January’s ice storm tested the Eugene Water and Electric Board’s water system on several fronts. There were six water main breaks, one pump failure, and, critically, the utility lost power to its Hayden Bridge filtration plant, and had to run on backup power for 36 hours.
The generator providing that power was installed in 2020.
At a media tour of the Hayden Bridge facility on Monday, Lead Operator Toby Dixon said that although he had to break through ice to get into the plant and trouble-shoot many things, including fuel delivery, the systems and the staff response were nearly flawless.
“Actually it was one of those things where it went really well," he said. "It was a really good learning experience. It just shows that EWEB as a whole gives us a lot of time to plan and to use infrastructure that we have, to train on it. So I don’t know how it could have gone better.”
Of EWEB’s 200,000 water customers, only six households were temporarily on “boil water” notices.
Dixon said he and another operator documented what happened during the storm event, and are writing it up to use as training for the future.
Although officials were pleased with the performance of the backup power generator, EWEB wants even more redundancy in its system to help it get through the next natural disaster.
Chief Operations Officer Karen Kelley told KLCC that EWEB is working on three additional resiliency projects, including emergency well stations."
"We’ve done five, I believe," she said. "We have two more that are in progress. We are working on our base level reservoirs. We have just completed construction of our East 40th reservoir sites, they are seismically sound to today’s standards. And then on top of that, the one that I’m really excited about, is our second water treatment plant on the Willamette.”
Kelley said EWEB plans to install emergency water stations near Churchill High School and Roosevelt Middle School. A second set of reservoirs will be built on College Hill starting this year. And the utility is on schedule to start construction on the Willamette River filtration site in 2026.
