Sometimes DUI cases and environmental conservation collide, as in this incident last week

Tanker crash prompts DUII probe

By Chelsea Gorrow

The Register-Guard

State police say the state Department of Fish and Wildlife driver who crashed his state-owned tanker truck Tuesday, spilling a load of 11,000 juvenile salmon on the McKenzie Highway near Walterville, may have been under the influence of alcohol.

Ray C. Lewis, 45, of Umpqua, had an initial medical blood alcohol level of 0.29 percent, Oregon State Police Lt. Josh Brooks said Wednesday.

That’s more than three times the level at which the driver of a passenger vehicle is presumed to be intoxicated under Oregon law and nearly seven times the level of presumed intoxication for someone using a commercial driver’s license, according to the state Driver and Motor Vehicles Services Division’s standards.

Lewis was driving a tanker truck owned by the state.

Lewis was taken to a hospital with facial and scalp lacerations and a broken shoulder after the crash.

The crash occurred about 3 p.m. near Cedar Flat when the tanker truck went off the highway, hit a power pole and ended up on its side in the ditch. The truck was transporting salmon from the Department of Fish and Wildlife McKenzie Hatchery on the McKenzie River to the Row River after a dam malfunction caused water levels to drop at the hatchery.

The move was an effort to save the salmon. Instead, 11,000 died.

The truck that crashed was one of 10 truck loads moving a total of 227,000 young salmon.

According to the state Driver and Motor Vehicles Services Division, a person using a commercial driver’s license is considered intoxicated if they have a blood-alcohol level of 0.04 percent or higher. A person using a standard passenger-vehicle driver’s license is considered intoxicated if they have a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent or higher.

Lewis has not been cited.

The Department of Fish and Wildlife is releasing the salmon into the Row River, which feeds into the Coast Fork of the Willamette River, because it is facing a lawsuit claiming that it releases too many hatchery salmon each year into the McKenzie, jeopardizing native salmon.

The agency still has about 570,000 young salmon at the McKenzie hatchery.