Our Favorite Photos of 2025
Happy 2026! On behalf of your local utility public servants, we wish you a healthy, peaceful and successful new year. We have many resolutions individually, but collectively we are resolved to continue to deliver safe, affordable, reliable and environmentally responsible water and electricity – and to do it in a way in which we earn your trust to carry out our daily mission.
For a final look-back at 2025, we’d like to share some of our favorite photos that illustrate our work day-in and day-out. We celebrate amazing teamwork, vital partnerships, and sing the praises of our individual champions and their quiet dedication to serving our community!
EWEB Linemen compete at the International Linemen Rodeo
Our line crews are our true heroes. They answer the call 24/7 no matter the weather to restore power for our community. This year, our Linemen Rodeo team traveled to Kansas City to compete with hundreds of other linemen from around the world! We are so proud of their accomplishments and thankful for their tireless dedication. Watch them compete! https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/eweb-hometown-heroes-compete-internationally
EWEB’s Fleet Services team reaches 200,000 hours without a lost-time injury
We talk a lot about how our water and electric service to our community can be taken for granted. It works more than 99% of the time. Often, we want to provide the privilege of NOT THINKING about it. Switch on: light. Tap on: water.
Yet even at EWEB, we have work that goes unnoticed – but NOT unappreciated. Our Fleet Services team keeps our vehicles running and maintained – they keep us all safer – protecting us from the most dangerous thing we do in our work: driving.
So, it’s not a surprise, then, that the Fleet Service team’s culture of safety helped them reach a major safety milestone in 2025: 200,000 work hours without a workplace injury that resulted in an employee losing at least one full day of work.
It took the team roughly twelve years to achieve that mark. The team has recorded only one lost time injury in the last 24 years, but many of EWEB’s mechanics have been able to work their entire careers without a lost time injury.
Their successful record supports all of us at EWEB. There carefulness helps keep our costs down. And we are thankful they are taking care of themselves, too. Great work, team! https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/how-ewebs-fleet-services-reached-200000-hours-without-a-lost-time-injury
A day in the life monitoring water quality throughout the McKenzie Watershed
David Donahue and his team mates quietly patrol the McKenzie to visit their sampling spots and make sure EWEB is tracking water quality throughout the watershed. Their work often goes unnoticed – but it’s an essential assurance for EWEB to keep the pulse on the health of our drinking water source. https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/a-day-in-the-life-monitoring-water-quality-throughout-the-mckenzie-watershed
EWEB Water Operators Celebrate 75 Years of a Tradition of Excellence
To observe the 75-year anniversary of EWEB’s Hayden Bridge Water Treatment Facility, we recreated photos from yesteryear with today’s teams. Some things have changed, but the commitment to serving safe and delicious drinking water remains as strong as ever! https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/eweb-celebrates-operators-on-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-hayden-bridge-filtration-plant
EWEB Commissioner Tim Morris and 4J Superintendent Miriam Mickelson inaugurate the Kennedy Middle School Emergency Water Station
EWEB worked with Eugene 4J Schools to build a site to distribute water if a natural disaster like an earthquake disrupts regular service. “No matter where you live in the City of Eugene, if an emergency happens, you have access to safe, clean drinking water.”
“The emergency water partnership makes families and our community more resilient," 4J Superintendent Miriam Mickelson said. "Locating this resource in schools supports our families and their neighbors in challenging times, at a familiar and friendly location. Eugene School District 4J is happy to play a role." https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/eweb-partners-with-eugene-school-district-4j-to-celebrate-new-kennedy-middle-school-emergency-water-station-site
McKenzie watershed partners ‘set the stage’ for transformative ecological restoration
Another partnership – with the McKenzie Watershed Council, McKenzie River Trust, and USDA Forest Service – earned a big win for our drinking water source by resetting the floodplain of Quartz Creek. The McKenzie River tributary has been the most significant contributor of sediments during rain events – dumping “chocolate milk” into the mainstem of the river – but now it has 275 additional floodplain acres to slow down the flow and trap sediments – a gigantic natural filter that supports EWEB’s drinking water filtration efforts.
“These kinds of projects make our watershed more resilient because when we slow down the water, the sediment and contaminants drop out of the water, making it cleaner. A slower moving river with less sediment in the water is better for our communities, infrastructure, roads, power lines – everything down river.” said EWEB Water Resources Supervisor Susan Fricke (pictured with MWC’s Lara Colley and MRT’s John Trimble). https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/quartz-creek-setting-the-stage-for-floodplain-restoration
5 Years of Regeneration since the Holiday Farm Fire
2025 marks 5 years since the Holiday Farm Fire devastated 25 miles of habitat along the McKenzie River. Although the recovery efforts continue, EWEB and the Pure Water Partners have made some excellent progress at hundreds of properties throughout the watershed. Jim Russell shared some progress along his riverfront, showing how the same red house across the river was visible a year after the fire is now mostly obscured by trees and shrubs the PWP planted to jump-start recovery. “Pure Water Partners did everything we would’ve wanted to – but we wouldn’t have had the capacity to start until now,” he said. https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/pure-water-partners-5-years-of-regeneration
EWEB completes major habitat improvement work on the upper McKenzie River
The Lower Carmen Bypass Reach Habitat Enhancement Project added 2000 tons of gravel and twenty bundles of brushy treetops by helicopter, and ten large trees pulled into the river by a cable yarder in efforts to support threatened Chinook salmon and bull trout. They need gravels to build their spawning nests, called redds. Branchy trees in the water provide cover where young fish can hide from predators. Gravels and trees also add complexity to the river, creating pools for fish to rest in and rapids to oxygenate eggs.
And just look at that soft lighting on the gravel as it’s being poured into the river. By a helicopter. Hovering over the treetops: https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/eweb-completes-helicopter-installation-of-salmon-habitat-features
Truck or Treat returns!
Dragons! More than 2,500 people came out to trick or treat from truck to truck. Along the way, they learned about the exceptional crew members and equipment that keep water and electricity flowing to homes and businesses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Beyond the candy and costumes, events like Truck or Treat help build a stronger connection between EWEB and the community we serve. Neighbors get a chance to see our staff and equipment not just as everyday fixtures, but as the caring people and essential tools that support public health, safety, our local economy, and quality of life in Eugene. Events like this may even inspire some of our youngest customers to become the next generation of EWEBers! https://www.eweb.org/your-public-utility/news/ewebs-halloween-truck-or-treat-is-a-huge-success
Thank you for a wonderful year and for being a part of the story!
