Skip to Content

Important notice regarding portal availability

EWEB is upgrading our customer information and billing system to better serve our customers. Some payment options, including online bill pay, pay-by-phone, and Walmart Pay will be unavailable during the last week of November. Click here to learn more.


(Close)

Related News

  • Related News

  • 2025 rate update: Less than Initially Forecasted

    While the costs of producing and delivering electricity and water are rising, EWEB is actively working to reduce the financial impact of rate increases in 2025.

    Find Out More
  • EWEB Launches 2024 Residential Customer Survey

    EWEB has again partnered with professional research firm, GreatBlue Research, Inc., to conduct a survey of residential customers, starting October 30, 2024.

    Find Out More
  • 2024 Public Power Week Poster Contest

    To celebrate Public Power Week, EWEB is held our annual poster contest for fifth graders in our service area. Help us choose the winners.

    Find Out More
  • Smart meters make UO move-in easier

    Automatic move-in service order processing makes signing up for electric service easy for UO students and the entire Eugene community, while keeping utility vehicles off the road and lowering carbon emissions.

    Find Out More
  • EWEB to Mitigate 2025 Rate Increases to Reduce Customer Impacts

    Amid a turbulent energy landscape and rising costs, EWEB has reduced projected rate increases for electricity and water in 2025.

    Find Out More
  • Show More
New Agreement Protects Fish and EWEB Customers

October 26, 2016

Crowd listening to speakers at the 1958 dedication of Carmen-Smith.

For more than 50 years, Carmen-Smith has reliably served Eugene with low-cost hydropower.  The plant remains valuable as a carbon-free generation resource that can ramp up and down to meet customers' peak energy needs.  In other words, Carmen operates when our community needs power the most and when buying that power on the wholesale market would be most expensive.

We reached a Settlement Agreement with 16 partners representing fisheries and natural resource agencies, environmental groups, tribes and recreation organizations in 2008.  This negotiated agreement formed the basis for new federal operating license.

This initial agreement provided major habitat enhancements, campground improvements, and fish-friendly plant operations including a fish passage system at Trail Bridge Dam.  These significant investments were agreed to at a time when wholesale power prices in the region were strong and projected to persist or even rise. 

Since 2010, while the license application was under federal review, regional wholesale power prices shrunk by 60 percent, making the 2008 settlement agreement uneconomic. EWEB and the original settlement parties were able to successfully request a pause in the federal license review and go back to the table to revise the agreement.  This revised agreement will be formally adopted by the EWEB Board on November 1 and submitted to the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission by the end of the month. 

The revised agreement still includes many investments in habitat restoration, aquatic enhance measures and recreational improvements that are now balanced with the economic realities of the regional energy markets.  Fish passage will be accomplished by alternative method, using a "trap and haul" facility and spillway fish passage.  EWEB will no longer generate power at the Trail Bridge powerhouse, giving up a bit of energy production in exchange for more cost effective less intrusive fish passage. 

Altogether these revisions are expected to reduce capital investments by about $80 million and long-term operating costs by $1 million annually.

With approval of the revised agreement, Carmen-Smith can further forge a balance of our community's desire for clean energy with our responsibility to protect and enhance native and endangered fish populations for future generations.