Related News
Related News
-
September is National Preparedness Month: 3 tips to prepare your home & family
Let's "Be Ready" together!
Find Out More -
EWEB invests in preparedness for severe weather and natural disasters
Just as you take steps to safeguard your home and family, EWEB is investing in equipment and processes to ensure our community’s electric and water systems remain reliable in the face of adversity.
Find Out More -
EWEB customers achieve remarkable results in environmental stewardship through EWEB's Lead Green programs
Subscribers of EWEB's Lead Green programs helped reduce carbon emissions in 2023 by 730 metric tons of CO2e.
Find Out More -
EWEB prepares to re-energize the new Currin Substation
The rebuilt substation will increase load capacity, improve power reliability, and incorporate seismic resiliency to ensure service to our community for generations.
Find Out More -
EWEB, SUB and RWD join forces at Lane County Fair to distribute water to fairgoers
The Eugene Water & Electric Board, Springfield Utility Board and Rainbow Water District are teaming up for the 9th year to provide fairgoers with clean, cold free water.
Find Out More -
EWEB preparing for expected surge in electric vehicles
Electric vehicle (EV) sales are poised to skyrocket in the years ahead as technology improves, more models hit the market, prices fall and regulations limit the sale of gas-powered vehicles. And EWEB is preparing for this surge.
Find Out More -
Community members can test out climate-friendly e-bikes at E-Bike Expo on Saturday
EWEB encourages Eugene residents to ride into summer on clean, accessible e-bikes, with a $300 e-bike rebate.
Find Out More -
EWEB Hosts Dinner to Appreciate Customers of the McKenzie River Valley
EWEB hosted a customer appreciation dinner at the Walterville Community Center on Thursday, May 23, in place of its yearly upriver Board meeting. The event allowed customers, EWEB Commissioners, and staff to share a meal and openly discuss topics most relevant to the McKenzie Valley community.
Find Out More -
EWEB bids a fond farewell to College Hill Reservoir and prepares for modern drinking water storage tanks
Several hundred Eugene residents came together on May 30 for a Farewell Celebration at EWEB’s College Hill Reservoir before demolition and construction to build modern drinking water storage tanks begins later this year.
Find Out More -
Tips to stay cool while saving money this summer
June is quickly approaching, and that means summer weather is just around the corner. Before you turn up the air conditioning and see an increase in your utility bill, try these tips to prepare your home for warmer weather to keep your home cool.
Find Out More -
EWEB offering additional energy efficiency supplement to qualified customers
Current EWEB residential electric customers may qualify to double their energy efficiency rebates with a limited time supplement.
Find Out More -
EWEB opens application for 2024 Electric Mobility Community Grants
Grant awards of up to $30,000 to cover costs associated with electric mobility projects.
Find Out More -
Upgrades to Eugene's downtown electric network continue
You may have noticed construction this week on the corner of 7th and Pearl Street. That’s because crews replaced a corroded, aging vault with an innovative, new Voltek vault. The Voltek design allows for the new infrastructure to be built inside of the existing aging vault. We’re able to install the new vault while the cables are still energized, minimizing disruption to customers and traffic while cutting construction time in half.
Find Out More -
The Big Freeze 2024: After Action Report
Winter 2024 was one for the records books, and we'll look back on it for years to come and say, "That was a doozy!" The back-to-back January Ice Storms caused widespread damage to EWEB’s service territory, affecting approximately 38,000 customers. Preliminary repair costs were over $8 million, and additional repairs to transmission lines are still required.
Find Out More -
Fixing the Unseen: Water Pipeline Replacement in Unincorporated Eugene
Learn more about EWEB's methods for monitoring and replacing aged water pipelines.
Find Out More - Show More
Remembering Wiley Griffon, an early Black resident of Eugene
February 10, 2023 • Rachael McDonald, EWEB Communications
You may have noticed a plaque along the sidewalk on East 4th Avenue near the entrance to the employee parking lot at EWEB’s former headquarters building. It commemorates Wiley Griffon. He’s not considered the first Black resident of Eugene. But he is the first one mentioned by name, according to scholars.
Griffon was born in 1867. Despite Oregon’s exclusion laws that prohibited nonwhite citizens in the state, Griffon moved here from Texas in 1890. He served as the driver of Eugene’s streetcar service, which was powered by a mule, and ran from the train station to the University of Oregon. Griffon was, “driver, conductor, dispatcher, and largely the motive power by persistently shoving along the ambling mule.”
After the mule-driven streetcar shut down, Griffon worked at the University of Oregon, where he was the first African American employee. He worked as a janitor at the Men’s dormitory, Friendly Hall on campus.
Griffon was known to have worked several other jobs including serving as a waiter on a railroad dining car. In 1909, he purchased a home on the riverfront on the site of what’s now the EWEB employee parking lot. He died in 1913 at age 46.
Griffon was buried in the Eugene Masonic Cemetery, but his tombstone went missing sometime over the years. Recently, Eugene residents and students raised money to erect a historic monument at his gravesite.
The plaque was dedicated at EWEB Headquarters in 2017. It was funded by EWEB and the Eugene-Springfield NAACP. EWEB General Manager Frank Lawson, Eugene City Councilor Greg Evans, and then-Executive Director of the Eugene-Springfield NAACP, Eric Richardson spoke at the event.
“I'm really excited to move this story from oral tradition into a confirmed solid history for our community,” Richardson said at that event. “It's important to remember to look back at where we've been and how things have changed so we can continue to move the ball forward.”
Richardson shared some additional comments this week as we remember Wiley Griffon for Black History Month:
“It is important for us to remember Wiley Griffon because he was an early Black American who came as part of the “immigrants” coming seeking work and a place to practice his own agency a common reality based in our understanding of the great Black migrations of the late 19th and early 20th century,” said Richardson. “The memorial gives us a sense of place and belonging in the bigger picture. The “modern” history of the Willamette Valley is relatively new and understanding this story gives us more context to historic times. Understanding the arc of justice, as Dr. Martin Luther King put it, is important as well an attempt to raise the awareness and consciousness of our space and struggles.”
Richardson said many of the African American laborers, like Griffon, who came to Oregon were skilled workers from the south who found the same old racism or worse here than what they were escaping from in the south.
Numerous community members and organizations, including the Lane County Historical Museum, have contributed to telling Wiley Griffon’s story. Much of the information for this article comes from the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Strides for Social Justice app, which provides historic routes that you can walk, run, bike or wheelchair to learn about the people, places and events that shaped the experience of Black residents in Eugene.