How does it work, a sign at Talking Water Gardens asks. Sadly, at the moment it doesn’t.
Sixteen years ago, the Albany City Council decided to build the wetlands known as Talking Water Gardens because members thought the city had to do something to cool treated wastewater in order to meet state rules. Now a lawyer for the city says no, the rules did not require it.
This assertion startled me when I read it this week in the court file of City of Albany v. CH2M Hill et al. That’s the lawsuit the city filed in 2017 against the engineers and builders of the Water Gardens.
The suit remains pending before Judge Michael Wynhausen in Linn County Circuit Court. A status conference was scheduled last week. Wondering if there had been developments, I checked the file on Tuesday.
The action continues. The judge said Albany will file an amended complaint by Aug. 29 and CH2M will respond by Sept.29. The file also has two letters from lawyers for the city and CH2M.
In the first, dated July 21, CH2M lawyer John W. Spiegel, of Los Angeles, told the judge about “two significant and, in CH2M’s view, positive developments.”
One was that the city has water rights “to use Santiam River water as needed in the Gardens during summer months. Therefore, the city’s treated wastewater is not needed to continue the use of the Gardens as a community amenity.”
The other development, Spiegel wrote, is that on May 8 Oregon adopted a revised “Willamette River Temperature Total Maximum Daily Load,” replacing a TMDL regulation adopted in 2006. This, the letter says, “allows the city to discharge its treated wastewater directly to the Willamette River without thermal reduction treatment in the Talking Water Gardens … or otherwise.”
“In light if these important regulatory developments,” Spiegel wrote, “CH2M believes that the city should file an amended complaint if it intends to proceed with the litigation notwithstanding that treated wastewater is no longer needed to be discharged through the Gardens.”
Kerry J. Shepherd, the city’s Portland lawyer in the case, wrote on July 22 and disagreed with the argument that the change in TMDL regulation was material to the case. He wrote:
“The city has never been subject to a TMDL heatload limitation, either via the 2006 TMDL or the new 2025 TMDL, and the city has never been prevented by either TMDL from discharging treated effluent from its wastewater reclamation facility directly to the Willamette River via its existing outfall diffuser. The city could do so in 2006 and it can do so now under the new TMDL; there is simply no change here.”
This was news to me. When the city council approved the Talking Water Gardens project in August 2009, my story in the Democrat-Herald said: “Under a state-mandated program called ‘Total Maximum Daily Load,’ dischargers of treated wastewater along the Willamette must further reduce pollution in the river and lower the summertime water temperature to benefit migrating salmon and steelhead.”
I reported that according to then-City Manager Wes Hare, if Albany had not opted for the wetlands approach, the city would have to take other measures such as building a cooling tower at greater expense.
City officials said they had to do something to meet the TMDL temperature regulation. So they went ahead and spent north of $13 million for this wetlands project. (Some $8 million of the total came from the feds, and $2 million of that was a loan.)
Now the city says in court papers that it wanted to cool the wastewater, but it didn’t have to. That’s a startling point. It would have been nice to know that 16 years ago, before this fiasco began. (hh)
A look across the dried-out Talking Water Gardens on Tuesday evening.
Sounds like a big mess.
I originally thought waste water was being filtered & treated there at talking gardens…not just temperature reduction.
(Thanks for that clarification and all you do)
I recentlyread that underground leaks are occurring and why would this be an issue?
Is it getting into the aquifer?
Leaks through the berms and underground, at a “prodigious” rate, were the reason the DEQ forced Albany to quit pumping treated wastewater into the Gardens in December, and why the city is now getting ready to pump water from Cox Creek into the wetlands to keep the vegetation from dying. The DEQ has never publicly explained if that is an actual pollution problem or just a technical violation of the city’s discharge permit.
I remember the leak rate being 3% or some small number. What was the leak rate? And was it significant as they just pump the effluent into the Willamette and I suspect there is a similar leak rate in pumping the efluent.
