State Rep. Vurgle Osborne
Virgle Osborne, State Representative of Oregon’s House District 2, is suffering from an apparent credibility gap.
Known around the Oregon State Capital as “Ryan Beckley’s errand boy,” Osborne has compromised his integrity by repeatedly issuing false written statements regarding the condemned and uninsurable Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River, five miles north of Roseburg, Oregon.
Regulations clearly state that fragile baby turtles can only be released by trained personnel and not by hotel guests.
At the behest of his capo, Ryan Beckley, president of the Board of Directors of the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), owners of the infamous Winchester Dam, and owner of TerraFirma Foundation Systems, Rep. Osborne announced on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, that he is introducing state legislation for a taxpayer funded study to rebuild the derelict and deadbeat Winchester Dam and its worst-in-the-state substandard fish ladder.
Osborne claimed “This is a study bill to compute cost. Ultimately, the cost of this replacement and power station would be a federal project funded by the Trump Administration, not the landowners.”
In other words, the cost of repairing this crumbling and leaking condemned 135-year-old dam that serves no purpose other than as a private waterski lake for a handful of privileged speedboat owning homeowners in the Winchester Water Control District will be transferred from the homeowners to the Oregon taxpayers.
But it appears Osborne told a fib.
According to Anna Kelly, White House as a Deputy Press Secretary, “The Trump Administration will not be funding any projects in so-called ‘sanctuary states.’ A White House Communications Official stated that they were not aware of any communication between White House staff and Rep. Osborne.
Oregon is a Sanctuary State, meaning that state and local governments are prohibited from helping federal immigration authorities like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The law was passed in 1987 and has been strengthened several times since it was enacted.
Osborne responded to critics of his proposed bill on Facebook writing “This is a study bill, not a finished proposal. Yes DC [sic] already knows this. Do you realize I am a state rep. It’s [sic] my job to create bills and all of them that have hearings or go to OREGON [sic] state house and senate. This is a study bill to see what makes the most sense to use the dam for.”
Osborne added, “Hard to say if it’s an idea that will take hold or not…. The only way I would support it is if it would benefit the entire community by adding electricity and saving fish.”
But Rep. Osborne is just blowing smoke.
He is ignoring the simple economic reality that the 17-foot dam isn’t tall enough for high-capacity electricity production, which requires both flow and hydraulic head. But if they raise the height of the dam for greater capacity, lakefront homeowners lose acreage and, by extension, property value, so that’s a dealbreaker.
So Osborne’s plan is merely a ruse to allow Ryan Beckley and the WWCD to trick taxpayers into paying money to study the dam (instead of removing it).
By the end of the Second World War, Winchester Dam’s hydroelectric power plant on the North Umpqua River was no longer profitable. In 1948, the Toketee Powerhouse, the first of the eight dams in the new North Umpqua Hydroelectric Project, was erected sixty miles upstream from the Winchester Dam. Although the Winchester Dam power plant, continued to operate, it was obsolete by the 1950s. The plant was destroyed in the 1964 flood and never rebuilt. For six decades the dam’s only function has been as private water ski lake from which the public is excluded.
Osborne pretends he is unaware that five years ago, April 1, 2020, a letter was sent to the WWCD offering to permanently remove the Winchester Dam “at little or no direct cost to the District [WWCD]” and to “end ongoing harm to fisheries and water quality in the North Umpqua River.
The letter was signed by the leaders of Steamboaters, North Umpqua Foundation, Umpqua Watersheds, Inc., Umpqua Valley Fly Fishers, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, Northwest Guides and Anglers Association, Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Associations, Oregon Wild, Port Orford Sustainable Seafood, Rogue Flyfishers, Pacific Rivers, Native Fish Society, Cascadia Wildlands, American Whitewater, and McKenzie Flyfishers. It’s a standing offer that WWCD refuses to acknowledge.
In a graphic example of the pathology of wealth and power, 99 privileged property owners in WWCD collectively spent more than $3 million of their own money on the summer of 2023 repairs of the long ago condemned Winchester Dam, in order to retain control of their private water ski lake, rather than allow river advocate groups to remove the dam at no cost to them.
