EWEB Commissioners Work Session: October 21, 2025

Second Source Willamette Treatment Plant Project Update

BACKGROUND
The Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) is one of the largest utilities in the Pacific Northwest
that relies on a single source of supply to provide potable, emergency, and fire suppression water
to nearly 200,000 customers.

Having a single source of water puts the community at extreme risk of experiencing an extended
water outage due to a natural disaster like a wildfire or earthquake, chemical spill on the river,
equipment failure, or water quality issue in the McKenzie River which could cut off the
community’s access to water.

This is the Water Utility’s single biggest risk to accomplishing EWEB’s core values:
• Safety: Loss of a water supply would threaten our customers’ access to safe drinking
water resulting in a potential loss of life. Medical and critical care facilities could struggle
to maintain patient health and services in a water emergency. Emergency wells could
mitigate some impacts but are not practical and available for all members or our
community such as the elderly or those with disabilities. Depressurization of the water
system could hinder the ability of Emergency Personnel to respond to fires and other
emergencies.
• Reliability: An interruption in EWEB’s water supply could do lasting harm to EWEB’s
reputation of being a reliable provider of safe drinking water in our community.
• Affordability: Responding to a loss of our water source could be very expensive and
result in regulatory mandates that would be less strategic or efficient than addressing
• Environmental Stewardship: Strategically investing in a second source of supply can
have a net positive impact on the local environment and provide an opportunity to
expand EWEB’s successful watershed protection efforts to a larger watershed.
• Community/Culture: A second source of supply is the most effective way to protect all
members of our community including those who are disadvantaged or who are less able
to prepare for emergencies such as students, the unhoused, senior citizens, etc. Without
water, there will be significant impacts to the economic health of the community,
medical offices will need to shut down affecting the community’s public health, there
will be no (or severely limited) water to fight fires and flush toilets, and the overall
vitality of the community will be affected.

Disasters are becoming more common, and Hayden Bridge has been in continuous service for 75
years, which is putting the utility at a greater risk than ever before of being unable to deliver
water. Hayden Bridge was designed for known disasters 75 years ago and is inadequate to deal
with anticipated extreme weather, fire, and earthquakes. A significant amount of work has been
done at the plant to protect EWEB from losing the water supply, however, it is difficult to upgrade
some of the most critical processes with the need to keep the plant in continuous operation.

Efforts to develop a second source of water and construct a redundant treatment plant with
capacities ranging from 10 MGD to 30 MGD have been attempted since the 1960s. Options for
regionalization, developing groundwater, building a second intake and plant on the McKenzie
River and developing EWEB’s water rights on the Willamette will be discussed in detail in the following sections.