In a story I wrote last year, I said this about how much it leaked: “Talking Waters has the capacity to treat 12.5 million gallons of wastewater a day. In a motion filed in its lawsuit against the designers and builders of the wetlands, the city quoted a consultant who concluded that “TWG currently leaks approximately 425,000 gallons per day of treated wastewater to groundwater and surface seeps that end up in the Willamette River.”
Hasso, this whole “shut down TWC” has never made sense to me, a leak out of TWC ends up in the same place as the water leaving the system as designed, it only goes thru a sand filter before it gets there. It is ground water, not the aquafer, none of it goes below bedrock.
That’s 3.4% leakage. Doesn’t that mean it’s 96.6% effective? Isn’t 100% leakage what they had before it was built?
Since we’re stuck with this boondoggle, it would seem a decent City Attorney should be able to argue the case on all the good it has caused vs if it were never built.
The original intent was to lower the temperature, and it pretty much failed at that. The water is cooler in the summer and fall than it was in the 1940s before the Dams.
Wow! Something is not right here! If the engineered wetlands were not required back then, according to what was quoted, then why did CH2M Hill agree to the TMDL and design the gardens to reduce the temperature? Why was Wah Chang told to do so and why did other cities have to build treatment facilities like ours to reduce the temperature of their effluent? It looks like there will be more to this story! Thank you for the reporting!
Because CH2M Hill is in the business of making money and portrays itself as environmentally capable of saving the world. When any bureaucrat says the rules require any action–demand to see the legal basis for the rule. I knew from the start this project was adopted because the City wanted to show that we cared and get some public press. Thanks for getting the truth out.
There are other city decisions the council have made with the impression they had no other choice. Things of that magnitude are not usually just one-off. The city is focused on whatever projects they can get funding for. They make money for a only for a few and long term economic growth is not part of the deal. At least Taking Gardens is the most used and beneficial for everyone.
I sat in on dozens of meetings on the need for Talking Water Gardens in my previous position as the City Administrator for the City of Millersburg. The whole reason of the TWG was to meet the TMDL temperature regulation. Hasso, your story in August 2009 was correct.
So you’re okay with dumping into the Santiam, and the Willamette?
This is the old school mentality. I ask you one question.Where are the Salmon?
So then why did the state force the city to shut down the Talking Water Gardens?
Hasso,
When I was elected to the City Council in 2013, I was told that the City “had” to build TWG. I was complaining that the City used fanciful names like “Talking Water Gardens,” or “The Promenade” to describe a wastewater cooling system or a wide street. Thereby making some folks think that they were a waste of money. We have now found out over time that TWC has been pretty much ineffective at the original purpose, and with your new information, it was not needed. Waste of millions, so now Who came up with the idea to begin with and why did they lie to at least some of the Council? I was elected after it was built, but I would like to know the who and why of this, thank you for exposing this.
This is what happens in small towns where there are not enough decisionmakers with expertise, desire to consult experts who aren’t also selling a product, and general lack of intellectual humility.
I remember when I worked at Oremet Titanium (ATI) in the 1990s they pumped their wastewater containing magnesium chloride during the summer into ponds when Oak Creek was not flowing. During the winter they had permission from DEQ to drain the ponds directly into the creek when it was flowing.
What happens to Swan Lakes and Waverly lake when they start diverting water from Cox creek?
The diversion would be downstream, at the Waverly Drive bridge over Cox Creek. So there’s no effect on Swan or Waverly lakes. Actually, if the city finds it necessary to divert a little more water down Cox Creek from the canal, this might improve water quality in the lakes.
Thanks for the info. I find interesting the comments from former public officials.
I to have participated in meetings, discussions, policy development, etc. Now, 20 years later we are finding that we weren’t as smart as we thought we are. Our intentions were noble, we were good people and we tried to do the right things, but there were unintended consequences.
I think this article makes it clear that knowledge and regulations have changed. The state changed the TMDL (temperature) rules and technology has changed.
Knowledge grows, technology is changing overnight, and none of us have perfect foresight.
Isn’t it ironic that what amounts to a large SWALE is shut down by DEQ? Apparently, SWALES may not be as good as the City thinks.