating problems with the DEQ, Albany in 2017 sued the engineering firm that designed the wetlands for $33 million. That suit was still pending this past June, and I haven’t checked on it since.
On Saturday I rode the bike to Talking Waters, called that because of the sound of water cascading over rocks. The system of trails remains open. But when I got there the waterfalls said nothing at all. (hh)
You write, “…as a system to further treat already treated wastewater…”
How is nature harmed if already treated wastewater is treated again and then seeps into a pond?
This sounds like a good thing, not a bad thing.
The stifling effect of the bureaucratic mind appears to be the real problem here.
I worked at Albany waste water. Talking waters took the chlorinated effluent and through natural processes, dechlorinated the water. If it is sending chlorinated water into the ecosystem it. Could be a problem
Someone else is doing the talking.
This is very disappointing. I was always proud of this project. I hope this gets resolved.
It seems over regulation is an ongoing theme, Politics aside, treatment of Already clean Water is a good thing, But Chicken lil syndrome has always been a thorn in the side for any good intentioned project, and What ifs and second guessing etc, there are risks to any enterprise or endeavor, yet the risks here seem minimal.
I wonder if they were beginning to see eutrophication issues in First Lake. Eutrophication is when excess nutrients are introduced to an aquatic system. It can cause harmful algal blooms and other issues with the existing ecosystem.
very sad news. Was a relaxing and convenient walk. hope it reopens soon.
To be clear, the trails remain open. It’s the water treatment function that was stopped.
Maybe the city should just pump river water thru the pond system introduce appropriate fish species and open it to fishing. Maybe even charge a fishing fee to recoup some of the money wasted on the project.
I can see the algae coming to take over now, just wait and see…
Thank you for your report on the City of Albany’s Talking Waters Gardens DEQ compliance case. I took advantage of the fair weather this afternoon to get a fresh look at the park’s water features and was not disappointed. This project was once hailed as an environmental success and those who took part in its creation should remain proud.
Where does the City of Albany pump the treated water now that they don’t pump it into the Talking Gardens?
It goes into the Willamette.
Instead of going into the ponds and some leakage into first lake that flows into the Willamette River, they shut down Talking Gardens to dump directly into the Willamette River. Well done.
Maybe it caused eutrophication issues in the Waverly lake aquatic system through ground water. Is it possible that the seepage could have caused the harmful algal blooms and other issues with the existing ecosystem there? The city may be able get some of the money from the law suit to fund getting the process to work like it was designed to function. It should be necessary to further clean and cool the treated water before it goes to any water source.
The seepage is downstream from Waverly lake.
More DEQ “help”, “edicts”, hmm just pumping it directly into the Willamette River is a real solution! Let’s go backwards. Add a few thousand tons of bentonite clay from Wyoming to slow the seepage?
EV’s are also a solution to environmental damage according to DEQ but that’s another story.
Groundwater in unconfined aquifers (open spaces (pore spaces) are filled with water) tends to flow towards, and discharge to, streams, lakes, and wetlands, because these waterbodies often occur in low points of the watershed. The water table is not a flat surface: rather, there are high areas and low areas just like the hills and valleys found on land. Groundwater can significantly affect a lake by influencing its water levels, chemistry, and overall ecosystem health.
Hasso scoops the G-T. The 12Dec2024 front page of the Corvallis G-T / Albany D-H ‘Talking Waters Goes Silent’ describes some of the contaminant, leakage, and permitting issues involved. No link to the online article yet.
Albany – where great ideas come to die. What I’d like to know, is why my tap water always smells like a pool that’s just been freshly chlorinated?!?
Well shoot. It couldn’t have been that bad. Place flourishes with aviana reptiles and amphibians. We were wondering why it was over growing and the frog buddies were gone. :(
This sounds like the same type of MO that happened with Green Peter.