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Focus on water quality

For nearly 100 years, Eugene area residents have enjoyed some of the best tasting and safest water in the world. Eugene Water & Electric Board water is so clean, in fact, that Organic Style Magazine named Eugene’s water the best in the nation.

The McKenzie River is the sole source of drinking water for nearly 200,000 Eugene-area residents who are supplied with water by EWEB. Water is drawn out of the river at Hayden Bridge, treated and then sent to customers through more than 800 miles of water pipes and stored in nearly three dozen reservoirs.

As part of its effort to protect this valuable resource, EWEB developed a drinking water source protection plan in 2000 that includes a risk assessment of all potential threats to our drinking water. Since then, much of this effort has fallen on the shoulders of Karl Morgenstern, EWEB’s Drinking Water Source Protection coordinator.

“The McKenzie is a very unique river; one of a half dozen that share the same characteristics that make it what it is,” says Morgenstern. “It’s a very special river, that’s for sure.”

One of his key jobs is emergency and disaster preparedness. Morgenstern was instrumental in creating a first-ever emergency response plan for the McKenzie watershed. It’s the foremost riverwide emergency plan developed in the Northwest, if not the nation. The plan includes a sophisticated mapping and web-based notification and response system to help agencies quickly respond during an emergency.

“We work to figure out what threatens our water, and from that, develop programs that will take a long-term approach to mitigating those threats,” says Morgenstern.

A disaster preparedness plan is just one element of an extensive watershed protection program that also includes water quality monitoring, outreach and education. For example, Morgenstern currently works with Thurston High School on a water quality-monitoring program taught through the school’s science classes.

The utility’s latest effort is an innovative Agricultural Chemical Removal Project, again spearheaded by Morgenstern. EWEB and several other state and local agencies are working with growers to voluntarily remove unwanted and obsolete farm chemicals in the McKenzie and Middle Fork Willamette watersheds as a way to lessen the threats to water quality.

A number of growers are scheduled to safely dispose of more than 1,000 pounds of obsolete and harmful chemicals during a collection event in late October.

“I’m glad that EWEB actually put the resources behind something like this, whereas other utilities do not,” says Morgenstern about the water source protection program. “We try to do something that is going to make a difference on the ground.”