EWEB's southeast Eugene water tanks near completion
Two years after the Eugene Water & Electric Board began construction on a new pair of water tanks in southeast Eugene, the tanks are built and the utility is excavating and connecting the pipes that will carry water from the E 40th Street site to the rest of the city.
"These tanks, and our entire distributed storage plan, is really aimed at making sure that the community has water through, during and after an earthquake," said Laura Farthing, chief engineer for the E 40th and College Hill water reservoirs.
"This allows us to keep a really robust, resilient and reliable water system for the entire community,"
Farthing said the two 7.5 million gallon tanks, will be operational by the end of the year. The tanks will temporarily replace the purpose of the College Hill Reservoir, which the utility and the Oregon Health Authority said must be replaced to fix the aging tanks and provide seismic upgrades.
In the longer-term, EWEB said it is switching from a system that relies on College Hill for its drinking water storage to three smaller sites spread between College Hill, E 40th and Hawkins Hill.
When the project began in 2021, the utility's General Manager Frank Lawson said it was needed to ensure Eugene residents would have safe drinking water in the event of a disaster. "This distributed approach improves water quality, operational and maintenance flexibility and increases our resiliency to potentially disruptive events," he wrote.
Critics of the project said Eugene's water would remain vulnerable despite the new tanks because a disruption to the McKenzie River would keep the utility from collecting drinkable water and they objected to the tree clearing needed for the project.
"EWEB plans to cut down roughly 300 mature trees, then blast the rock underneath for months to create pads for two new 'tanks,'" Steve Goldman, retired Eugene-based natural resources program manager, wrote before construction started in 2021.
According to EWEB, the utility cut down 265 trees, 25% of what was on the site, and "downed wood was kept in the community," primarily for Eugene wetland restoration.
Farthing said EWEB plans to bring in dirt to build up hills around the tanks, similar to what it did at the College Hill site.
The site will remain open for recreation, and the utility will soon open public comment to hear what neighbors would like the site to look like.
Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on twitter @alanfryetorres
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: EWEB water tanks near Spencer Butte Middle School will be operational
