CUB began 2015 by launching a year-long Anniversary Club fundraising campaign. Named in honor of our 30th year as Oregon’s primary advocate for residential utility customers, the Anniversary Club campaign reflects CUB’s ever-present need to build and sustain internal capacity. The... Read More »

After months of review, the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC), in concert with CUB’s and other industry stakeholders’ assessment, granted CenturyLink’s request to stop providing IntraLATA (local long distance) service in certain areas of Oregon served by rural local phone companies... Read More »

Workers at the Portland Water Bureau read over 176,000 residential meters every three months. Daily residential routes range from 250 to 725 meters depending on housing density and terrain. The average residential route has 500 water meters and workers typically... Read More »

CUB is working on two main bills focused on energy efficiency this session. HB 2946 was a bill targeted at making sure that large energy users paid their fair share for energy efficiency investments. Currently, the amount that industrial customers... Read More »

Aeration tank at Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant, photo from BES website

City of Portland budget development is rolling along this spring. CUB gave testimony at a mid-March meeting focused just on budgets for the two utility bureaus. Next, CUB gave... Read More »

Late last fall, I sat in on a public meeting in Southern Oregon for one of the major utilities providing natural gas service to the area. They had just proposed a second rate increase in less than a year– one to... Read More »