EWEB candidates discuss watershed rights, UO contract

Presenter: What do the two candidates for EWEB Board of Commissioners say about the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights? Alexi Miller:

Alexi Miller (EWEB, at-large): That is a tricky question. It’s a tricky one. 

So the Watershed Bill of Rights—and, like, I’m running for the EWEB board, among other reasons, to improve our long-term environmental outcomes, right? And that includes moving toward a zero-carbon local economy, a zero-carbon utility, fully renewable, that is, with some kind of date set so we can strategically plan for it.

It also includes watershed protection. EWEB has actually been really involved in watershed protection. It’s done a lot of great work. Look at Finn Rock Reach, septic system repair grants, and zero-percent loans up the McKenzie, Holiday Farm Fire build-back incentives. There’s a bunch of cool stuff. 

And that’s mostly focused on the McKenzie River for now, right? That is where we get our water. But with that second source planned on the Willamette, I’m expecting EWEB’s going to invest more in the Willamette watershed as well. That’s a good thing.

In the case of this Watershed Bill of Rights, Measure 20-373, I have some real concerns about unintended effects and about the constitutionality of the measure. 

I’m not an attorney, but I am a licensed engineer, and so I have some idea of when I should listen to the experts in a particular technical field. And the attorneys I’ve talked to about this, including some that are nonprofit environmental-focused people, have led me to believe that this measure is likely to end up getting declared unconstitutional in the end.

But my concern is that that won’t happen until both sides have wasted a ton of money and dedicated a ton of time to arguing this thing and litigating it, which is really especially important for the grassroots folks who are advancing this thing, since they don’t have deep pockets.

And in the end, my concern is the only winners may end up being the attorneys who argue the cases. That seems like a real waste of resources, which I think realistically could be better spent advancing some other critical priorities, like:

What about saving those legal fees to defend our last few old-growth stands against this rapacious BLM proposal to level 1 billion board feet a year of old growth and medium growth?

What about advancing collaborative proposals to improve salmon habitat, connected to the Leaburg Dam removal, and thinking about a better job on fish passage up at Carmen-Smith and Trail Bridge upstream?

My concern is it’s just going to be a big waste of time and resources and end up being a divisive issue that risks driving a wedge between the idealists and the pragmatists when it comes to habitat preservation.

My other concern is that that whole extravaganza risks disillusioning a lot of advocates and turning people off of environmental activism, right? Like, tilting at a windmill, it doesn’t work. It’s very frustrating.

But then I decry the both-sides mentality among some people that, like, You tilt at an unrealistic windmill, you get knocked down. Well, a pox on both their houses. I think we should be picking our battles, spending our energy on productive and realistic projects. So that’s my real concern.

From the EWEB point of view specifically, I think it’s possible the legal framework could be almost sort of weaponized against EWEB by bad actors who are opposed to restoration projects. 

Like, what if EWEB were making investments in watershed protection, but someone along the way didn’t like it and filed suit under the guise of watershed protection and that gummed up the works and stopped that well-intentioned habitat work from happening?

And even if those are unsuccessful, you’ve still got to defend lawsuits. It costs money. And that might limit EWEB from making those good faith investments in watershed protection. 

So, I’ve got some concerns about it. I recognize the goal for this, you know, I stand against this sort of shortsighted, damaging timber harvesting, megaclearcuts and aerial herbicide spraying, widespread, widespread megaclearcut approach. That can be very heavy on the herbicides. 

I think that’s largely what this is aimed toward preventing, but my concern is that 20-373 may not get us there, and I fear the unintended consequences.

Presenter: Eric Dziura:

Eric Dziura: So the Watershed Bill of Rights comes up quite frequently. It’s a major issue of discussion in Eugene and of course in Lane County in general. 

So, City Club of Eugene hosted a program which was actually sort of a debate, and it was very informative because we had enough time to get down into the details of both sides’ positions.

I think the reason that the petitioners were motivated to do so is that they’re very concerned about the fact that the state of Oregon sprays herbicides on forests for particular purposes. And they are concerned that these herbicides are poisoning human beings, causing disease, and then making their way from the watershed into water supplies.

And I can understand why they would be concerned about that. They have tried to address that issue, unsuccessfully, previously to putting forward this ballot initiative and so forth. And what they chose to do is to approach it from a very, very broad perspective. They essentially wanted to grant some sort of legal status to Mother Nature.

And, you know, that sounds really good. I mean, I am an environmentalist. I’m fully supportive of that. I’m a scientist. I understand the dangers of climate change, and I take it very, very seriously. I take pollution from harmful chemicals very seriously. And I don’t particularly like the idea of spraying chemicals from aircraft on the earth. It seems just a dangerous way to do it. It’s not very targeted.

The Watershed Bill of Rights is a very, very blunt instrument. It’s not very surgical. It doesn’t address that particular issue directly. It opens up the possibility of a number of issues, and it opens up the possibility of a lot of lawsuits, which ultimately would not succeed because what it tries to do, in some respects, is to preempt the powers of higher levels of government.

So, I think if it were to pass, there would be immediately pushback from the state of Oregon and also the federal government along the lines of, ‘Hey, this is our responsibility. We are the ones that have the authority to deal with these issues and as such, it’s not something that can be dealt with by Lane County, per se.’

So I reluctantly and sadly, I’m opposed to it. And I think you’ll find that, I think what EWEB did to alert the community to the downsides of this particular legal mechanism to deal with this, it was appropriate in the sense that they need to protect the interests of EWEB because you’re protecting the interests of EWEB ratepayers and consumers of water and electricity.

