
Electric Outage: 1-844-484-2300
Water Emergency: 541-685-7595
EWEB Main: 541-685-7000
Using fireworks near power lines could lead to a fire, explosion, power outage or downed line.
Find Out MoreEWEB will continue the annual closure of our College Hill Reservoir over the Fourth of July holiday and prohibit fireworks on the property grounds.
Find Out MoreOn June 18, with the help of community neighbors, EWEB inaugurated a new emergency water station at the Lane County Fairgrounds.
Find Out MoreThe tour focused on the coordinated response to the Holiday Farm Fire, emphasizing the effectiveness of large-scale floodplain enhancement projects for mitigating the impacts of sedimentation and increasing water temperatures.
Find Out MoreEWEB exceeded drinking water safety standards in 2021 for every type of contaminant regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oregon Health Authority. The utility has never failed to meet the standards.
Find Out MoreAs a public utility, it is important EWEB check in with customers to see how we are performing. We invite you to share your feedback and opinions.
Find Out MoreAs a public utility, owned by the people of Eugene, it’s important for us to be open and transparent with our customer-owners. The following State of the Utility Address, delivered by General Manager Frank Lawson at the March 1 EWEB Board meeting, highlights key events, accomplishments and challenges of 2021.
Find Out MoreEugene’s drinking water received an outstanding performance rating from the Oregon Health Authority.
Find Out MoreStarting late night Sunday night, an intense windstorm blew over trees and caused just over 2,600 Eugene Water & Electric Board customers to lose power. But EWEB line crews working through the dark hours of the night and early morning promptly restored service for nearly all those customers.
Find Out MoreTwo Eugene Water & Electric Board line crews will spend the New Year holiday weekend through next week restoring power to thousands of Pacific Gas & Electric customers in northeast California after winter storms dumped more than 10 feet of snow in the Lake Tahoe area starting before Christmas.
Find Out MoreSeveral hundred customers have been restored, but the smaller outages with five or fewer customers may not be restored until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Find Out MoreWith the National Weather Service predicting snow for the Eugene area Sunday through Tuesday, we want to remind customers that the expected snow could bring trees and branches down onto overhead power lines and cause electric outages.
Find Out MoreJust as high winds with gusts of more than 30 mph arrived in the Oregon Cascades early Thursday, EWEB has completed aerial trimming around its Carmen-Smith transmission line using a helicopter with saw attachments to trim branches and treetops.
Find Out MoreEWEB Leads "Spill Drill" to test HazMat Response
Find Out MoreHave you ever thought about where your drinking water comes from? What about where your wastewater goes?
Find Out MoreA disruption last week at a major chlorine producer in Longview, Wash., created a chlorine and caustic soda supply shortage that has affected water and wastewater utilities in Oregon and along the West Coast. Thanks to a decision in 2019 to replace EWEB's chlorine disinfection system with a safer, more resilient process that produces disinfectant on-site, Eugene residents are unlikely to see any impacts of the shortage. Still, the event has many EWEB customers wondering, could a water crisis happen here, and what is EWEB doing to protect our community's drinking water?
For more than 100 years, we have reliably served the community with clean, healthy water drawn from the mountain-fed McKenzie River. But there's always the possibility that a natural or human-caused disaster could affect us here in Eugene. Emergencies that could lead to a water supply shortage include earthquake, prolonged drought, forest fire in our watershed, severe flood, a chemical spill into the McKenzie River, and a system or facility failure.
Communities around the country have experienced crises similar to these. Earlier this year, a massive grid failure in Texas left millions without drinking water for more than a week. In 2018, a toxic algae bloom in Detroit Lake forced Salem city officials to warn parents of young children and medically vulnerable adults not to drink from the tap. Closer to home, the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire came close to threatening EWEB's Hayden Bridge Water Filtration Plant and caused extensive damage to the watershed that provides drinking water to around 200,000 people in Eugene.
If something happens to disrupt our water supply or distribution systems, there is only a one- or two-day supply of water stored in reservoirs throughout the community.
That's why, just as your household invests in an emergency kit, EWEB is making investments to prepare, replace and maintain our community's water system. We have invested more than $35 million upgrading and expanding our Hayden Bridge Water Filtration Plant in the past decade. We are replacing water mains, improving pump stations, building new storage tanks, planning for a second filtration plant on the Willamette River, and developing neighborhood emergency water stations.
It's easy to take drinking water for granted. We don't often think about what we can't see, like the infrastructure behind our taps: the treatment facility, water pipelines, pumps, and storage reservoirs. But these complex construction and engineering projects reliably deliver clean water to our homes and businesses around the clock, and continued investment is needed to ensure uninterrupted delivery of safe, high-quality drinking water.
As we continue to care for our critical infrastructure, we are also working to protect the source of our drinking water—the McKenzie River and its surrounding watershed.
To protect from the effects of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), we actively monitor multiple locations in the watershed for cyanotoxins. If toxins are detected, EWEB can treat the drinking water thanks to a new biofilter at the Hayden Bridge Filtration Plant that employs beneficial bacteria that consume algal toxins.
In the aftermath of the Holiday Farm Fire, EWEB and our Pure Water Partners are replanting riparian areas that burned, installing erosion control measures, and providing funds to incentivize people to rebuild their homes and septic systems farther back from the river to reduce the risks of flooding and contamination. Customers will help to fund these and other restoration projects through a temporary Watershed Recovery Fee beginning in July 2021.
We are fortunate in Eugene to enjoy exceptional drinking water. For over a century, our community has benefitted from a pristine watershed, abundant supply, and safe and reliable delivery to homes and businesses. None of this has happened by accident. Generations before us made smart, sustainable decisions so that we can enjoy safe, clean drinking water today. And today, customers continue to express a clear and unchanging priority—ensuring safe, reliable drinking water remains the most important EWEB program.
We are taking steps to ensure safe, reliable water continues to flow in our community. You can do your part by building an emergency supply kit for your household.
If a natural or man-made disaster occurs, you can rest easier knowing you are better prepared with a household emergency kit. Putting together your own kit is simple and easy, and it begins with having on hand a minimum of one gallon of water per person per day for drinking and basic sanitation. The Oregon Office of Emergency Management encourages residents to be prepared to be on their own for a minimum of two weeks.
For tips and resources on building an emergency kit, visit eweb.org/emergencyprep and join our Pledge to Prepare.
4200 Roosevelt Blvd.
Eugene, OR 97402
800-841-5871
541-685-7000
Open Monday-Friday
Phone hours: 9 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.