With construction of two massive water tanks on College Hill completed, Eugene Water & Electric Board is touting the seismic resiliency of its new water storage system. September is National Disaster Preparedness Month, and EWEB invited the media to check out the $100 million upgrades to the facility.

The circular water tanks are 35 feet tall, made of pre-stressed concrete, and each holds 7.5 million gallons. EWEB’s Water Group principal engineer Laura Farthing explained the numerous reasons why they could withstand a natural disaster, such as a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.

“They have flexible pipe couplings that bring the water into the tank, that allows the pipes to move in all directions where they’re shaking,” she said. “The tanks themselves have seismic resiliency built into them in the way that the floors and the walls are anchored together, that gives them strength during the shaking as well. And then we leave room between the highest water point and the roof. That’s because water sloshes in an earthquake.”

These tanks are made with prestressed concrete, which means they’re wrapped in wire which puts the tanks in compression and that gives them strength and water tightness. It also provides earthquake resiliency.

“So, the amount of wrapped wire is just about 90 miles for each tank. It’s pretty impressive,” Farthing said. “And then it gets coated in shotcrete, which is just concrete without rock in it. And that just acts as a protective coating over the wire.”

EWEB’s water system is controlled electronically, remotely or manually and these will have remote actuated valves that when there is a shake alert, they can actually shut them and isolate the water which will keep the water inside the tanks—allowing for later use.

“So we have points that we can pump out of so that we can get water to distribution sites or for fire suppression,” Farthing added.

In southwest Eugene, there are two new water tanks exactly like the ones on College Hill, which hold another 15 million gallons. And there are 20 million gallons of water storage at EWEB’s Hawkins storage site, Farthing said.

EWEB provides water and electricity to about 200,000 people in the Eugene area.

As Farthing speaks, crews prepare to install new, underground pipelines.

“According to our timeline, we are actually still on the schedule that we laid out at the beginning of the College Hill Reservoir Replacement Project,” Farthing said. “We anticipate being able to fill the tanks and test them after the piping is done and that’ll be December of 2026.”

After that, EWEB will start backfilling around the water tanks and move to landscaping. The College Hill site is scheduled to be replanted and opened to the public in late 2027.

Tiffany Eckert is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/14/college-hill-water-tanks-eugene-eweb/