Page8
December 2023
Winchester Dam is the Most Dangerous Dam in Oregon
Continued from Front Page
expects loss of human life to occur if the dam
fails.” OWRD requires “high hazard” dams to be
inspected annually. OWRD told Winchester Water
Control District (WWCD) that “consideration must
be given to a permanent dam, the existing wooden
dam being considered as temporary in nature and
either reconstruction or removal of the dam would
be necessary.” WWCD was instructed to “inspect the
dam on a semiannual basis, once a year with the water
drawn down.”
That was nearly 50 years ago, WWCD president
Ryan Beckley and its board of directors have skirted
OWRD’s requirement by hiring contractors to
examine the dam without lowering the water spilling
over its top, it’s impossible to inspect a dam until the
water level is lowered to expose its leaking structure.
Despite these legal requirements, Winchester Dam
was only drained and its leaking structure inspected
by the OWRD three times in 47 years, in 1976,
1987, and 2013. Each inspector reported serious
deficiencies and a need for annual inspections. But
the dam hadn’t had a comprehensive structural
inspection since 1987, when it was determined that
10% of the dam wall was leaking.
After the 2013 inspection, OWRD found the
dam’s up slope, crest and downslope were described
as “urgent dam safety issues – action now.” It went
on to say that “The dam’s condition rating has been
downgraded to poor and may be downgraded
further to unsatisfactory if the dam safety issues are
not addressed in the very near future.” The OWRD
nor WWCD has taken any action to protect the
downstream residents and the general public in 10
years.
In 2019, ODFW ranked Winchester Dam and
its fish ladder the 26th worst out of 590 migratory
fish passage barriers in Oregon in accordance with
a state law (ORS 509.585(3)). This statute requires
ODFW to update the ranking of barriers to migratory
fish passage in Oregon’s streams and rivers every
five years. Winchester Dam and its fish ladder will
move up into the top 10 barriers to migratory fish
passage when the new list is released in 2024. The
Winchester Dam’s wooden lip and its height of
17-feet effectively prevent fish from jumping over.
Consequently, Winchester Dam is now the ODFW
second highest priority for fish passage improvement
among all privately owned dams in the state. But in
direct contradiction of ODFW’s Fish Passage Task
Force findings, their Senior Biologist Greg Huchko,
ODFW’s top official in the Umpqua District, is
repeatedly quoted by local media stating that in his
opinion, the dam is merely “delaying fish migration.”
Consequently, Huchko’s opinions are repeatedly
quoted by WWCD in their permit applications to
repair the Winchester Dam. This is at odds with the
ODFW, who has repeatedly stated that Winchester
Dam impedes access to 160 miles of high-quality
cold-water habitat for salmon, trout, and lampreys
upstream.
In 2018, those state agencies slapped WWCD’s
previous contractor, Basco Logging, Inc., owned
by WWCD board member Juan Yraguen, with a
$58,378 fine for pouring pollutants and cement into
the river that entered the public drinking water system
and killed a lot of lampreys, steelhead, and salmon.
On January 27, 2020, Yraguen was informed
that DEQ issued a penalty, because his activities
resulted in the discharge of sediment and wet (or
“green”) concrete to the river, degrading aquatic
habitat and killing numerous threatened Coho and
other sensitive species and fish. These incidents also
negatively affected the quality of the primary drinking
water source for two community water systems. City
of Roseburg and Umpqua Basin Water Association,
serving approximately 37,700 people (28,800 and
8,900, respectively).Yraguen appealed the fine
and inexplicably, DEQ lowered it from $58,378 to
$19,517.
Back in 1994 the OWRD determined that WWCD
was illegally storing 91-acre-feet of river water in
excess of their 1910 allotted water rights of 300-acre
feet. 30 years later in November 2022, a coalition of
17 organizations, including WaterWatch of Oregon,
Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Associations,
Institute for Fisheries Resources, and Steamboaters
formally requested OWRD conduct a bathymetric
survey to confirm WWCD’s illegal water storage.
OWRD instead agreed to amend WWCD’s 1910
water storage rights from 300-acre feet to 391-acre
feet, thereby accommodating the extra 91-acre-feet of
water WWCD had illegally stored for decades. This
increases the volume of water, and by extension, the
enormous pressure, behind the dilapidated, long-ago
condemned dam face which, according to OWRD,
can only be “considered as temporary in nature.”
Keep in mind OWRD’s condemnation of Winchester
Dam half a century ago and rating it a “high hazard”,
meaning “the department expects loss of human life
if the dam fails.” The WWCD and the state agencies
failed to remove the condemned Winchester Dam, as
was deemed prudent, appropriate, and wise, nearly
half a century ago.