I will say that the resolution they passed could have been written, I think, with a little more sensitivity. I think it was a fairly blunt instrument. I don’t think it emphasized how much the Board of Commissioners themselves and EWEB and the EWEB staff care about the watershed and care about the issues that the petitioners care about.

Nevertheless, they got their message out, and as I say, reluctantly, I have to agree that this is just not the best way to deal with the situation.

Presenter: Another recent item of public comment was EWEB’s contract with the University of Oregon for fossil-fuel-generated power. Eric Dziura:

Eric Dziura: And of course what this has to do with is that the University of Oregon burns natural gas, which emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and perhaps some toxins, some byproducts of combustion, to provide heating and other services to all of their buildings on the Eugene campus, and this system has been in place for some time.

It also turns out that their system has some excess electrical generating capacity. And so, EWEB decided that it’s always good to have local generation assets available to you in times when there’s a very, very high demand for electricity, and that occurs when we have heat domes. It occurs when we have polar vortexes. It occurs in the dead of winter when the sun is down and you can’t generate solar, and the temperatures are very, very low.

So there is a need to have backup sources of energy, and that’s what EWEB was interested in. They wanted to find out whether or not the system that the University of Oregon has could connect safely to EWEB’s grid. And then just find out, you know, whether it would work or not and what kind of pollutants there might be and all those sorts of things.

And the intent is, if they were to enter in such a contract, this would only be used for at most, maybe a few hours, maybe 10 or 20 hours per year, like only in times of serious large peak demand and so forth.

So I understand their reasoning with this, but I think what they didn’t do was they weren’t sensitive enough to the fact that the people of Eugene and the city government has said very strongly that they want to do everything they possibly can to reduce the output of greenhouse gases from Eugene itself to zero.

They’re struggling to do that. It’s very hard. They don’t have the money, unfortunately, to do as much as they would like. And so the idea that EWEB might be encouraging the continued generation of production of greenhouse gases and so forth, I think, was upsetting to a lot of people.

The other thing that people in Eugene are sensitive to, and I understand this, because I live in the Bethel neighborhood, is that we’ve had experiences with other large organizations causing pollution—that being J.H. Baxter, which was dumping dioxins into the environment and now is an EPA Superfund site.

I think EWEB could have done a better job of thinking about that holistically before they decided to enter into this contract. I think they should have acknowledged those concerns. And there should have been clearer communication about what they were doing and what the ultimate purpose of this was, and I think that that might have helped somewhat. 

I don’t know that those that are opposed to what the University of Oregon is doing—I think the only thing that will satisfy them is if somehow the University of Oregon can switch to some other source of energy to accomplish what they need.

Presenter: Alexi Miller:

Alexi Miller (EWEB, at-large): In terms of the U of O boiler question, and whether EWEB should tap into that as an emergency peaker plant effectively, that would basically mean the U of O boiler would be an available gas peaker for hopefully a relatively small number of hours a year. That’s what people are talking about here.

It’s a complicated question. None of this happens in a vacuum. So EWEB is 94% or so carbon-free. It’s almost all off the BPA—the big dams on the Snake, in the Columbia. We have a little bit of local hydro generation, like Carmen-Smith, Trail Bridge, Walterville, but mostly we’re 94% carbon free.

That other 6% comes from basically market purchases, and a lot of that happens at the peaks. We have a winter peak and a summer peak, and during those peak hours, that’s when EWEB is often paying more for energy and when EWEB is buying energy that has a higher carbon footprint.

So we have to think about, when we’re already in a situation where we’re buying peak power: Where are we buying that power? And it’s not compared to just sort of nothing. It’s compared to what are the other sources of power that we might buy instead. Is the U of O central plant better than a different gas peaker? Because that’s likely where EWEB is currently buying their gas power.

Or should we be thinking about something else? Can we procure resources that help us meet our peak power demands without having to go on the market and buy power? And as we see compression and cost of renewables, of batteries, that becomes potentially more realistic. 

One thing I would like to see happen. I would like EWEB to help lay the framework and the groundwork for more community solar installations across Eugene.

I think it would be fantastic if we could get collaborations going between EWEB, the city, the University, LCC, maybe local organizations like the YMCA, St. Vinnie’s, and the county to build resiliency hubs that have community solar systems in which the community could, people who, say, can’t put solar on their own roof, but do want to go solar, could buy into a shared community solar system.

And then that system could power a microgrid that would offer backup electricity in the event of a larger outage. And that would help EWEB potentially make our grid more resilient. It would offer a community asset to folks and it would help people decarbonize their own life, go renewable on their own.

And that may offer a pathway to let us rely less on those market purchases, whether that’s from the U of O or somewhere else, and be able to back up our grid during peak hours with other resources. We’re not really there yet.

I think what we need to do is build those partnerships and I’m interested in seeing if EWEB can be a technical partner to make this thing happen and can help lay the framework, if you will, figure out how this thing gets done. Who needs to do what, where do they go? How big are they? How do they connect to the grid?

There’s a bunch of little detail questions if you want to make this thing a reality. And I think if that’s likely to happen, I think EWEB could be at the middle of that.

So that’s a long and kind of complicated answer. But it’s not a sound-bite-friendly question, and that’s why I am coming to the Board, is, there’s nuance in this stuff. And we want to have a fully renewable, decarbonized community and utility, but we’re starting from where we are at today in reality, and see how we get there from here.

Presenter: The two candidates for at-large commissioner discuss watershed rights and the UO boiler. Ballots are due next Tuesday, May 19.