EWEB is overhauling its major power plant in a $100mln, five-year plan

The Eugene Water and Electric Board, Oregon’s largest customer-owned utility, announced that its 114-MW Carmen-Smith hydroelectric facility along the upper McKenzie River, about 70 miles east of Eugene, Oregon, will be overhauled in a five-year, $100-million-worth project, beginning this month, to upgrade facility’s generators as well as lessen environmental impacts at its Carmen-Smith powerhouse and facilitate fish passage.
The Carmen-Smith hydropower project operates as a peaking and load-following facility, using water stored in the three project reservoirs that includes the Trail Bridge development, operating as a re-regulating facility, but will cease power generation.
The Carmen Diversion Reservoir, filled by the McKenzie River is used to divert water into a tunnel leading to Smith Reservoir. From there, water is routed through a second tunnel to the Carmen powerhouse, which discharges into Trail Bridge Reservoir and then flows back into the McKenzie River below Trail Bridge Dam.