In 2021, WWCD members voted to approve a $3
million bond levy to “finance the repair of Winchester
Dam” and to “pay fines, penalties, judgements, legal
fees and other costs related to the Winchester Dam”
and to “refinance existing indebtedness.” The bond
was passed in their own private district.
In August 2023, WWCD president Ryan Beckley
said that he personally designed this dam repair
project as a “permanent solution, a fix for 100 years to
come”. But the repairs endangered the native fish on
the downstream side of the Winchester Dam, so that
on August 9, 2023, about 50 to 60 representatives of
state agencies rushed to the dam to rescue stranded
and dying fish.
“[WWCD]has been trying to run this dam,
cheap, for years and years…” wrote Jim McCarthy
of WaterWatch of Oregon, a nonprofit organization
that protects and restores Oregon rivers. “These
people can’t be trusted to own a dam.” According to
McCarthy, Ryan Beckley has “never repaired a dam
before in his life.” If Beckley really did design the dam
repair project, as he claims, this may be a violation of
state statutes regarding the practice of engineering
intended to protect public safety. Jim McCarthy
explained: According to his candidate form filed with
the county when he ran for the Winchester Water
Control District Board, Mr. Beckley does not have
an engineering degree. According to the form, he
left high school at the 11th grade and did not receive
a diploma.
The dam repair plan was, in fact, designed by
engineers at Dickinson, Oswald, Walch, and Lee
(DOWL). They told regulators repairs would be
much more limited than what Beckley claims. In an
April 4, 2023, DOWL technical memo to state dam
safety officials the repairs would be “to the minimum
extent necessary to eliminate known and reasonably
anticipated dam safety deficiencies at the dam.”
WWCD president Ryan Beckley awarded
the contract for repairs to TerraFirma Foundation
Systems, a company he owns. TerraFirma’s trucking
division, headquartered in Roseburg, Oregon, has
racked up over forty trucking violations, including
disciplinary action by Oregon Construction
Contractors Board, cited and fined by Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration and several “serious”
OSHA safety violation citations and fines in 2018
and 2019.
The Winchester Dam presents an increasing
danger to downstream residents. According to
WaterWatch of Oregon “there are many holes through
the dam’s face and under its foundation” including
“eroded concrete” and “exposed rebar.” During
previous repairs to the Winchester Dam, WWCD
contractors installed hundreds of pressure-treated
2 x 12” boards 50-feet upstream of the drinking
water supply for 37,700 residents, the use of which
is prohibited in contact with public drinking water.
They also installed creosote-treated wooden railroad
ties, a “probable human carcinogen” prohibited “for
use in contact with food, feed, or drinking water.”
The pressure-treated wooden planks installed during
the 2013 repairs to the Winchester Dam immediately
began leaking toxins into the downstream drinking
water supply.
Due to the likelihood of life-threatening disaster
if the dam failed, the OWRD ordered WWCD to
update their Emergency Action Plan (EAP). Oregon
statute OAR 690-020-0400(4) requires EAPs to be
updated annually, but the WWCD hadn’t updated
their EAP since 1987. Under pressure from the
OWRD and dozens of local organizations, after 34
years of stonewalling, WWCD finally updated their
EAP. But there are no safety rope buoys or signs
warning boaters and swimmers upstream to stay
away from the imminent danger presented by the
Winchester Dam. Last year, two women were paddle
boarding upstream of the dam. Due to the higher-
than-normal water levels, they found themselves
clinging to the rim of the dam with their bare hands
until they no longer had the strength to fight the
current and were swept over the dam’s precipice.
Both women were injured in the subsequent 17-foot
fall, and one was hospitalized.
The defunct Winchester Dam hasn’t produced
hydroelectricity for many years. It offers no flood
control or irrigation. Its sole purpose is to provide a
private water ski lake for the exclusive “recreational”
use of the 99 property owners in the WWCD, at
the exclusion of the public. So, the WWCD itself
is, an illegal organization according to Oregon law.
Oregon Revised Statute 553.020 specifically requires
all water control districts in the State of Oregon to
provide a public purpose such as hydroelectricity,
irrigation, or flood control. The same statute makes
it perfectly clear that “recreation” is not a public
purpose. Meanwhile, Douglas County real estate
brokers continue to advertise multi-million-dollar
WWCD properties as having their own private water
ski lake.
The WWCD hedges the permitting process
for dam repair by deliberately taking no action for
years until the problem becomes “an emergency.”
