Yes on concern over riverfront.  It's the site of a most foul squalor. If running them out of downtown means riverfront relocation, I'm against it.
I wade in Oregon rivers and often wonder about the needles and crap washed downriver by high water events like we've been having.
I've never recovered a needle in a fish, but still they're going somewhere. There are fewer and fewer successful salt water cycles in the lives of NW salmon and steelhead directly because of hostile oceanic conditions for cold water fish. This is not fake news.
"still for all this Nature is never spent, there lives the dearest freshness deep down things"  Maybe not forever