A few days ago residents along Albany’s Eighth Street Canal were wondering why the decorative waterway was nearly dry. By Friday the usual water flow, scant as it is, appeared to be back to normal.
The flow had almost stopped when a bike ride took me to Eighth Avenue on Tuesday, Oct. 28. A property owner had told me about the canal’s muddy state.
The shallow stream along Eighth Avenue is fed from the Albany-Santiam Canal on Vine Street. It is one of the remnants of the Albany’s ingenious network of open ditches that powered industries along the Willamette riverfront before and after 1900…