EWEB commissioners, impressed with Frank Lawson’s strategic vision and leadership, unanimously selected him in May to be the next general manager. Frank's plan for the next dozen years can be broken up into three overlapping phases.
After almost two years of extensive planting to establish native trees, shrubs and wetland plant species at the Walterville Pond, the conversion from a man-made pond to a naturalized wetland is nearly complete.
Housing and Community Services of Lane County and Buena Vista Elementary School each won a 2016 Greenpower grant of up to $50,000 from EWEB's Greenpower program. The announcement was made at BRING Recycling's Earth Day Birthday Party in April, and marks a milestone for the Greenpower grant program, which has awarded more than $1 million to local nonprofit renewable energy projects, research and education since the grants were first introduced in 2009.
Community volunteers in February joined a half-dozen agencies to collect and remove garbage and other debris from lower McKenzie River riparian areas.
For the past several years, the EWEB has been using alternative fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel as a way to meet fossil fuel and carbon emission reduction goals. In the fall of 2015, the utility’s fleet operations stepped out on a limb to try something different – renewable diesel, or R99.