The future of Albany’s Talking Water Gardens remains uncertain this spring. But if a claim made in a court filing is true, there’s a potential pathway to resume their use as part of the wastewater treatment plant.
Talking Water Gardens, the wetlands Albany built in 2012, was all but deserted Wednesday afternoon, empty and almost completely clean. But that’s not the whole story.
State regulators are inviting public comment on their proposed new Albany “water quality permit,” but they don’t tell us anything about the most important question: How much will this cost?
The City of Albany has received the draft of a new permit to discharge treated wastewater, but the proposal ignores the problems with Talking Water Gardens, the $13 million treatment system that the city was forced to shut down.
The continued shutdown of Albany’s Talking Water Gardens as a wastewater treatment system defies common sense. So I asked the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to explain.
Albany’s Talking Water Gardens is out of water, but construction is under way on a temporary and partial fix for the rest of the summer.
City ‘may apply’ for Talking Waters permit
The Cox Creek Path often takes me past Albany’s Talking Water Gardens, dormant now for the second year in a row. The question is whether this wastewater treatment installation, completed in 2012 at a cost of about $14 million, will ever be used again.
Tags: CH2M, DEQ, NDPES, Talking Water Gardens