For years, the city of Albany has posted pollution warnings near sewer outfalls on the Willamette River when heavy rainstorms overloaded the system. To fix this, the city now expects to spend $13 million borrowed from the state.
New signs have sprouted along a segment of Albany’s Dave Clark Path, opening the possibility that people could be cited for trespassing if they camp on the riverbank below.
If memory serves, these woodchip hopper rail cars got their new paint schemes — honoring the Oregon Ducks and the anti-drug DARE program — in about 2000 or before. And look at the colorful messes created by taggers in all the years since.
Trash left by transients along the riverfront and Dave Clark Path may be an intractable problem, but Albany city officials are not giving up. They will consider even cameras to deter or detect illegal camping.
Some days there is nothing to see on my riverfront beat. But sometimes there is, even if it’s nothing big. Three items caught my attention Monday afternoon.
That’s the last thing Albany’s struggling downtown needs — taggers. And yet here we are, on Monday afternoon, looking across Second Avenue near Ellsworth, where somebody with a can of red spray paint had gone to work on a cabinet holding, presumably, traffic signal controls.
Pump station on path worries neighbors
Some Albany residents have become concerned about plans to build a sewer pump station on the Dave Clark Path near where they live in the Iron Works townhouses on Water Avenue. But the design is more than half done, and the city says changing it would cause delays and a significant increase in the cost.
Tags: Albany council, Dave Clark Path, Iron Works townhouses, Riverfront Interceptor, sewer pump station