The Cox Creek Path often takes me past Albany’s Talking Water Gardens, dormant now for the second year in a row. The question is whether this wastewater treatment installation, completed in 2012 at a cost of about $14 million, will ever be used again.
The Water Gardens are shut down because the ponds leaked to groundwater and nearby streams, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality considered the leaks to be an unauthorized discharge.
But, the agency says, in the words of spokesman Dylan Darling, “The City of Albany may submit a permit modification application to DEQ to include the Talking Water Gardens as an additional treatment component, as stated in the recent permit renewal fact sheet.”…