It’s a shame what has happened to one of Albany’s canals, the one that runs down Thurston Street from Seventh Avenue to the Willamette River.
Albany’s downtown renewal board may now be on its way to setting priorities for completing its mission. That’s the vague but hopeful main news from Wednesday’s monthly session of the CARA advisory board.
Nobody seems to love what’s left of Albany’s Thurston Street Canal. Decades ago it was turned into a narrow ditch. The water flow is very sluggish. Now somebody was kind enough to cut the grass on the banks. But look where the cuttings ended up: In the ditch, making an already stagnant waterway even more so.
Every time I see this fence on the Albany-Santiam Canal, I’m reminded of the Town Center Plan the city council adopted in 1995. The barbed wire is a sign of one of the unfulfilled hopes that the plan contained.
Left in the dust: old Thurston Canal
Hardly any water flows in the little ditch known as the Thurston Street Canal or “Thurston Creek” in the best of times. On Sunday I was surprised to see that one section had gone completely dry.
Tags: Albany canals, CARA, Thurston Creek, Thurston ditch, Thurston Street Canal