EWEB Shares Performance Results in Report to Customers
As a public utility, it is important for EWEB to be open and transparent with you — our customer-owners — about how we are performing. We put together a Report to Customers looking back at the key events, accomplishments and challenges of 2017.
One of our primary goals is to improve our relationship with customers, and in 2017 we took a number of steps that demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement.
We launched an Affordability Initiative, which included cutting administrative and overhead costs, while focusing on investments that directly relate to our organizational core values of providing safe, reliable service that aligns with what our community expect of us. We were able to deliver tangible results of these efforts with a 2018 water price decrease and no electric price change for the second year in a row. We know there is more work ahead when it comes to making EWEB more affordable for customers, and we look forward to delivering more positive results throughout the year.
Emergency preparedness and disaster recovery has been top-of-mind for many in our industry, community and the greater Pacific Northwest. In 2017, the Board of Commissioners adopted a Strategic Plan that established emergency preparedness and disaster recovery as a top priority for EWEB over the next ten years.
Throughout the year we made investments in preparing, replacing and maintaining our community's electric and water systems:
- Crews trimmed around 300 line miles of vegetation to minimize trees and branches falling on overhead electric lines
- We began work on developing multiple emergency water supply sites spread throughout the community and look forward to the first of these sites being up and running in 2018
- We continued to make investments in our water infrastructure to make sure we can reliability deliver water to your home or business
- We completed construction on a new substation located up the McKenzie River, identified high-impact electrical infrastructure upgrades for improved reliability and made progress on upgrades at the Carmen-Smith hydroelectric project
We also took the time to evaluate what went well, and what didn't, in our response to the widespread outages caused by the December 2016 ice storm. Since then we have made several improvements that will help us respond in large-scale events and this work continues into 2018.
While much of 2017 showcased areas where we looked for improvement, we continued work that aligns with our organizational core values.
- We completed a 10-year Water Source Protection Plan aimed at maintaining our community's exceptional water quality
- We continued positive trends in the area of workplace safety and continued to invest in programs that are important to our community and customers
Browse the complete 2017 Report to Customers for details on the topics mentioned above, and more. We will continue to look for opportunities to share our progress with you throughout 2018, and as your publicly-owned utility we welcome your questions and feedback.
