Related News

EWEB Water Treatment Supervisor, Toby Dixon, stands in the onsite generation building for sodium hypochlorite at the Hayden Bridge Water Filtration Plant. Switching from chlorine gas to sodium hypochlorite for disinfection is one of the many safety and resiliency improvements that have been completed at the plant over the last decade. 

-

This July, EWEB’s Hayden Bridge Water Filtration Plant will celebrate 75 years in service. The anniversary comes as EWEB is making major strides to diversify its water supply for the next three quarters of a century. 

Toby Dixon, EWEB’s newly appointed Water Treatment Supervisor, has worked at Hayden Bridge for the last 17 years. After spending countless shifts at the plant, his knowledge runs deep.  

“You come in here and look at the walls and you see where they formed it up with boards,” said Dixon. “You see the wood grain in it. That texture is engineered out in newer buildings.”  

A lot has changed in the water treatment industry since Hayden Bridge was first built. For its anniversary, Dixon looks back at how the plant has adapted and how the industry’s standards for water resiliency have evolved over time. 

Hayden Bridge in 1950 vs. 2025; The old green entryway is now painted gray. 

-

A changing river
 

Sitting in his office, Dixon admires the vintage of the structure around him.  

“This thing’s 25 years older than me,” said Dixon. “And I’m not a pup.” 

Although he has only seen a small slice of the plant’s history, one could argue it has been among the most important. That’s because severe weather and changes in the watershed from the Holiday Farm Fire have presented new challenges in treating water from the McKenzie River.

The most noticeable difference is the river’s strong and immediate response to weather events that used to pass without issue.     

“We call it ‘flashy,’” said Dixon. “That’s when you see spikes in turbidity that you’d never see before.” 

Historically, it would take a substantial amount of rain to stir up debris in the river. Now, spikes in turbidity from smaller weather events come quickly and require immediate intervention. Operators are also seeing greater swings in raw water quality from seasonal changes like fall leaf events that produce tannins which can discolor the water.  

These changes in the river have made many of the old ways of doing things impractical. In the past, an operator needed over an hour to add 50-pound bags of powder activated carbon (PAC) to the feed equipment by hand to enhance treatment during water quality events. Today, the plant has an automated system that helps operators accomplish the task in 10 minutes.  

The PAC upgrade has an added benefit: increasing operator safety. While PAC is a gamechanger for treatment, its physical properties make it a safety concern. Its texture is like talcum powder, and it becomes airborne easily. The new system increases the distance between operators and the substance to keep them out of harm’s way.    

There have been other projects that EWEB has implemented over the years to improve treatment effectiveness and operator safety. These have included retiring a gas chlorine system in favor of sodium hypochlorite for disinfection, adding sensors on the river to transmit water quality information to the plant and building a new lab to support advanced water quality testing.  

But the primary focus over the last decade has been completing seismic and resiliency upgrades at the plant.  

Hardening the plant 

Eugene is one of the largest cities in the Pacific Northwest with a single source of water and single treatment plant. Every drop of water that comes out of a tap in Eugene first went through Hayden Bridge.  

“If you simplify it down,” said Dixon, “the water coming into this place, going through it and out the other side – that's one treatment train, one process. There are no workarounds.” 

EWEB has focused on hardening that treatment train, adding extra storage, and making key equipment more resilient to a threat like a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.  

Since Dixon has been at the plant, EWEB has completed seismic upgrades, replaced the raw water intake screens, built a new settling basin and two deep bed filters, and installed a generator for backup power. In addition, EWEB has always focused on training operators to ensure they have the knowledge to manage challenging situations at the plant.  

Despite all these necessary preparations, the risk of having only one river and treatment plant remains. 

“There's that old saying of ‘don't put all your eggs in one basket,’” said Dixon. “Well, that's where we're at.” 

Building a backup
 

As the river and climate have been changing, the urgency of securing a second source of water to serve as a backup in an emergency has grown. 

“Having a second source that could get us out of a pinch,” said Dixon, “that’s really critical.”  

EWEB is planning to build a small, earthquake resilient plant on the Willamette River  that will supplement the system year-round and be capable of meeting the city’s drinking water demand in an emergency.  

Last year, the team submitted a US Army Corps and Division of State Lands joint removal fill permit application to address environmental permitting for the project. The team is now working towards securing required land use approvals from the City of Springfield and Lane County. The current schedule has construction starting in mid to late 2026 with new water being added to the system around 2030.  

The project will have a significant cost, over $100 million, but Dixon is hopeful that citizens will see the value in the investment considering the current situation.  

“The public is very wise here,” said Dixon, “they know what’s what, and they know what’s important.” 

Establishing an interim safety net 

Just as the public is wise, so is the Board of Commissioners that represents them. Back in 2015, recognizing the long timeline and complexities of building a backup plant, the Board directed EWEB staff to develop a network of Emergency Water Stations.  

EWEB has since completed seven geographically distributed stations across the city capable of providing two gallons of water per person per day to everyone in Eugene in the event of an emergency. The stations consist of a well to tap groundwater, plus a distribution manifold with hoses to fill water containers.  

The stations do not replace the need for the backup plant, but they give people a manual way to access life-sustaining water should a severe natural disaster hit Eugene tomorrow. 

To Dixon, all the recent work on resiliency highlights a key reality of the water system.  

“It’s fragile,” said Dixon, “so the more we can do to prepare, the better.”