Readers will remember Rep. Osborne’s boss, Ryan Beckley, who is Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) “Fish Kill Champion of 2023.” Beckley is the notorious contractor who botched the summer 2023 repairs at the Winchester Dam, resulting in the death of more than half a million wild migratory native fish and incurring an unprecedented $27.5 million fine.
One week after the massive fish kill, during the hottest days of August, Ryan Beckley held a press conference at the construction site at the dewatered Winchester Dam.
Photographs of Republican Rep. Virgle Osborne, Republican Senator David Brock Smith, as well as the three Republican Douglas County Commissioners, Tim Freeman, Chris Boice, and Tom Kress, standing in solidarity with Beckley at the Winchester Dam during the August 17, 2023, press conference were posted to Facebook, as these elected officials publicly demonstrated their support for the man who, two months later would be recognized as the perpetrator the biggest fish kill on an Oregon river in 2023.
State representative Virgle Osborne went so far as to issue an August 30, 2023, statement declaring:
“My office has received numerous letters regarding Winchester Dam… After many phone calls and letters, I began my own investigation of the work being done on the dam and the folks conducting the work… There were numerous other actions being taken on the site that were in full compliance with DEQ [Oregon Department of Environmental Quality], ODFW and many other agencies that are monitoring the site… My observations are backed up by facts is that the Winchester Water Control District and associated contractors are in compliance with requirements to do the repairs on the dam… I would like to thank Ryan Beckley for letting us do a site inspection and exceeding all required expectations to protect the fish and the environment.”
It now appears that Representative Osborne was disingenuous in his August 30, 2023, statement and utterly wrong about the events that took place at the Winchester Dam in August and September 2023. So much for Osborne’s assertions that his opinions were “backed up by facts.”
One wonders if Osborne will issue an apology for lying to his constituents, who will remember his lack of integrity when he’s up for reelection.
Too cheap to rent a dump truck, Ryan Beckley stored wet concrete in a makeshift super sack retention pond. This decision resulted in dozens of yards of toxic green concrete contaminating the river (and the drinking water supply for 37,700 county residents), as well as a $134,000 fine from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
But Osborne wrote that Beckley and the WWCD were in “full compliance with DEQ [Oregon Department of Environmental Quality] – which apparently was false.
One wonders how Osborne could have been so wrong about so many of the assertions in his August 30, 2023, press release. Is he a willful and deliberate liar, or is he simply so naive and uneducated that he believed Ryan Beckley’s misinformation? Osborne hopes readers will believe the latter and not the former.
On September 17, 2024, ODFW sent the WWCD a 23-page Notice of Non-Compliance itemizing a laundry list of outrageous permit violations Beckley incurred during the botched summer of 2023 repairs of the Winchester Dam.
This document proves that Osborne’s August 30, 2023, statement was pure fiction.
In August of 2023, Beckley posted to his Instagram page, “Gee, I can name at least two dozen dam construction and renovations that I’ve prime contracted over the past 24.” But according to Jim McCarthy of WaterWatch of Oregon, Beckley has “never repaired a dam before in his life.”
At the August 17, 2023, press conference, he told Hannah Seibold of the Roseburg News-Review:
“There’s never been a salvage effort anywhere comparable to that whatsoever. I’m not trying to paint a picture that we were callous about it or we disregarded it, but we’re spending almost a quarter of a million dollars on fish salvage.” This just eight days after Beckley perpetrated the aforementioned slaughter of more than half a million wild migratory native fish – seven generations of Pacific lamprey.
Readers will be interested to learn that Patrick Markham, owner of the Roseburg News-Review has removed the article quoted above, apparently because this quoted statement is incriminating.
Photographs taken during the August 2023 repairs clearly show the crumbling and leaking dam face which is patched with hundreds of pressure-treated 2 x 12” boards that leach copper, arsenic, and chromium, and creosote-treated lumber, a “probable human carcinogen” prohibited “for use in contact with food, feed, or drinking water,” just 50-feet upstream from the drinking water intake for one out of three of the county’s 112,000 residents.
And the Winchester Dam now leaks even worse than it did before Beckley’s summer of 2023 repairs.
