The Winchester Pub at 5719 NE Stephens Street is only 600-feet south of the Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River. But it’s deep in the heart of the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), the Special District whose members own the infamous 135-year-old condemned and derelict Winchester Dam.
On Sunday morning, February 23, 2025, the Douglas County Democratic Party (DCDP) held a voter information seminar for WWCD members in the Dam Lounge at the Winchester Pub. Five of the nine seats on the WWCD Board of Directors are up for election in May. But the Democrats’ plan was a complete failure. Instead of dividing and conquering, they unwittingly and effectively unified the opposition.
Like many of the WWCD property owners, WWCD Board president Ryan Beckley lives in a second residence, outside Douglas County. Beckley owns a basement repair company called TerraFirma Foundation Systems. At the DCDP’s voter information seminar on Sunday, Beckley, the proverbial “Tony Soprano” of the WWCD, showed up in full force with a 40-person crowd of WWCD homeowners and TerraFirma employees.
One woman (who like other witnesses quoted in this story, did not feel safe being identified for fear of retribution) reported that when she arrived “the lounge was packed” and Beckley’s people “were screaming at the top of their lungs.” DCDP party chair Andrew Rosales and former DCDP treasurer Betsy Cunningham were “already in a corner and people were just screaming at them!”
The Democrats were not prepared for this eventuality. They never had the chance to present their educational and informative panel about how to run for a seat on the WWCD board. Their efforts were suppressed by the president of the WWCD Board of Directors, Ryan Beckley and his performative angry mob.
This intimidating crowd “filibustered so loudly, the Democrats couldn’t get a word in edgewise.” Another witness admitted that she felt “absolutely terrified” by the vitriolic screaming during the meeting. The people at the meeting were so angry, they didn’t seem to care if their screaming was being recorded.
Although there may have been a few WWCD members in the room genuinely interested in running for a seat on the WWCD Board of Directors, they never had the opportunity to hear the Democrats’ presentation. After the intimidating behavior of Beckley’s mob, these individuals will think twice before running for a board position–which is exactly what Beckley wants. “It was an act of voter-suppression,” one attendee admitted.
It was apparent that the DCDP failed to foresee that Beckley and his mob would stonewall them so forcefully and in such an organized manner, or it might have occurred to them to bring a larger contingent of supporters for back up. Each time Rosales or Cunningham attempted to speak about such mundane issues as county election procedure, they were literally and loudly booed by Beckley’s mob, like the villain in a melodrama. When Beckley spoke, the mob cheered and clapped, as if he had won an Olympic gold medal.
As one witness observed, “I’d never seen anything like it. They were screaming. I think people were leaving because it looked like it might get violent.”
Another attendee said that Beckley’s mob was “completely reactionary. They were screaming a lot of willful ignorance about things that were demonstrably untrue. People who couldn’t handle the screaming and just got up and walked out.”
Umpqua Community College’s Student Engagement Coordinator, Leila Goulet, who lives in the WWCD, also attended the meeting at the Winchester Pub on Sunday morning. Last year, UCC students recorded Goulet screaming at them in an on-campus meeting, each time the Winchester Dam was mentioned.
At one point, one of the WWCD homeowners spoke of his many years of service in the military. DCDP party chair Rosales, a soft-spoken man who served in the U.S. Air Force for two decades, responded by saying that he too, was a veteran. But the WWCD man shouted back hypocritically, “How dare you bring your service into this?”
Beckley told the cheering mob that he hadn’t taken the WWCD’s money when he walked off the summer 2023 Winchester Dam repair project having only completed 50% of the contracted work. “I actually lost money on the dam repairs,” Beckley claimed. “I took my best men off the most profitable projects and put them on that dam repair.”
According to one witness, Beckley was “working the crowd and giving them what they wanted to hear: ‘I’m great, the dam’s great, the fish ladder’s great. And the state and the Democrats are a bunch of liars.’”
Beckley has a penchant for making unsupported accusations, even when his attorneys advise him to keep his mouth shut. He told the mob that ODFW was “lying” about the number of fish that were killed under Beckley’s watch in August 2023. He said they were “lying” about diminishing fish counts at Winchester Dam. When questioned about his failure to test the anchor bolts during summer 2023 repairs, Beckley blamed his subcontractor saying, “It wasn’t my fault,” while the mob applauded and cheered.
Ryan Beckley wanted to make sure that the Democrats would never try to educate potential WWCD Board candidates again. And apparently, he succeeded.
Although single-source procurement is often a sign of corruption or collusion, the WWCD Board of Directors awarded the summer 2023 Winchester Dam repair contract to WWCD Board president Beckley without soliciting competing estimates. This is likely why Beckley doesn’t want ordinary citizens serving on the WWCD Board of Directors. He wants people who will award him future dam repair jobs without soliciting competing bids.
Thanks to Beckley’s mismanagement, the WWCD was fined for a laundry list of permit violations in a September 17, 2024, Notice of Non-Compliance issued by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), and ordered to build a new fish ladder that will cost upwards of $25 million. On October 7, 2023, ODFW fined WWCD $27.5 million for Beckley’s perpetration of the unprecedented massive fish kill–the largest on an Oregon river in 2023, in which more than 550,000 Pacific lamprey were slaughtered.
The WWCD Board of Directors operates like a drug cartel. They have no internet presence. Their street address and phone number are unlisted. For years they didn’t even bother to not publish the minutes or notices of their meetings, as is required by state law. They selectively answer email inquiries, but these responses never bear a name, signature, or street address.
One wonders if the local Democratic Party will learn from this experience or if they will continue to fall into the sea of knowledge without getting wet. Democrats aren’t very popular in Douglas County, where Republicans usually get the lion’s share of the vote. In the past, it has been the DCDP’s modus operandi to blame others when things didn’t work out as they planned.
ODFW rates the 80-year-old substandard concrete fish ladder at Winchester Dam the worst in the state. It’s 400-feet from the primary summer flow, and it’s on the wrong side of the river, making it nearly impossible for fish to locate. According to ODFW, the “presence of exposed rebar, in certain locations” in the cracked and broken concrete fish ladder, “can cause injuries and abrasions to fish and result in harm and fish mortality.”
The uninsurable Winchester Dam provides no hydroelectricity, irrigation, or flood control. It’s rated a “high hazard,” meaning it will kill people when it fails. For more than half a century, its only function has been as a private waterski lake for a few wealthy speedboat owners who live in the WWCD.
According to ODFW, the Winchester Dam impedes wild migratory native fish from accessing 160 miles of high quality upstream habitat on which the state of Oregon has spent tens of millions of dollars of restoration funds.
