EWEB completes McKenzie Valley power transfer to Lane Electric Cooperative

About 2,500 McKenzie Valley electric accounts are now served by Lane Electric Cooperative, moving local distribution service away from EWEB and shifting who handles bills, outages and customer questions from Thurston Road to Vida. The change became effective May 1 and covers a rural stretch that EWEB says runs between Thurston Road and Vida, while Lane Electric describes the territory as extending from Thurston Road in Springfield to Thomson Lane in Vida.

The transfer is limited to the neighborhood-level utility system. EWEB kept its generation assets, transmission assets and substations, while Lane Electric took over distribution facilities, including poles, lines, transformers, meters and related equipment. EWEB said the handoff followed nearly a year of research, analysis, community engagement and coordination between the two utilities, with the goal of matching a sparse river-valley service area to a utility built for rural work rather than Eugene’s denser city grid.

The scale of the mismatch was part of EWEB’s case for the shift. The utility said only about 3% of its customers live in the McKenzie Valley, yet that area makes up about 25% of its total service territory. The realignment began with a joint study in July 2025, advanced when EWEB commissioners approved a resolution in December 2025 authorizing negotiations, and was locked in after formal agreements were signed in early 2026. Both utilities said they coordinated final meter reads, customer-account transfers, billing information and system details to keep the transition as seamless as possible.

For customers, the most immediate changes are practical. Lane Electric said member numbers were emailed and mailed during the first week of May, and checking-account autopay information moved automatically. Debit and credit card payments, however, must be reset in Lane Electric’s system. That means McKenzie Valley households now need to look to Lane Electric for billing and service questions tied to the distribution system, including outage response when the lights go out.

The change also alters local representation. Lane Electric said lower McKenzie members will be organized into two board districts, giving those customers cooperative voting rights and a direct say in choosing the board. For families and businesses along the McKenzie River corridor, the transfer is more than a paperwork change: it places daily utility service under a rural cooperative structure that fits the valley’s geography and gives customers a new voice in how power is delivered.