If we don’t want people setting up tents along Albany’s public paths, we’ll have to come up with another place for them to go whether we like it or not.
On Thursday evening I got off the bike and looked around near the Ninth Avenue ramp on the south side of the Pacific Boulevard viaduct in Albany. The site had been almost completely cleaned up.
Saturday was their deadline for leaving, and by the afternoon people seemed to be getting ready to move their improvised shelters from the state property near the Ninth Avenue off-ramp on Pacific Boulevard.
The City of Albany says it is about to start enforcing its revised ban on unauthorized camping on public property. The new regulations took effect one month after the city council adopted them on Aug. 7.
As if cities like Albany don’t have enough to do, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is proposing to list sections of the Willamette River as “impaired” by trash. This will trigger new regulations under the federal Clean Water Act, and cities likely will bear the brunt of a new mandate.
One of my bike routes through Albany takes me along the Perwinkle Bikepath, and on it you can see different kind of sights, from wildlife to trash.
In Senate bill, a new approach to river trash
A state senator from Port Orford has an answer to the problem of vagrants leaving trash behind when they leave their camping spots along Oregon rivers: Make the state clean it up.
Tags: David Brock Smith, homeless camps, riverside trash, SB 359, vagrant camps, Willamette River