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.
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
In our ongoing efforts to make more information available to customers, we want to share a new tool: the Power Outage Map. The map, accessible at eweb.org/outage, provides the general location of a power outage within EWEB’s service area, along with various details that will emerge as field technicians investigate the cause and determine repair strategies.
In partnership with the Bethel School District, we’ll open the first emergency water distribution station at the Bethel Farm on Oct. 6 with a “FILL UP at the Farm” grand opening event. A key component of EWEB’s ongoing initiative to prepare for emergencies, whether earthquake, forest fire or other disaster, is to establish at least five of these geographically dispersed emergency water stations within the next five years.