The following is a transcript of the Feb. 17, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s News Director.
Our guest on this episode is Karen Kelley, Chief Operations Officer at Oregon public power utility Eugene Water and Electric Board. Karen is joining us to discuss how EWEB is proactively working to improve water resiliency through the construction of a second water treatment plant. Karen, thanks for joining us as a guest on the podcast.
Karen Kelley
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Paul Ciampoli
Karen, typically -- especially lately -- what I do when I interview public power officials prior to diving into a topic, I like to give our guests the opportunity to discuss their own role and responsibilities at the utility in question. So before we dive into the main topic of this episode, could you provide an overview of your role and responsibilities as Chief Operations Officer at the utility?
Karen Kelley
Sure. And I will probably refer to the utility, Eugene Water and Electric Board as EWEB. So if you hear that, that's what I'm talking about.
So as the Chief Operations Officer, I oversee our power generation, transmission and distribution, as well as our water production, transmission and distribution, and the functions that support these operations.
As part of the executive team, I oversee complex infrastructure projects, direct operational and engineering teams and drive initiatives to enhance system resiliency and sustainability. Because we are called to provide water and power to Eugene and some of the surrounding communities serving around 200,000 people and as a public utility, we are stewards of the public's resources and infrastructure, which amount to about $1.4 billion of it, so it is a big role and I'm proud to serve in this way.
Paul Ciampoli
So just turning to the topic of water resiliency, I want to give you the opportunity to elaborate on why Eugene Water and Electric Board is pursuing the construction of a second water treatment plant.
Karen Kelley
In this job there are several things that can keep a person up at night, and for me one of them is our single source of drinking water, which is the McKenzie River. Earlier in my career, I was part of numerous incidents of investigating and resolving water borne disease outbreaks, as well as assisting water utilities when their single source of drinking water was disrupted or ran dry.
So you can think of contamination, equipment failures, major leaks and drought as some of the causes for these situations. And they were very stressful times for the utility and the customer and unfortunately led the customers to lose their trust in their water provider.
I really don't ever want to see EWEB in this kind of situation and like other utilities, we are facing threats to our watershed, including chemical spills, severe storms, wildfires and harmful algal blooms.
We need to prepare for those, so investing in water resiliency is a major priority at EWEB. A few years ago, we completed critical upgrades to harden our existing Hayden Bridge water filtration plant and make it safer.
Our current focus is building robust water storage facilities, which are part of the backbone of our distribution system. We installed two new tanks at our East 40th Ave. and are now working on building earthquake resilient water storage tanks at College Hill and eventually at Hawkins Hill. In addition, we recently completed a multi-year project to bring emergency water stations fed by wells to the city of Eugene.
We have seven sites that are geographically distributed across the city that will provide emergency water for domestic use following a major disaster such as an earthquake when our pipeline network may be down. So these wells are not attached to our system.
They are placed where you might come and fill up water jugs to take them back for use at home. So this brings me to our largest and most impactful resiliency project in recent history -- establishing a second source of water by building a new water treatment plant on the Willamette River.
Given that we only have one water treatment plant and about one to two days of supply in the system during peak usage months, that puts us at high risk should we have a major event such as a critical equipment failure, hazardous material spill into the river, or a natural disaster.
It also impacts our operations in that parts of the plant are difficult and even impossible to take offline for maintenance and repair. Some folks have asked me, why don't you just add more storage and what I'd like folks to realize is that additional storage can lead to water quality problems for us. And it's really not an answer. We've got to diversify our water sources -- that's the most important thing we can do at this time to improve our resiliency.
Paul Ciampoli
One follow up question occurred to me. To be honest with you, typically when I speak to public power executives, we’re focused on the electricity side of things, so I apologize in advance if this is not a very insightful question, but I wanted to know -- do you have any sense in terms of how does what your utility is grappling with compare overall and nationwide in terms of other public power utilities that have a water segment?
Karen Kelley
Well, I can’t speak nationwide, but I do know in the Northwest we're one of only a couple of systems of our size that has that single source of water and I'm not sure if the ones that are like us are also power companies because normally in my experience at least in Oregon, I only know of two water providers that are also the power providers, so normally it's like a completely separate process, so I’m not sure if there's others in that situation.
Paul Ciampoli
So I just wanted to keep with the topic at hand with respect to the second water treatment plant and ask if you could offer additional details in terms of the construction timeline and other key elements of the project.
Karen Kelley
So with respect to the project timeline, we started down this road of planning for a new treatment plant decades ago. As part of this, we considered the alternatives, acquired the site and began sampling water quality.
