I took this photo when I last visited the Talking Water Gardens on my bike on Oct. 7, 2025.
Depending on the method that is eventually chosen, repairing the leaks from Albany’s Talking Water Gardens could cost as much as $126 million, according to the city’s latest filing in its long-running lawsuit against the wetlands’ engineers.
On Monday I spent some time at the Linn County Courthouse pouring over the digitized paperwork in Albany vs. CH2M Hill, which the city filed in 2017.
Just last week, the city’s lawyers filed their sixth amended complaint in the action, which blames CH2M engineers for the failure of the constructed wetlands, which opened in 2012.
The problem, discovered soon after the project was completed, is that the ponds holding treated wastewater leak into the ground and to surrounding creeks. One estimate cited in an earlier filing put the leakage at 425,000 gallons a day.
Under pressure from the state Department of Environmental Quality, the city shut down the Talking Water Gardens (TWG) a year ago. This past summer the city tried keeping some of the plants alive by pumping in water from Cox Creek.
In its latest amended complaint, filed Dec. 18, Albany says this about the costs of repairs:
“The estimated costs to repair the TWG wetlands to satisfy design objectives and legal compliance reasonably varies from approximately $39.1 million to $59.8 million for a high-density polyethylene flexible laminated waterproof material, or $82.5 to $126.1 million for the clay lining option, based on reasonably estimated costs at the time this amended complaint was filed.”
The lawsuit also seeks to recover the city’s costs in buying property for the project, building it, and then operating it from 2011 to 2024. That bill comes to $17.1 million.
The Water Gardens were intended mainly to cool treated wastewater from the Albany-Millersburg sewage treatment plant, even though the plant’s state discharge permit did not actually require this at the time.
The new permit just issued does limit the “heat load” the plant adds to the Willamette River. The city has not said whether this will require cooling the effluent, and if it does, how cooling could be accomplished, and what it would cost.
As for the pending lawsuit, the city has been demanding a jury trial. One entry in the file mentions a “final resolution conference” last July 24, but evidently no final resolution was achieved.
The city’s lead attorney is Kerry Shepherd, of the Markowitz Herbold firm in Portland. The lawyers for CH2M are in Los Angeles and Seattle. All together, I counted 14 lawyers involved in the case.
According to the file, the next hearing, before Circuit Judge Michael Wynhausen, is scheduled for an hour and a half starting at 10:30 a.m. on March 17, 2026. (hh)
That’s a lotta lawyers, and law suits happening!
My biggest question in this ongoing litigation/fight is what will the cost be to taxpayers?
I was very wary in this Talking Waters situation from the get go… the city and big corporations selling this as a “perfect trail” for multiple community benefits was skeptical… a past toxic environment turning into beautiful walking paths that is self cleaning of waste with waterfalls, and ponds?
With no word why said ponds/waterways were drained, and dry for years??
There was obviously a big problem with the engineering contract between the city and corps!
Who pays in the end of this on going lawsuit?
Better not be taxpayers!
What a hella-of-a-mess!! That 23 million spent on the pink brick road (Water Street) is needed in Albany elsewhere…that is, when you look right, left, up and down, forward, back, and sideways!!!
THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THE 22 MILLION IT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY ANYMORE….SAVE THE WORLD FROM CLIMATE CHANGE…WOKE JUST WENT BROKE….OH MY
Hasso, that is a great picture you took in October of the little bridge and the little creek (and your bike) at Talking Water Gardens.
Donald Kalina: Were the Scio Kalinas Republicans also?
The average flow of the Willamette River at the mouth is 37,400 cubic meters per SECOND. The treated flow from the Albany sewage treatment plant is like a pimple on an elephants behind but idiot democrats run the DEQ and have wasted millions of dollars for what purpose? They raised the gas tax just so they wouldn’t have to lay off ODOT employees when they should be cutting thousands and per an ODOT spokesman they have built 8 miles of new road in 50 years so in essence they only do repair and maintenance and they can’t even keep the paint lines up to date. They are now going to make 2 turn lanes from 1st street onto the bridge which would be the same as turning onto 9th at the south end and they need $500,000 for that. Tom Cordier went to a lot of time going through the red tape to get them to do that and of course they wouldn’t consider it. As Ronald Reagan famously said “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help”. Merry Christmas to Republicans and Happy Holidays to Democrats.
Sometimes you just need to close down a project that has multiple problems and thank of new ways to change the process that they follow any try something new that area could be made into a Apartment area or small business park . We should quit putting money into all these old felled projects and move forward.
Corvallis Public Works was so keen to follow Albany’s example for further cooling treated wastewater that it foisted a plan to use Parks Dept Orleans Natural Area to treat more water on a less created-wetland acreage basis. Forgot to ask Parks for permission. The whole area would have to be lined, like the clay-capped old dump area to its east. Still dissipated heat would be dumped into the subsurface (hyporheic) Willamette flow. The project died before implementation. Both cities still add heat to the Willamette–if you’re not a fish it might seem inconsequential by flow volume, but Corvallis raises the Willamette by 1/2 degree F in the summer.