On the bridge overlooking a now-dry pond at talking Water Gardens on July 29, 2025.
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.
The constructed wetlands was completed in 2012 in order to cool and further treat water from the Albany-Millersburg sewage treatment plant. With a capacity of about 12 million gallons a day, the Gardens leaked an estimated 400,000 gallons a day to adjacent creeks and lakes that feed the Willamette River.
To settle a compliance case against the city by the DEQ, no water has been pumped into the wetlands since December 2024. Instead the effluent from the sewage plant now goes directly into the river.
Last week I asked the DEQ: Why is it better for the river to receive treated effluent directly without additional filtering?
Dylan Darling, a public affairs specialist with the DEQ in Eugene, passed my question to the agency staffers who worked on this issue. Here’s their reply:
“DEQ’s enforcement action was not a comment on the benefits of additional filtering of treated wastewater. DEQ issued the penalty because the Talking Water Gardens was not functioning as DEQ approved and DEQ did not allow leaking to the smaller surrounding creeks. Talking Water Gardens was the city’s proactive response to increasing regulation of the Willamette River by DEQ. The river does not meet state temperature standards and in some areas experiences problems with maintaining dissolved oxygen standards.”
In other words, it doesn’t matter whether the leaks might actually be better for the river. What counts is that the city’s discharge permit does not allow leaks. And that’s it.
An agency more interested in results than rules might look at the situation, including the 13-plus million dollars of public funds spent on the Gardens, consider the costs and benefits of its actions, and quickly amend the city’s permit.
Another question came up last month when I reported on the status of Albany’s lawsuit against CH2M, the engineering firm that designed the Gardens. In letters to the court, lawyers for both sides said Albany did not have to cool its wastewater effluent before putting it in the river, either then or now.
That seemed to undercut the main reason for Albany to build the Gardens. So I asked the DEQ: Is the Albany sewage treatment plant required to do anything to lower the heatload of its discharge to the river?
The DEQ didn’t say yes and didn’t say no. Instead, the agency replied:
“The city does not have or temperature heatload limit in its current National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. DEQ is renewing Albany’s permit this year. The renewal will incorporate temperature heatload limits based on the 2025 Willamette River Mainstem Total Maximum Daily Load. The TMDL is a water quality restoration plan to improve instream temperatures. It calculates the maximum amount of heatload from all pollutant sources that the river can receive while still meeting water quality standards. The city will need to determine if any action is necessary to meet these new limits once they are finalized.”
Where does that leave Albany when the city does eventually get a new discharge permit that requires cooling the discharge?
If the CH2M lawsuit does not come out the way the city hopes, and the Water Gardens don’t work or are not allowed to work, how many additional millions will ratepayers have to pay? (hh)
simply raise taxes until its paid for. that seems to be the way this city solves its over spending problems. what make this any different?
Bureaucratic sclerosis. This is a primary argument against government in general and highly regulatory entities like the DEQ in particular. I do not see any solutions for the State of Oregon to address the growing bureaucracy. It is what people elect
Common sense has lost the day and to bureaucrats.
I know the issue is the leaking and not a water quality issue. However, I was wandering if the water quality from leakage from the ponds from the Cox Creek water is better or worse than leakage from the wastewater treatment plant?
how many angels can fit on the head of a pin?
This is why people have no respect for Government, the “I made a rule and you didn’t abide by it” I am a little tin plated Hitler and you MUST bow to my whim. Quality be damned, intelligence completely missing, and no respect for the better outcome. Before the dams on the Willamette system, the water was warmer in the summer and fall than it is now, Oh ya, lets empty some reservoirs so we can protect fish that did not exist before the dams and fish passage at Willamette Falls in 1873. A total lack of intelligence.
OK rant over…………………well maybe not….
Steelhead and Chinook are native fish known to be so plentiful, “you could walk across the river on their backs” and they are now needing protection from extinction. The Coho salmon, also native, has been introduced into some runs where it wasn’t documented historically because they tolerate the conditions of stress better than the other two species.
When settlers arrived, they saw them as an unlimited resource and immediately began overharvesting them. Combined with dams and lack of fish passage at dams and suitable breeding habitat access (or just general destruction of habitat from human development) has been documented as a primary reason for their inability to rebound.
Not before 1873, they couldn’t get over Willamette Falls, Now in the Columbia, that was a whole different kettle of fish, pun intended.
In a 2017 press statement regarding sea lions harvesting fish below Willamette Falls, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said: “One of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest’s iconic fish, native steelhead trout, have been migrating over Willamette Falls in Portland to spawn in Cascade Mountain rivers for millennia. They are now at high risk of going extinct, based on a new analysis by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.”
This makes me sick. We are paying the state to come up with arbitrary unpaid mandates. We can tell by their language what games they play. How much longer are we going to take this? Is Idaho the only way out?
Refile all the paperwork and say leaking is a feature. Problem solved.
Eggs on many folks’ faces. Let’s get this suit settled soon.
We’ll start building apartments, convenience store, roads.
Maybe a bridge…..
Leaking… But it’s filtered more regardless… But shut it down anyways?
Same logic as, ‘the patient’s leg is sunburned, so we have to amputate’.
Maybe we could use the revenue for the new speed cameras to get the permit adjusted and redone so that way all the wetland water life, which I believe are protected Oregon, can come back.
Thank you Hasso for your continued info on this. I am so upset with the condition of T.W….the loss of just the wildlife is heartbreaking. I appreciate your reporting.
From the tone of many of these comments, I think DEQ’s response needs some translation. First, wastewater effluent contains MANY pollutants of concern, including those without much regulation and known to be persistant, bioaccumulative, and toxic. WW plants are allowed to discharge into LARGE rivers because of mixing zones that dilute *most* of the compounds to levels that are not harmful to fish and other aquatic biota. Thus, the “leaking” into a small creek has the potential to cause serious harm to the ecosystem and the animals living in that water. Fish are much more sensitive to the compounds in WW effluent than humans. My assumption as a water quality scientist reading this article is this is why the “leaking” is a serious enforceable permit violation. I believe DEQ scientists are doing their job to keep Oregon’s water clean and clean water is something I’m happy to have my taxes pay for.
Above the Falls: The Story of the Peoples of the Upper Willamette Valley in Oregon Amid the Absence of Abundant Salmon Runs
Weston Wardle, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
Friday, January 31, 2025
12:00-1:00 PM
1322 School of Education Map
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Salmon fishing was a major activity for people living along the Lower Colombia River in Oregon. But the Willamette Valley in Oregon has a major barrier to salmon runs: Willamette Falls. Above this barrier, indigenous communities in the Upper Willamette Valley developed different responses to fewer and more limited salmon runs. The most significant of these was the use and intensification of camas (Camassia quamash). The story of this plant, and the earth ovens constructed to process them, tells us many interesting things about the societies that lived in this valley and how they were similar and different to their nearby neighbors who did have access to abundant and predictable salmon runs.
Building: School of Education
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: Anthropology, Archaeology
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, Interdepartmental Program in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology, Research Museums Center, Archaeology at Michigan