One of the numerous permit violations cited in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) September 17, 2024, Notice of Noncompliance to the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), the owners of the condemned Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River, pertains to the use of “unknown” quantities of polyurethane foam used in the 2023 repair of the dam.
Polyurethane foam contains perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), synthetic so-called “forever chemicals” that don’t break down over time. 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.
In 2020, PFOAs 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.
PFAS are used in a myriad of industries and products, including food packaging, stain repellent, 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’re linked to a wide range of health problems, including asthma, decreased fertility, cancer, liver damage, and thyroid disease. Unborn and young children are usually at the highest risk.
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.”
ODFW’s September 17, 2024, Notice of Noncompliance references WWCD’s Fish Passage Plan Application (FPPA), submitted to ODFW in October 2022. The FPPA states that “the planned work” on the Winchester Dam scheduled for August 2023 specified that WWCD’s contractors would “fill voids in the existing dam embankment using polyurethane foam.” The FFPA explained that “[t]here are several known areas where embankment material has been washed out of the dam creating voids behind the wall face.”
This refers to the large concrete southern abutment of the Winchester Dam, the old hydroelectric powerhouse that was destroyed in the flood of 1964, which is visible to motorists driving on Interstate Highway 5.
Most people don’t know that when the concrete for this abutment was poured, they never bothered to excavate all the way down to the bedrock, so it’s sitting on the bed of sediment and mud beneath it. Consequently, for decades, the forceful river current has excavated huge holes beneath the Winchester Dam’s foundation that have been leaking for decades. Divers hired to inspect the damage refused to go anywhere near the leaks for fear they’d be sucked through one of the holes by the force of the current.
These holes beneath the dam’s foundation created a whirlpool in the WWCD’s private water ski lake behind the dam. So, they haphazardly dropped sandbags onto the suspected leak in an attempt to plug the hole, on the upstream side of the dam. But this proved completely ineffective.
Instead of hiring a contractor with a track record in dam repair, WWCD decided instead awarded the $3 million August 2023 dam repair project to Ryan Beckley, president of the WWCD, and owner of TerraFirma Foundation Systems, a basement and concrete repair company. Beckley, who has no previous dam repair experience, signed the October 2022 FPPA submitted to ODFW. Although Beckley is the WWCD president, he lives in West Linn, Oregon, and is not one of the homeowners who live around the private waterski lake behind the dam.
WWCD has known for more than a decade about these huge holes beneath the concrete foundation of the dam. But WWCD did not include them in their October 2022 FPPA, which was signed by Ryan Beckley.
The catastrophic repairs of the Winchester Dam in August and September of 2023, resulted in a $27.5 million lawsuit against WWCD for an unprecedented fish kill of more than half a million Pacific lamprey.
During the August and September 2023 repairs at Winchester Dam, “ODFW observed during project implementation site visits that WWCD filled voids by foam injections along the south bank near the powerhouse, which was not included in October 2022 FFPA. The foam injections both modifies the surface area and mends the surface to prevent leakage. This repair, patch, or modification of the surface area of the upstream, downstream, or top face of the dam is in an unknown amount but represents an amount that when combined with other additional repair or modification work on surface area of the dam exceeds 30 percent of that area.”
According OAR 635-412-0005, if more than 30% of the dam is repaired, it automatically triggers ODFW’s reevaluation of the dam and its fish passage, frequently requiring that the fish passage be brought into compliance. ODFW determined that the use of polyurethane foam during the dam repair in areas not specified in WWCD’s October 2022 FPPA constitute repair to more than 30% of the dam.
This may explain why WWCD didn’t include the polyurethane foam repairs beneath the dam’s foundation at the southern bank near the powerhouse, in their October 2022 FPPA. WWCD didn’t want to trigger OAR 635-412-0005, so they made sure the work specified in the October 2022 FFPA did not exceed the 30% regulation. They figured it would be cheaper to pay the fine than to build a new multi-million dollar fish ladder.
The dam’s 80-year-old concrete fish ladder is substandard and worn down to the rusting rebar; it’s 400-feet from the primary summer flow, and it’s on the wrong side of the river, making it difficult for fish to locate. Consequently, ODFW”s September 17, 2024 Notice of Noncompliance stipulates that “Pursuant to ORS 509.625 (3) (b) (A), WWCD must install fish passage at Winchester Dam.”
ODFW specifies a December 31, 2028, deadline to complete installation of the new fish ladder in order to comply with this “proposed order.”
The Winchester Dam provides no flood control or irrigation. Its sole function is as a private waterski lake for a couple of dozen privileged speedboat owners. Because it provides no public purpose, the Winchester Water Control District itself is an illegal organization. Oregon Revised Statute 553.020 specifically requires all water control districts in 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.
The use of hundreds of cubic feet of polyurethane foam containing forever chemicals in the Winchester Dam, 50-feet upstream from the raw water intake that supplies the drinking water to 37,700 people – one out of three Douglas County residents – is of particularly concern, to say nothing of contaminating the river and the fish with PFAS.
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.
Until the 134-year-old, uninsurable Winchester Dam is removed, polyurethane foam, as well as the thousands of square feet of pressure treated lumber and creosote treated lumber will continue to leach poisons into the North Umpqua River – and by extension into wild migratory native fish and the people who eat them.
An April 1, 2020 letter sent to WWCD offers 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.
Many consider the North Umpqua River to be the number one steelhead stream in North America – and some say, in the world. It is indeed ironic that the “sensitive” and “endangered” native migratory fish in the North Umpqua should be poisoned with PFA’s “forever chemicals” because the most dangerous and illegal dam in Oregon – one that provides no hydroelectricity, flood control, or irrigation, one that maims and kills fish that attempt to pass through it’s broken and crumbling fish ladder, one that is uninsurable and was condemned in 1976 – is still standing.