Emergency repairs do not require permits. Haphazard
and careless repairs were made by contractors with no
qualifications or previous experience in dam repair.
It is now documented that WWCD failed to disclose
to regulators that during previous emergency repairs
WWCD knowingly released sediment stored behind
the dam into endangered salmon habitat and into
public drinking water supplies. WWCD’s ongoing
pattern of non-compliance of state and federal laws,
and ongoing mismanagement of the Winchester
Dam, has served to galvanize a bipartisan coalition
of neighbors, fishermen, conservationists, and
whitewater groups, who now call for the permanent
removal of the dam.
On August 7, 2023, Ryan Beckley drained the
private lake behind the Winchester Dam to begin
three weeks of repairs as originally ordered by the
ODFW in 2019. The permit specified that the water
level would be lowered at a rate of no more than
two inches per hour to minimize disturbance to the
aquatic habitat. Witnesses report that it was drained
at midnight at two feet per hour, exponentially faster
than permitted, devastating downstream fish habitat,
impeding fish migration, and making the dam an even
more insurmountable barrier for fish. This resulted in
the killing of what Shaun Clements, acting director
of the ODFW called “hundreds of thousands” of
lampreys in what is now recognized as the largest fish
kill on an Oregon river in 2023.
Also in violation of his permit, Beckley built a
roadbed for his heavy equipment, made out of used
car tires, right through the riverbed. Tires contain a
chemical called 6PPD, an antioxidant and antiozonant
that helps prevent the degradation rubber compound
which is instantaneously lethal to Coho [salmon].
The highly toxic pressure-treated and the
creosote-treated wood used in previous repairs to
Winchester Dam was exposed during the August
2023 repairs , but not removed. Taxpayers picked
up the tab for a specially designed $50,000 lamprey
fish ramp installed at the Winchester Dam in 2013.
During the August 2023 dam repairs, along with the
fish ladder, this ramp was shut down so fish passage
was blocked for over four weeks when the private
water ski lake above the dam was drained. When
the dams were removed on the Rogue River in
neighboring Curry County, the same Curt Melcher,
Director of the ODFW refused to allow the fish
ladders to be shut down or fish passage blocked
for even one minute. During wildfire season in the
hottest summer on record, WWCD’s private water
ski lake was drained. The permit required WWCD
to implement a comprehensive strategy to salvage
fish stranded or isolated fish both upstream, and
downstream of the dewatered dam. But according
to Jeffrey Dose, a retired fish biologist with 31 years
of experience in the Umpqua River Basin, this did
not occur. “Tens of thousands of juvenile Pacific
lamprey were also dewatered,” said Dose, “and
suffered extensive mortality. The WWCD, failed
miserably.” He called Ryan Beckley’s and WWCD’s
conduct “reprehensible and predictable.” On August
9, 2023, 48 hours after the draining of the private
water ski lake, dozens of state, federal, and tribal
entities attempted to rescue juvenile Pacific lamprey
that were trapped behind the drained dam wall, even
though Beckley’s permit specifically stated that this
was WWCD’s responsibility. The 109º temperature
of August 14, 2023, sealed the fate of any remaining
trapped fish.
Throughout the repair process, Ryan Beckley
has made modifications to the dam repair plan that
were not approved in his permit. ODFW inspectors
are stamping their approval to each noncompliant
phase of Beckley’s construction. Things that should
have been included in the ODFW’s permit approval
but were not. “I am extremely disappointed in the
current situation at Winchester Dam,” said Kirk
Blaine, president of Steamboaters and Southern
Oregon and southern Oregon coordinator for the
Native Fish Society. “ODFW knew this would
happen and they said yes for the convenience of the
landowners who want to maintain their private water
ski lake at the lowest cost possible.”
It is hard to believe that this has gone so long
and the why it still persists is food for another look at
some of the rfolks who are facilitating it.
Dam History
Continued from Page 6
the summer of 1961, the Pacific Power
& Light Company acquired COPCO
and the outdated Winchester Dam. In
December 1964, floods caused $500
million in damages statewide and many
bridges and dams were damaged. The
powerhouse at Winchester Dam was
flooded. By this time it was so out-of-
date, in 1965 Pacific Power & Light
abandoned it rather than rebuild and
update the facility.
In 1969, for the sale price of one-
dollar, Pacific Power & Light Company
transferred ownership of the Winchester
Dam and the surrounding property to its
present owner, the Winchester Water
Control District (WWCD). WWCD
was formed by the property owners who
lived close to the Winchester Dam site,
solely for recreational purposes.