Ryan Beckley, ODFW's reigning fish kill champion and President of the Board of Directors of the Winchester Water Control District
In the 1990s, West Virginia farmer Wilbur Tennant watched as his cows began dying after DuPont, the world’s largest chemical company, began dumping chemical waste in a landfill next to his ranch.
Tennant tried to get answers, but DuPont stonewalled him. Tennant sued, exposing one of the biggest corporate cover-ups in U.S. history—the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.
“They [DuPont] wanna try and keep everything hushed up.” Tennant explained. “Like it’s some kind of big secret… They won’t tell us what it is. They don’t wanna talk to me. Because I’m an old dumb farmer. I’m not supposed to know anything. But it’s not gonna be covered up. Because I’m gonna bring it out in the open for people to see.”
Thirty years later, during the August 2023 “repairs” of Winchester Dam, Ryan Beckley, owner of TerraFirma Foundation Systems, and President of the Winchester Water Control District, owners of the the derelict Winchester Dam, violated his permit by using hundreds of gallons of polyurethane foam to fill the enormous holes excavated by the river current under the dam.
Providing no hydroelectricity, irrigation, or flood control, the Winchester Dam’s only function is as a mile and a half long private water ski lake for a handful of wealthy, privileged speedboat owners.
But the polyurethane foam Ryan Beckley used to patch the holes under the Winchester Dam contain the same PFAS “forever chemicals” that poisoned Wilbur Tennant’s cattle.
Many people don’t know that the drinking water supply of more than 37,000 county residents is just 50-feet downstream from the condemned and uninsurable, 135-year-old Winchester Dam.
The use of this toxic polyurethane foam is just one of a laundry list of permit violations cited in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’ September 17, 2024, Notice of Noncompliance to Ryan Beckley and the Winchester Water Control District.
Polyurethane foam—the same poison at the center of the DuPont scandal—contains perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), synthetic “forever chemicals” that don’t break down over time.
Like DuPont, Ryan Beckley benefits from a political culture where officials look the other way rather than pay for testing or cleanup to ensure public safety.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality admits that PFAS contaminate public water systems across the state—23 of which have PFAS levels above safe drinking water standards.
PFAS poisons are endocrine-disrupting chemicals due to their ability to interfere with hormone systems. They accumulate in the testes and can lead to the collapse of testosterone levels and male fertility by damaging Leydig cells in the testes, and are linked to low sperm counts, infertility, increased rates of testicular cancer, and disrupted puberty or sexual development.
These poisons linger in the bloodstream for decades. Even the most minuscule dose can alter hormone signaling, presenting a synergistic, slow-motion assault on male reproductive health. PFAS are linked to diminished testosterone levels and low sperm count.
PFAS presently contaminate so many U.S. rivers, they are now found in freshwater fish. Seventeen states have issued PFAS consumption advisories warning residents that fish from certain lakes or rivers are not suitable for human consumption due to dangerously high levels of PFAS – forever chemicals.
Today, nearly 50% of the American population is drinking water contaminated with toxic PFAS chemicals. Tragically, this is likely an underestimation as many public drinking water sources have yet to be tested.
Few foods are as highly contaminated with PFAS as freshwater fish.
One study of locally caught freshwater fish around the United States found that eating even a single portion can increase your blood level of PFAS poisons as much as drinking heavily contaminated water every day for an entire month.
Ironically, it isn’t just our drinking water and our fish that is contaminated with PFAS—they are used in a countless industries and products, including food packaging, stain repellent, make-up, lotion, personal care products, disposable diapers, children’s clothing, waterproofing products, electronics, and non-stick cookware.
PFAS accumulate in soil, in water, in fish, and in the liver and blood of human beings. They are linked to a wide range of health problems, including asthma, decreased fertility, liver damage, kidney cancer, prostate and testicular cancer, leukemia, organ damage, infertility, obesity, diabetes, reduced IQ, immune suppression, pregnancy complications, as well as birth defects and thyroid disease.
Unborn and young children are usually at the highest risk.
550,000 Pacific lamprey died during August 2023 Winchester Dam “repairs.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), some forever chemicals “take over 1,000 years to decompose.” The United States “has already begun phasing out PFAS, with many states now banning their use and the federal government publishing legally enforceable standards to protect communities from exposure.”
DuPont and 3M are among the largest manufacturers of poison PFAS chemicals.
DuPont-funded scientist first articulated the principle that underlies the American system for regulating toxic chemicals—that any chemical is presumed safe until proven otherwise. In this way, the burden of proof is never on the manufacturer or distributor of these poisons, but rather on the unsuspecting public.
And so, every existing toxic chemical was “grandfathered in” and presumed safe. This means that the most of the more than 80,000 chemicals for sale today in the United States have never been tested for safety or toxicity.
