We're here today with the solar challenge.
This is the 16th annual solar challenge.
We probably have close to five or six hundred middle school students here with their about
a hundred and sixty cars of different sorts.
E-Web's role is critical.
It provides some staff, people.
We have E-Web commissioners here, all the cars, the materials, the people's time is
all funded by E-Web through their education grants to schools.
I'm James Houghton with Eclectic Edge Racing, one of the organizers of the Butte to Butte.
E-Web has been a partner for over a decade now and they have provided volunteers to man
the water stations along the course, go out and test the water source, make sure everyone's
drinking good clean water, keeping folks hydrated, their customer care program that they do with
their own event, the E-Web run to stay warm, giving back and helping people that have a
hard time paying their electrical or water bills in those winter months.
We're here at Green Island, which is just an incredible spot for our community and historically
as well.
This is where the Willamette and McKinsey Rivers come together.
It's a great place to make investments for our community long term.
So with E-Web's help, we were able to acquire this property ten years ago, but something
as simple as turning on a tap, getting a glass of water and enjoying clean, pure water is
a great thing to be a part of.
Same drop of water that can start in the central Cascades, in Meanderow, it's way down underground
through waterfalls and end up here at the headwaters of the McKinsey, is that same drop
of water provides recreation, aquatic species habitat, and then it can find its way through
our Carmen Smith project to generate electricity at the Carmen power plant, the Trail Bridge
power plant, end up in the main stem of the McKinsey River where people like to boat,
a place for osprey and bald eagle to find fish, and then that same drop of water continues
on downriver, finds its way through Lieberg and Walterville projects, generating more
renewable energy through our hydroelectric projects, and then can find its way into our
Hayden Bridge filtration plant and become drinking water for the citizens of Eugene.
Because of our FERC license, we have a mandate to do the right thing.
These islands are part of the Walterville Canal system, we utilized them for the building
of the chevrons, clearing the areas and then planting trees so that we can over time get
canopy in there.
Out here it's been Pacific Northwest Youth Corps, a great non-profit organization.
We talk to them about the importance of riparian areas and about eWeb owning so many properties
that we're part of creating corridors for wildlife to move up and down the McKinsey Valley.
We provide utilities, water, electric, but beyond that we can really supply a support
system to make sure that everybody understands what is so important about our natural resources
and how we can make sure to be environmentally sound in what we do.
We exist to serve our customers and so we really need to take a leadership role around
these sustainability issues, around resource use, around fossil fuel use, around responding
to climate change.
We can really set an example of how to operate efficiently as an organization while providing
excellent service.
The services we offer are vital for our customers and so it's really important that we uphold
their expectations.
I see a lot of my job is to try and educate, especially kids, where do we get these energy
resources, how do we make electricity.
As a utility we work on reliability which kind of makes us a little invisible.
We need to be able to deliver power as efficiently as we can possibly do that and that means
being innovative, being creative in what we do, being adaptable, understanding that the
business is changing, the technology is changing.
So we need to be able to be adaptable and flexible.
We are a utility that cares, we care about our community and we want to give back and
this is our little bit that we can give back month by month.
I think we have a responsibility to the community to be involved when I started finding out
all the different stuff that eWeb does in the community, I was like, wow, that's really
cool, I can take pride in that.
We want to be a great employer.
It's important to us, this event is great evidence of that.
We want to be a place that has great engaged workers where people understand that we care
about them, we provide good, safe working conditions and we have a happy workforce.
eWeb's role in the community is a little bit broader than simply providing power and
water because we're connected to our community in so many different ways besides the pipes
and the wires.
Yesterday we had a lot of eWeb employees out with the United Way Day of Caring working
at nonprofits.
I really feel it's important that we maintain that connection because this is our community
we serve.
We are connected to our community and we take care of this community besides our core mission
of providing water and power.
