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Electric mobility seems to be everywhere these days, but does availability equal accessibility? Here at EWEB we’ve determined that the answer is ‘no’ and are working to bridge that gap through EV car shares, community grants and electric bike rebates.
Find Out MoreIn Eugene, we take pride in knowing we have one of the cleanest power portfolios in the nation. Roughly 90% of Eugene's power comes from carbon-free hydroelectric energy. And EWEB has a long history offering robust conversation programs. But we wanted to do more, so we launched Lead Green, a suite of programs for climate innovators looking to support renewable energy and take action on climate change. In the year since Lead Green was launched, we've accomplished a lot we can be proud of.
Find Out MoreLearn some of the many ways EWEB customers support local schools and help inspire kids to explore the wonders of watershed health and clean energy resources.
Find Out MoreNational Infrastructure Week (May 14-20) may be a politically charged quip on the national stage, but for EWEB, the urgency and importance of infrastructure is no joke.
Find Out MoreBy upgrading substations – key nodes in the electric grid – EWEB is investing today in a resilient electric grid for the future.
Find Out MoreSeventh graders in the Bethel School District put their handmade wind turbines to the test in a wind power challenge supported by EWEB grants last week.
Find Out MoreThe application period is now open for the Electric Mobility Community Grants. Mobility Grants of up to $25,000 will be awared to five nonprofits, schools and academic intitutions, government and other public agencies to cover costs associated with their electric mobility projects.
Find Out MoreEWEB's Greenpower subscribers voted to award this year's Greenpower Grant to Friends of Trees, a local nonprofit that brings trees to areas of Eugene and Springfield with low tree equity.
Find Out MoreFollow along as the Currin Substation, the first of 10 substations in 10 years, is rebuilt from the ground up as part of EWEB's Capital Improvement Plan for major infrastructure investments to rehabilitate, replace, and install new infrastructure.
Find Out MoreEWEB is excited to announce the eligible candidates for the 2023 Greenpower Grant! The winner of the Greenpower Grant will be voted on by Greenpower subscribers. Learn more about each origanization and their proposal before casting your vote.
Find Out MoreOld reservoir leaks, threatening water quality, and will fail when a major earthquake strikes.
Find Out MoreCrews are identifying and addressing equipment failures before wildfire season and doing so mitigates risk of fire ignition.
Find Out MoreCarbon is everywhere. But do we really understand what it is and what is being referred to when people mention it? We are taking it back to the basics in this article that breaks down carbon and explains what it is at it's most basic element and why we need to pay attention to it.
Find Out MoreEWEB customers use more than twice as much water in the hot, dry summer months, compared to the cold, rainy winter months. The higher summer water use can almost assuredly be attributed to customers watering their lawns and gardens.
Find Out MoreThe Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) is expanding its capacity to provide water to customers in case of an emergency.
Find Out MoreOctober 25, 2022
Hundreds of landowners in the McKenzie River valley are working with EWEB to prevent future fires and protect the river by replanting burned properties and removing fuels like dead trees and underbrush.
Jim Baker has lived on a wooded property in Vida since 1967. The 2020 Holiday Farm Fire burned through here destroying his home.
“Well, we lost the house and the cabin down below and the big white mobile home was 50% damaged,” said Jim Baker.
Baker sat in in the living room of his newly rebuilt house on this 60-acre property. He has seen fires here before — a cabin nearby burned down years ago. But the Holiday Farm Fire was different. Nearly 500 homes were burned in the wind-driven fire that moved quickly through the McKenzie River Valley on Labor Day.
Baker is part of Pure Water Partners (PWP), which helps landowners improve and restore their lands in the McKenzie River corridor. Baker described the work that PWP did on his land.
“Most of the property’s steep. Steep slopes or riparian. (We) did fuel reduction on some of that and some between the timber sale and the house. And they also cleaned up down below and on the bank below the house here. Did a great job,” Baker said.
EWEB’s Karl Morgenstern has been involved with Pure Water Partners since its inception in 2014. It was formed to encourage and enable private landowners to protect and restore their land, especially in riparian areas, in a way that benefits the environment. The program was crucial to EWEB’s swift response after the Holiday Farm Fire.
“We shifted from doing riparian health assessments to basically doing burn assessments and designing erosion control and replanting burned riparian areas. So, we were able to basically pivot very quickly.” Morgenstern said.
“The nexus for EWEB in fuels reduction is two- or three-fold. One we can treat the landscape in a way that brings native (plants) back, more fire-resistant, drought-tolerant species, that then allow us to be more resilient to future fires,” Morgenstern said. “It allows us to basically protect our infrastructure that’s up there by having larger scale treatments designed rather than individual properties. “
This helps protect the McKenzie River, which provides drinking water for about 200,000 EWEB customers.
Funding from EWEB customers, as well as state and federal grants, has made this work possible.
EWEB customers support these efforts to restore the watershed and keep drinking excellent quality water through the watershed recovery fee, which will raise about $12.3 million over 5 years and is scheduled to sunset in 2026. This allowed EWEB to invest an additional $4.25 million toward watershed recovery efforts in 2022.
EWEB also works with a variety of funding sources, including state and federal grants, to fund Pure Water Partners and protect the McKenzie River. In the two years since the fire, EWEB has leveraged about $15 million in grants to scale up efforts that benefit water quality and habitat.
Pure Water Partners is now working with over 250 landowners in the watershed and the program is moving towards a more contiguous, landscape-scale effort to reduce fuels and increase resiliency.
“And so now we’re moving towards more of designing landscape restoration, fuels reduction projects that cross property boundaries,” Morgenstern said. “So a property will have a piece of that larger design rather than us going tax lot by tax lot and working within the confines of the tax lot.”
Sue Zeni owns a tree farm off Deerhorn Road near Walterville. Her property was outside the Holiday Farm Fire’s burn zone, but she’s doing fuel reduction projects to make it more resilient in case another fire comes through here.
“So, I need to take out some of the trees so the biggest and the best trees stay. So, I needed to do the thinning anyway, but I was generating quite a bit of fuels with the branches,” Zeni said. “So the PWP allowed me not to leave all that as fire fodder. It could be chipped up and spread back on the woods which is perfect.”
Zeni purchased this property more than 20 years ago. Her goal is to make it a biodiverse, healthy forest that continues to the next generation.
“I love trees with a passion, so this is a project to keep me busy for the rest of my life,” Zeni said. “I guess I feel lucky I was able to apply for this program. It’s been really helpful and will pay off in the future."
The Pure Water Partners program is applying for its largest grant yet, over $10-million that would help fund landscape scale fuels reduction projects like Zeni’s for the next 5 years.
EWEB’s Strategic Program Manager Jeannine Parisi said fuels reduction can be expensive for individual homeowners.
“That’s why we are looking for additional federal funds to support this work, support property owners who live in higher fire risk areas and make the watershed more resilient to wildfire,” said Parisi. “There’s a lot of opportunity to scale up this work and it will take strong partnerships to help reduce the risk of destructive wildfires in our area.”
In the meantime, McKenzie valley property owners interested in having a property assessment are encouraged to reach out to Pure Water Partners.
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