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On September 17, 2024, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) served the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), owners of the condemned and derelict Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River, with an order to build a new $25-30 million fish ladder.
According to ODFW, Winchester Dam and its 80-year-old substandard concrete fish ladder is the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in the state. It’s 400-feet from the primary summer flow and on the wrong side of the river, making it difficult for fish to locate.
But even if a fish manages to find the broken fish ladder, according a fisheries biologist with 30 years experience in the Umqpua Basin, it usually takes it six or seven attempts before a fish recognizes the fish ladder as an upstream passage. This results in questionable and even inaccurate fish counts at Winchester Dam.
Fish counts at Soda Springs Dam, 60 miles upstream, are significantly more reliable because fish easily locate the $60 million state-of the-art-fish ladder on the first attempt.
And as a fish passes through the crumbling concrete fish ladder at Winchester Dam, it’s often maimed, injured, or even killed by the exposed rusting iron rebar.
ODFW’s September 17, 2024, Notice of Noncompliance describes “inadequate fishway attraction flows at the fishway [fish ladder] entrance (s) and excessive false attraction flows. This discrepancy from design standards and criteria can prevent or delay, upstream migrating fish from finding the fish ladder entrance, which can result in fish injury, or harm, including stress, by NMF [native migratory fish] expending, effort in multiple attempts to leap over the dam… The “deteriorated internal fishway walls” of the fish ladder “are spalling [fragmenting], which can cause abrasions to fish and result in fish injury, or harm, including stress” and the “presence of exposed rebar, in certain locations, which can cause injuries and abrasions to fish and result in a harm and fish mortality.”
The fish ladder video camera at Winchester Dam is the main attraction at Matt Hill’s website for the Umpqua Fishery Enhancement Derby—a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation funded by the Douglas Timer Operators (DTO) and its members. In the past 30 years, the Derby has granted $1.83 million for “fishery enhancement, restoration, and educational projects in the Umpqua Basin.”
Ironically, the restoration mentioned in the previous paragraph would not be necessary if not for the damage caused by DTO’s own members’ over-logging, and failing to observe best forestry management practices.
As support coalesces for the removal of the long-ago condemned Winchester Dam, some neighbors bemoan the inevitable loss of Winchester Dam’s fish ladder video camera.
Some believe that Winchester Dam has the only fish ladder camera and counting station on the North Umpqua River—and if it is removed, ODFW won’t be able to count the fish.
And the three Douglas County Commissioners, as well as Matt Hill and his Umpqua Fish Enhancement Derby website, do everything they can to perpetuate this myth.
The cheerful images on the Umpqua Fish Enhancement Derby website of the occasional fish passing through the antiquated fish ladder betray the reality that the native fish count at Winchester Dam is so desperately low, the fishing season is usually closed.
Fish injured by the exposed rusting iron rebar at Winchester Dam
Douglas County Commissioners Tom Kress and Chris Boice claim the fish ladder video camera at Winchester Dam is “one of a kind on the West Coast.”
But their assertion is false—it’s not even “one of a kind,” even on the North Umpqua River.
The only thing that makes the Winchester Dam “one-of-a-kind” is that ODFW rates it the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in the state—attached to fish-killing fish ladder at a condemned dam that’s too high for fish to jump, and rated a “high hazard,” meaning the Oregon Water Resources Department expects “loss of life” when the dam fails.
No other dam in Oregon can make those claims.
The fish ladder video camera at Winchester Dam is identical to the fish ladder video camera upstream from Winchester Dam at Soda Springs Dam which, along with the fish counting stations, were paid for by taxpayers.
Tour guides at the Soda Springs Dam delight in explaining how the fish ladder and viewing station at their dam is far superior to the “antiquated” and “out-of-date” fish ladder at Winchester Dam. Anyone who has visited the Soda Springs Dam can see for themselves what a state-of-the-dam and fish ladder looks like.
By comparison, the Winchester Dam and its fish killing fish ladder appear to be (as one Soda Springs Dam visitor recently commented) “a primitive wood obstruction—the kind of things that me and 15 of my logger buddies would build on a weekend. Do people realize what a real, permanent dam looks like and how much it would really cost?”
When the Winchester Dam is removed, the Umpqua Fishery Enhancement Derby will broadcast the live video feed from the fish ladder video camera at Soda Springs Dam to keep their website visitors entertained.
Commissioners Kress and Boice are just doing their part to help their cronies, the two dozen speedboat owners in the Winchester Water Control District from losing their private water ski lake behind the condemned and deadbeat Winchester Dam—a dam that provides no hydroelectricity, irrigation, or flood control—the most dangerous and illegal dam in Oregon.
