Quite a few Douglas County residents have asked, when the long-ago condemned Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River is finally removed, is another record-breaking fish kill inevitable?
The summer of 2023 so-called “repairs” of the Winchester Dam caused the biggest fish kill on an Oregon river in 2023.
According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), 550,000 Pacific lamprey, a wild migratory native fish, died as a result of Winchester Water Control District’s (WWCD) permits violation in August of 2023.
On September 17, 2024, ODFW ordered the WWCD to build a new $25 million+ fish ladder.
Ryan Beckley of West Linn, Oregon, is president of the Board of Directors of the WWCD, owners of the 135-year-old Winchester Dam. In an abundance of self-interest, in 2022 Beckley persuaded his fellow WWCD Board members to award the summer 2023 dam repair contract to Beckley’s own company, TerraFirma Foundations Systems, a basement repair company with no prior experience repairing dams.
It is worth remembering that when the dams were removed on the Rogue River in neighboring Curry County a few years ago, Curt Melcher, former director of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, refused to allow the fish ladders to be shut down (or fish passage blocked) for even one minute. And these dams were successfully removed from the Rogue River without perpetrating a massive fish kill.
But for reasons that have never been adequately explained, ODFW’s Melcher permitted the draining of every drop of water in the private waterski lake behind crumbling and derelict Winchester Dam, leaving the riverbed dry (and completely blocking fish passage) for more than 30 days during the hottest months of summer, and resulting in the end of Melcher’s career, as well as the biggest fish Oregon river kill of 2023, and a $27.5 million lawsuit brought by the Oregon Department of Justice.
The ODFW Fish Passage Plan signed and submitted by Ryan Beckley on October 18, 2022, stipulated that the 391-acre-feet of water stored in the private waterski lake behind crumbling and derelict Winchester Dam would be lowered at a rate of no more than two inches per hour to minimize disturbance to the aquatic habitat and fish.
Since the dam is 17-feet tall, this meant the dewatering of the of private waterski lake behind the dam would occur gradually, over the course of more than four days (two inches per hour x 204 inches).
Pacific lamprey are wild migratory native fish that have populated the North Umpqua River for a millennia. Like salmon, lamprey spawn in gravel riffles further up the Umpqua Watershed. Juvenile lamprey spend the first seven years of their life burrowing in the wet silt along the riverbank. If Ryan Beckley had complied with the specifications of his permit and drained the private waterski lake behind the dam at two inches per minute, the dewatering would have occurred so slowly, the juvenile lamprey in the wet riverbank silt would have had plenty of time to gradually migrate down the riverbank to wetter silt as the moisture drained from the mud on the shore.
But Ryan Beckley showed little regard for the science behind the Fish Passage Plan which bore his signature. He willfully and deliberately drained the water ten times faster than stimulated in his permit.
According to eyewitnesses, shortly after midnight on August 6, 2023, Beckley opened the flood gates on the Winchester Dam to their full capacity and drained the private waterski lake behind the dam at two-feet per hour – ten times faster than his permit allowed.
Consequently, the lake was totally “dewatered” in nine hours, instead of more than 100.
Beckley’s Fish Passage Plan stipulated that a sprinkler system would keep the silt in the dewatered dam moist in the scorching August heat. But Beckley dropped the ball. His sprinkler system proved to be a total failure.
This is how Ryan Beckley became ODFW’s fish kill champion of 2023. He needlessly slaughtered of more than half a million Pacific lamprey, literally killing seven generations of this wild migratory native fish.
Beckley claimed he complied with his permit regarding the draining of the private waterski lake. However, he was apparently unaware that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) maintains a stream gauging station on the North Umpqua River, five miles downstream of the Winchester Dam, and the real-time stream gage data appears on their website.
An August 2023 screenshot from the USGS stream gauging station on the North Umpqua River clearly indicates a severe spike which coincides precisely with the excessively fast release of the 391-acre-feet of water in the private water ski lake behind the Winchester Dam. The sudden increase in water volume on August 7, 2023, is clearly visible on the USGS chart monitoring water discharge and the cubic feet per second. It took about 4 hours for the river to go from baseline (750cfs) to the peak of the release (1020cfs).
