Water Reliability Projects

Just as your household invests in an emergency kit, EWEB is making investments to prepare, replace and maintain our community's water system.

Emergency Water Stations

EWEB is working with community partners to develop an emergency water supply program that would include several permanent distribution sites located throughout the community using groundwater wells, as well as mobile water trailers. Our plan calls for the development of five geographically dispersed well sites by 2022. As of December 2019, three sites are operational:

• Prairie Mountain School - 5305 Royal Ave.
• Howard Elementary School - 700 Howard Ave.
• Eugene Science Center - 2300 Leo Harris Parkway

Two new sites will be in construction during 2020—at the Sheldon Fire Station and the Lane County Fairgrounds and Event Center.

If disaster strikes our community's water system and you need to obtain water from one of these distribution sites, you will need to bring your own storage containers. Learn how to clean and prepare water containers.

Water Storage Tank Improvement Projects

In the next decade, we plan significant upgrades to the existing water storage systems at EWEB's College Hill and Hawkins Hill sites, and a new water storage facility near East 40th Avenue and Donald Street. The proposed projects will be built to seismic and contemporary operating standards, providing more than 40 million gallons of resilient, safe water storage.

Would you like to receive news and updates on EWEB's Water Storage Tank Improvement Projects?
Click here to join our project email list.

Filtration Plant Improvements

We have invested more than $30 million upgrading, expanding and renovating our Hayden Bridge Water Filtration Plant. Over the past ten years, we have completed a series of seismic upgrades to the plant, including reinforcing basin walls and filter buildings and disconnecting an old flume from the filtration building. In early December 2019, we changed the way we disinfect drinking water, switching from chlorine gas to a liquid chlorine bleach that is manufactured on-site at our Hayden Bridge Filtration Plant. The new system, which uses coarse salt, water and electrolytic conversion to make sodium hypochlorite (bleach), allows us to store enough salt at the filtration plant to last three months. Read more.