Mats made of used truck tires placed in the North Umpqua riverbed during the botched "repairs" of Winchester Dam, August 2023
On Thursday afternoon, September 10, 2026, at a meeting of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) commissioners, they voted to uphold fines of $104,767 for permits violations incurred during botched “repairs” of the condemned Winchester Dam in August 2023, by Ryan Beckley, President of the Board of Directors of the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), and owner of TerraFirma Foundation Repair, Inc.
Beckley’s lawyer, Dominic Carollo unsuccessfully implored the commissioners to reduce the fine, which resulted from Beckley spilling green concrete—stored in a makeshift, jerry-rigged retention pond constructed of supersacks—directly into the North Umpqua River, and other permit violations
Apparently, Ryan Beckley, was too frugal to rent a dump truck. Carollo shamelessly claimed that his client was a first time violator.
But the commissioners knew this was false.
In 2018, Juan Yraguen, then a member of the WWCD Board of Directors subcontracted the “repair” of Winchester Dam (without the proper permits) to his Basco Logging, Inc.—a company he owned—resulting in the exact same permit violation incurred by Beckley in 2023. DEQ fined Yraguen $58,378 for pouring pollutants and green cement into the river and be extension, the public drinking water system.
Curiously there was no discussion of the fact that the drinking water intake for 37,700 Douglas County residence is 50 feet downstream of the Winchester Dam.
Beckley also violated his permit by placing mats constructed of used truck tires into the de-watered North Umpqua riverbed. Tires leach a substance called 6PPD-quinone that is lethal to salmon. During the trial, Beckley admitted these tire mats were, in fact, in contact with the water in multiple places.
The commissioners found that Ryan Beckley was responsible for the work of the WWCD’s contractors and subcontractors, serving a dual role as president of the district’s board as well as president of TerraFirma, and that he was onsite for most of the project making and implementing decisions.
In March 2026, Senior Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Jarry upheld civil penalties against the WWCD for water quality violations committed during Ryan Beckley’s botched “repairs” of the infamous Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River in August 2023.
In her proposed and final order, Judge Jarry called Ryan Beckley’s environmental violations “flagrant,” “reckless” and “a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would observe in that situation.”
She also found that the WWCD cannot shield itself from responsibility by claiming a lack of control over the project or from violations incurred by its contractors and subcontractors, including Terra Firma Foundation Repair, and DOWL Engineering.
Judge Jarry’s order states that the violations included:
• Work that was inconsistent with the permitted project description.
• Inadequate erosion and sediment controls.
• Placing mats made of used truck tires in the riverbed.
• Spilling green concrete into the North Umpqua.
• Operating heavy machinery in the flowing river channel.
• Failure to fully isolate the in-water work area from the active stream
Although Ryan Beckley, has repeatedly sued government agencies rather than comply with regulations and laws, this legal strategy is proving unsuccessful.
He’s lost every lawsuit he brought against the state agency this year.
The millions of dollars spent of legal fees are collectively paid by the WWCD MEMBERS—109 homeowners whose residences surround the private water ski lake behind the Winchester Dam from which the public is excluded.
But Beckley, WWCD, and TerraFirma are still on the hook for a $27.5 million October 6, 2023, lawsuit brought by the Oregon Department of Justice for violation of their permit that resulted in the infamous, record-breaking fish kill of more than 550,000 Pacific lamprey during the same so-called “repair” project.
On September 17, 2024, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlfie (ODFW) Director Debbie Colbert ordered WWCD to build a new $70 million fish ladder at the Winchester Dam by 2029.
That means each of the 109 WWCD owners will have to pay approximately $700,000 for this fish ladder—which is more than some of their properties are worth.
Since Ryan Beckley has vowed to appeal the decision, the cost will only go up. No wonder none no properties in the WWCD were bought or sold in 2025, in a neighborhood where historically one out of 10 properties were filpped each year.
On February 20, 2026, the seven ODFW commissioners voted six-to-one to adopt a ruling that the Winchester Dam has been in violation of fish passage laws since its owner did construction work in 2023.
Judge Jarry found that Beckley and his subcontractors failed to remove temporary construction materials before the approved in-water work window ended and failed to provide unobstructed fish passage, which resulted in the record-breaking fish kill.
Her order clearly states that Beckley and his company had no previous experience in this kind of in-water work involved in the project, as Beckley has repeatedly claimed.
Judge Jarry wrote, “In early March 2023, Respondent [Beckley] retained a law firm to provide advice regarding the process of seeking and selecting a general contractor to complete the dam repair project. Mr. Beckley , who is also the owner and operator of TerraFirma, recused himself from the selection process because he planned to submit a bid on behalf of TerraFirma [a company he owns].”
According to Judge Jarry, Beckley’s TerraFirma, the contractor hired for the repair work, listed experience involving foundation repair, waterproofing, wall stabilization, and concrete work.
But she found Terra Firma’s disclosed project history included just one solitary in-water project and that few, if any, of Beckley’s employees on site during the 2023 repair had any in-water work experience.
Jarry’s order states “The Winchester Dam is categorized as a High Hazard dam by OWRD [Oregon Water Resources Department], which ‘means that OWRD expects loss of human life to occur if the dam were to fail.’”
Judge Jarry noted that Beckley was a repeat offender, stating “In 2018, Respondent hired Basco Logging to perform repairs to the dam. Basco Logging was owned by a member of the Board. In his capacity as Board President, Mr. Beckley oversaw dam repair work performed by Basco Logging. Basco Logging was subject to a DEQ enforcement action due to discharging concrete into the river during the repair project… Respondent paid part of the civil penalty assessed by DEQ against Basco Logging…
“Based on the 2018 repair project, respondent anticipated incurring fines for the 2023 project… In 2021, Respondent had approved up to $3,000,000 in bonds to pay for the repair project and to ‘pay fines, penalties, judgements, legal fees and other costs related to the Winchester Dam,’ among other things.”
The violations against Beckley and WWCD were upheld across several categories tied to permit compliance, including project consistency, erosion and sediment control, concrete, tire mats, in-channel equipment operation, fish passage and work area isolation.
But the judge’s order states that Beckley apparently did not learn from his mistakes, repeating the same violation in August 2023—by failing to use a dump truck or cement mixer to contain green cement that wound up spilling into the river, fifty feet upstream of the drinking water intake for one out of three county residents.
The WWCD members, held hostage by their own board of directors, aren’t the only ones getting stuck paying millions in legal fees. Oregon taxpayers are spending million of dollars as state agencies and the Oregon Department of Justice respond to Beckley’s many apparently frivolous lawsuits.
Consider how many hundreds of millions of dollars Oregon taxpayers will save after the condemned and derelict Winchester Dam is removed.
