EWEB commissioners will host presentations at an upriver meeting on April 23, including an update on Carmen-Smith Hydroelectric Project construction, the Leaburg Canal seepage repair project and timeline, as well as a briefing on EWEB's outage and restoration response following the Feb. 25 snow storm.
Following the 2016 ice storm, we applied for grant funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make resiliency improvements to our electric system to reduce the frequency and duration of storm-related outages in several areas prone to storm damage.The agency has thus far approved 15 of the 16 proposed reliability projects, and will fund 75 percent of the cost, estimated to be about $3 million. The final project should be approved later this spring.
Due to recent severe weather conditions our meter reading staff could not safely complete their assigned routes Feb. 24-28, 2019. Customers in a few areas of Eugene, east Springfield and the McKenzie River Valley will have estimated readings on their next bill.
Fourteen full crews worked in the McKenzie River area Sunday, whittling down the number of upriver customers without power to less than 860 as of 3 p.m. With cell service still down in the area, reports from field crews are limited to radio communication, making it more difficult to keep upriver restoration information current. Starting with more than 14,000 customers out of service on Monday, fewer than 920 of our customers now remain without service on Sunday. Most repair work in Eugene is limited to incidents with just a few services out of power. Several smaller teams have spread out across Eugene to continue working these service restorations
As of 8 a.m. Saturday morning, there are just under 2,000 customers who remain without power. This includes a little over 200 in the Eugene area, and about 1,700 in the Mckenzie River Valley. Most of the remaining Eugene-area outages are single homes, which can be extremely labor intensive, particulalry those with accessibility issues, such as backyard service lines with no access for bucket trucks. We will continue to work until every customer is restored.