Last fall, we submitted our joint use permit application with the Department of State Lands and Army Corps of Engineers. This is the environmental permitting piece of the project and it's expected to take us about a year or more. We're actively engaged with the City of Springfield Planning Department on the land use Process that is also required, which could also take about a year or more.
We're planning to go out for bid on the plant design in the next month or so and hope to award the job in April or May, but construction won't begin until 2026 at the earliest and will take about three years to complete.
We have a highly skilled team assigned to the project that's proven their ability to complete high dollar, high stakes infrastructure projects on time and on budget -- very fortunate to work with these folks.
By 2029, we hope to commission the plant and introduce water into the system. But with respect to the key elements of this project, I do want to touch base on what makes this project a little different from others like it -- specifically around our source water quality and treatment components.
We are fortunate to live in Western Oregon because the Willamette and the McKenzie are both excellent sources of water both in available water and in water quality. EWEB has been testing water samples from the Willamette River for over 10 years, and the EPA regulates about 66 contaminants, but we choose to test for over 250 to make sure that we're being proactive about any emerging threats.
In all of our sampling, we have not detected any levels of concern in the Willamette for any of the tested contaminants, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and PFAS, among many others. PFAS is one that's kind of a hot topic in the water world right now and it stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances -- basically compounds that make things non-stick and fireproof. That's what that stands for. So the sources are remarkably similar in parameters that have the greatest impact on taste and odor also because we do have folks who are worried about that.
The Willamette has slightly greater swings in organic material, but that can be managed through treatment. And speaking of treatment, the new plant will take advantage of modern equipment and processes to improve on the basic conventional treatment steps of flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection and corrosion control and we'll add a treatment process called ozonation.
Ozone adds another layer of safety to the treatment process and together with granulated active carbon filter caps, can treat the more difficult compounds that traditional treatment processes were never designed for including threats to our watershed that I mentioned earlier and specifically those harmful algal blooms and the PFAS component that I mentioned.
Those are things that originally treatment plant designers had not even thought of, so this ozonation is going to take care of that for us. One key point that I also want to make is that this project is not about needing more water, it's about resiliency. We have ample water rights on the McKenzie and capacity at the existing Hayden Bridge water treatment plant. So because the majority of water rights are on the McKenzie, the Hayden Bridge will remain our primary plant.
The future, though, with this Willamette Water treatment plant, is that that plant will run continuously to supplement the McKenzie and be ready for a disaster, and also be ready when we need to take it offline for maintenance, so we are looking forward to that.
Paul Ciampoli
So obviously it goes without saying that in terms of public power utility projects, communication with customers is always front of mind for public power utilities when they pursue projects such as this. So against that backdrop, I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about how EWEB has communicated with customers to explain the need for the second water treatment plant.
Karen Kelley
EWEB is a customer-owned utility and we are governed by a citizen elected Board of Commissioners. These Commissioners keep a pulse on the public sentiment and serve as our guiding light to help us decide where to invest rate payer dollars for the highest benefit. Eugene is a forward thinking community as well, and our biannual customer surveys consistently show that residents want a second source of water to increase the region's resilience to natural and human caused disasters. That's why the board has approved this project because it aligns with the community interests and values.
Regardless, though, change can be intimidating and consistent communications are vital to helping all ratepayers understand the need and value of this project. Our overall goal is to tailor our communications to the many audiences interested in the project. For example, we all know water is life for everyone, but for some local industries like breweries or manufacturing centers, water is also their livelihood.
That's why we're working hard to share data on water quality and water composition so they can see our commitment to maintaining our high standards of water quality locally. There are other sides in this project, like our commitment to offset environmental impacts of the new plant and bring in source water protection strategies that could help enhance the Willamette in the long run.
We are sharing this information as well and connecting with neighbors adjacent to the project site to let them know about potential construction impacts and how we're planning to mitigate them. People are so inundated these days with information that we are trying to get useful, concise information to the public so they can meaningfully engage with us.
Our project website is the main hub for information, but we're also using mailers in person events and other tools like this podcast to get the word out, so I do appreciate your interest in this topic and giving us this platform.
Paul Ciampoli
Karen, I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time to speak with us. I’d love to have you back to perhaps get an update on this project and or discuss other elements of your overall portfolio of responsibilities as Chief Operations Officer.
Karen Kelley
I'd be happy to anytime.
Paul Ciampoli
Great. Well, Karen, thanks again so much for taking the time out of your day to speak with us.
Karen Kelley
Thank you.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA. I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
