SEATTLE — The United States and Canada announced Thursday that they have agreed to update a 60-year-old treaty governing the use of one of North America’s largest rivers, the Columbia. Officials said the provisions will ensure effective flood control, irrigation and hydroelectric power generation and sharing between the countries.
The “agreement in principle,” reached after six years of talks, provides a framework for updating the Columbia River Treaty. It calls on the U.S. to retain more of the energy generated by its dams while improving cooperation between the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from dams in the U.S. Northwest, and Canadian utilities to help prevent blackouts.
The U.S. would pay Canada for reservoir capacity to hold back water during flood seasons, protecting downstream communities, at a rate that would start at $37.6 million a year and increase with inflation. And the agreement would give Canada more flexibility in how it uses the water stored in its reservoirs.
“After 60 years, the treaty must be updated to reflect our changing climate and the changing needs of the communities that rely on this vital waterway,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a written statement on Thursday.
But environmental groups decried the deal as a missed opportunity to provide more water to the endangered salmon and steelhead populations that decimated by dam operations in the Columbia River Basin over the past century. Although the original treaty ratified in 1964 was designed to cover flood control and hydropower generation, conservationists and Native tribes have long argued that it should be updated to include river health and salmon recovery as a third principle.
“Our community is frustrated and disappointed today,” said Joseph Bogaard of the nonprofit Save Our Wild Salmon. “The treaty is meant to be a tool to address the challenges these fish face. There are benefits and certainty for the energy sector and for flood risk management, while salmon essentially get status quo treatment.”
The Biden administration earlier this year brokered a $1 billion plan to increase the salmon population in the Northwest.
The Columbia River begins in Canada but flows mostly within the U.S. on its 1,243-mile (2,000.41-kilometer) journey to the Pacific Ocean. It forms most of the border between Washington state and Oregon. Its tributaries account for 40% of U.S. hydroelectric power, irrigate $8 billion in agricultural products and move 42 million tons of commercial cargo annually, officials noted Thursday.
The Columbia River Treaty was created after a 1948 flood washed away the Oregon community of Vanport, leaving more than 18,000 people homeless.
It provided for the construction of one dam in Montana, which flooded land in Canada, and three in British Columbia, completed between 1968 and 1973, which together more than doubled the amount of reservoir storage in the basin, providing benefits for both flood prevention and hydropower. The British Columbia dams also flooded tribal lands and trapped much of the spring runoff that would otherwise have been available to migrating salmon.
The treaty provided for what came to be known as the “Canadian Entitlement,” under which Canada would receive $250 million to $350 million a year in electricity in exchange for storing water in huge reservoirs that could be released to boost U.S. hydropower production. The cost was higher than the United States anticipated when the treaty was signed, and it raised prices for U.S. customers, lawmakers in the Pacific Northwest have long complained.
Under the agreement announced Thursday, the U.S. will immediately cut the amount of hydropower it supplies to Canada from the Columbia Basin by 37 percent, with further reductions reaching 50 percent by 2033. BPA Administrator John Hairston said Thursday that the deal will save the agency about $70 million next year and about $1.2 billion over the next two decades.
“These new terms will go a long way toward meeting the region’s growing energy demand and avoiding the construction of unnecessary fossil fuel-based generation,” Hairston told reporters at a briefing Thursday.
U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who have been pushing for updates to the treaty, called the agreement a positive step but said they still needed to work out the details. Administration negotiators will finalize the details before the treaty goes to the U.S. Senate for ratification.
Native tribes have long wanted the Columbia to flow more like a natural river, rather than a series of reservoirs of slow-moving water that often warms to temperatures deadly to migrating salmon.
U.S. and Canadian officials said the agreement would establish a tribal-led body that will make recommendations on how treaty actions can better align with the needs of the ecosystem and the cultural values of tribes and indigenous peoples.
In a written statement, Chief Keith Crow of the Syilx Okanagan Nation in British Columbia said the agreement gave him hope that his grandchildren could one day fish salmon in the upper Columbia River.
“We still have much work to do with Canada and British Columbia to address the past and current impacts on our lands, waters and people,” Crow said.
Canada provides up to 1 million acre-feet of water annually to help young salmon migrate to the Pacific Ocean, and up to an additional half million acre-feet in dry years, depending on negotiations between the countries, said Bogaard of Save Our Wild Salmon.
Researchers say Canada needs 3 to 5 million acre-feet of fish annually, but the agreement announced Thursday will increase that current amount, with one small improvement: In dry years, Canada will automatically provide the extra half million acre-feet if it is available, he said.
“Salmon have suffered tremendous losses from the industrialization of the Columbia Basin rivers, in part because of this treaty,” Neil Brandt, executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon, said in a written statement. “A modernized treaty must do better for salmon.”