Some states are passing laws that ban entire classes of poisons, but this is the exception to the rule—in the USA, each chemical is usually evaluated individually. According to Mariah Blake, author of They Poisoned the World—Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, 30 U.S. states have passed at least 170 laws restricting PFAS; this includes 16 full or partial bans on the entire class of chemicals in consumer goods.
The manufacturers of PFAS chemicals secretly studied the harmful effects of PFAS on human and animal health since the 1960s. Like the tobacco and oil company cover-ups, they kept the extremely negative findings of their research from ever reaching the public, effectively avoiding regulatory agencies.
The main manufacturers of these poisons, 3M and DuPont, have known since the 1960s that PFAS poisons were extremely toxic. They have known since the 1970s that these chemicals were already found in blood samples of people in dozens of U.S. States—including places where there was no known source of exposure.
Once it was apparent that these chemicals were already in the blood of virtually every American, it created an industry-wide panic. The manufacturers began intensively studying PFAS poisons, discovering that they did not break down naturally.
DuPont began testing their employees and found PFAS chemicals in their blood. Test of lab animals resulted in devastating impacts from PFAS chemicals. One test on monkeys was aborted because all the test subjects died of exposure to PFAS poisons.
Non-stick Teflon-coated cookware is made with PFAS chemicals. Many people who keep birds as pets have made the unpleasant discovery that water warmed in a Teflon-coated pan is lethal to birds.
In the 1980s, DuPont began monitoring pregnant workers in its Teflon plant, testing them to determine whether this PFAS chemical caused birth defects—which it did. In fact, two of the seven women in the study gave birth to children with horrible facial deformities—which were quite similar to facial deformities 3M discovered testing the same PFAS chemicals on rats.
But 3M and DuPont kept the results of these studies from the public for decades, until Wilbur Tennant sued them and these studies were exposed.
This prompted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to investigate DuPont and 3M, the two largest multinational manufacturers of the lethal PFAS chemicals.
For decades, tobacco companies funded studies that “proved” lung cancer was not connected to smoking cigarettes. In the end, it was proven that these studies were entirely false, and that smoking cigarettes actually causes lung cancer.
DuPont and 3M, armed with billions of dollars, mounted a “tobacco science” response to the EPA’s claims that PFAS chemicals poisoned people and animals, delaying regulation for decades.
In 2018, as more and more people learned that their drinking water was contaminated with PFAS poisons, a citizens’ movement gained momentum. Thereafter, Congress began drafting legislation to ban these poisons. But 3M organized a front group called the Responsible Science Policy Coalition who lobbied the legislature, downplaying the negative health effects of PFAS poisons.
For decades, the EPA encouraged farmers to spread sewage sludge over their fields as fertilizer. But it’s now well-documented that sewage sludge is highly contaminated with PFAS poisons. Consequently, many American farms have higher levels of PFAS contamination than military bases and manufacturing plants.
On February 7, 2023, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands jointly submitted the EU PFAS Restriction Proposal, aiming for a blanket ban on all PFAS chemicals.
In 2007, a U.S. study on members of the public found PFAS in more than 98% of blood samples. It can take over seven years for PFAS in a person’s bloodstream to reduce by half. Lead, which has been regulated since the 1970s in the U.S., takes just 32 days. The European Union began regulating PFAS in 2008 and outright banned the compound in 2020. The U.S. started phasing the compound out in 2003, ultimately outlawing it in 2014.
In 2020, PFAS chemicals were banned worldwide as part of the Stockholm Convention, a global health treaty between 186 countries.
But they are still used in the United States.
Bankrupt municipalities like Douglas County, Oregon, don’t test for these toxic chemicals because, if PFAS chemicals were detected, the county would have to mitigate the situation, which would be very expensive. So it’s cheaper for them to not test at all.
Most Douglas County residents can’t afford an under-the-sink tap water system certified to remove PFAS. It is prudent to avoid purchasing products marketed as “waterproof,” “greaseproof,” or “stain resistant,” as these usually are made with PFAS poisons. Additionally, it is wise to avoid food storage containers and utensils made of plastic, opting for alternatives made of natural materials like glass, stainless steel, or wood.
Until the condemned uninsurable Winchester Dam is removed, polyurethane foam—as well as the thousands of square feet of pressure treated lumber and creosote treated lumber from which the dam is constructed—will continue to leach poisons into the North Umpqua River, and by extension into wild migratory native fish and the people who eat them, and the drinking water supply for one out of three county residents.
One hesitates to speculate what Douglas County citizens do when they discover—too late—that the owners of the Winchester Dam (and their elected enablers) are robbing them of their testosterone, their fertility, and their future?
