For about an hour between 5 and 6 on Wednesday night, the bike took me on my usual route along the Albany riverfront to the east end of town, and then back a different way. In bright sunshine, these were among the things I saw:
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.
The bike and I took the Cox Creek Path in Albany on Tuesday to see if the Union Pacific had made any progress replacing its trestle across the creek and the path. The video below, with bonus footage of a passing train, shows what I found.
The Cox Creek Path in Albany is about one-third of a mile long and runs from Simpson Park to Salem Avenue. It used to be a scenic segment of Albany’s system of walking and cycling paths. This spring the nature of the scenery has dramatically changed.
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