On June 13, the state Department of Environmental Quality gave the city of Albany 90 days to come up with a plan to stop leaks from Talking Water Gardens. The deadline has passed, but evidently it wasn’t meant to be met.
On June 13, the state Department of Environmental Quality gave the city of Albany 90 days to come up with a plan to stop leaks from Talking Water Gardens. The deadline has passed, but evidently it wasn’t meant to be met.
Listening to the calming murmurs of Albany’s Talking Water Gardens on a sunny afternoon, you would not think there could be a problem. But there is, or at least the DEQ thinks it’s a problem.
The state Department of Environmental Quality’s latest move to control the discharge of stormwater will cause the city of Albany and property owners all kinds of problems, so the city is going to court.
It’s not exactly Zuma Beach, let alone the French Riviera, but as an occasional swimming hole this spot on the Calapooia River upstream of the Queen Avenue bridge has its uses during the mid-valley summer. At least for a few people, as in this shot from June 30.
The rules under which small Oregon towns will have to operate their storm water systems are still in flux, and how costly they will be and what effect they will have on Albany’s eventual rain tax nobody knows.
On a bike ride Wednesday to celebrate the temporary absence of rain, I stopped at Albany’s Bowman Park to take a quick look at the Willamette River. It reminded me that a few days ago, the river got a B-minus on some report card. Why not an A or at least a plain B?
DEQ has new plan to reduce mercury in river
The DEQ announced on Monday it had issued its plan for reducing mercury pollution in the Willamette River. Whatever other merits this may have, it also gave me a pretext for using this photo of the river I took last month.
Tags: DEQ, mercury TMDL, Oregon DEQ, Willamette River