This evidence refutes Beckley’s claim that he drained the private water ski lake behind the dam at a rate of two inches per hour, as specified in his permit.
According to Umpqua basin biologists, it will be a decade or more before Pacific lamprey populations on the North Umpqua River recover from Beckley’s solitary act of ecocide.
For this reason, Ryan Beckley and the Winchester Water Control District must never again permitted to attempt so-called “repairs” of the Winchester Dam. Like a driver with dozens of D.U.I.s, they are repeat offenders with a terrible track record of serial permits violations whose licenses should be summarily revoked.
So, it begs the question: when the condemned Winchester Dam is finally removed from the North Umpqua River, will this result in another massive and unprecedented fish kill?
The answer is no.
On April 1, 2020, a letter was sent to the WWCD Board of Directors offering to permanently remove the deadbeat 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.
These are some of the same groups who expertly and successfully removed the four dams from the Rogue River without a massive fish kill – and without stopping fish passage for one second
Their April 1, 2020 letter constitutes a standing offer that the WWCD has refused to acknowledge for nearly five years.
This is a graphic example of the pathology of wealth and power. The 99 privileged homeowners in WWCD collectively spent more than $3 million of their own money on the summer 2023 dam “repairs,” 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 the WWCD.
And what did the WWCD homeowners get for their $3 million they paid Beckley?
• The dam now leaks worse than it did before Beckley began his summer 2023 repairs.
• Beckley only completed half the work in his contract.
• Oregon DOJ is suing them for $27.5 million.
• They’re looking at another $25 million+ to build a new fish ladder.
• They’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees because their Board of Directors would rather sue than comply with state law.
Unlike Ryan Beckley and the WWCD, the seventeen groups removing the Winchester Dam will build cofferdams (a temporary enclosure built around a construction site in the river that creates a dry work area) making it possible to remove the 450-foot Winchester Dam without blocking fish passage for one second, just as they did during the removal of the dams from the Rogue River.
In this way the dam will be removed without causing another massive fish kill.
Had Ryan Beckley been willing to spend the money and time to build cofferdams, he and the WWCD and Terra Firma, would not be the defendants in a $27.5 million lawsuit brought by the Oregon Department of Justice for the biggest Oregon river fish kill of 2023.
The recent removal of the dams from the Klamath River have sparked concerns about the great quantities of silt that collected behind those dams that resulted in deer and other animals stuck in the deep muddy silt.
Some Douglas County residents fear the same thing will happen on the North Umpqua River when the Winchester Dam is removed.
But the Iron Gate on the Klamath was more than ten times taller than the Winchester Dam, resulting in exponentially more silt collecting behind them.
Few realize that the Winchester Dam, in its 135 years of existence, has never been attached to the bedrock. The dam itself is floating on a bed of wet, shifting silt, which is why the Oregon Water Resources Department condemned it in 1976 and rated it a “high hazard,” meaning that “loss of life” will occur when the dam fails.
Consequently, the river current bored huge tunnels beneath the dam, which flushed the silt under the dam and downstream. These holes were never plugged until Ryan Beckley filled them with PFAS forever-chemical polyurethane foam in August 2023. So, there’s very little silt collected behind the Winchester Dam.
According to ODFW, the 80-year-old substandard and crumbling fish ladder at Winchester Dam is the worst barrier to fish in Oregon. On September 17, 2024, Debbie Colbert, the new director of ODFW, ordered the WWCD to build a new state-of-the-art fish ladder. This will easily cost $25 million or more, which is more money than the WWCD has spent on dam “repair” and “maintenance” in the last half century.
Since three out of four homeowners who live around the private water ski lake behind the Winchester Dam don’t even own a speedboat, the standing offer to remove the dam at no cost to the owners becomes increasingly attractive.
Ironically, when the dam is gone and the river returns to its normal (lower) water level, lakefront property owners in the WWCD will gain additional acreage. Some lakefront properties will more than double in size and increase in value, commensurably.
WWCD homeowners are faced with a simple decision: allow the seventeen local groups to remove the condemned Winchester Dam at little or no cost, or continue paying millions of dollars to keep a private waterski lake that is only used by a handful of their neighbors.
It’s a no brainer.
