“A Crucial River Treaty is Tangled in Trump’s Feud With Canada,” The New York Times (gift link)

The Columbia River Treaty is an example of the benefits that cooperative management of international river basins can bring. The treaty, in place since 1964, allowed for the construction of four new dams (three in Canada and one in the US), which are managed cooperatively for flood-control and hydroelectric power, with the benefits shared between the two countries. Most of the treaty provisions are permanent (although either country can withdraw with 10 years’ notice), but the flood-control provisions were scheduled to transition to a less integrated management regime in 2024. The two countries have been negotiating changes to the treaty, but have not been able to conclude a final agreement and instead signed a three-year interim agreement in 2024. Now Trump’s chaotic and aggressive attitude towards Canada has put the future of the negotiations in question.

The four CRT dams – Mica, Duncan, Keenleyside, and Libby – provide significant storage for flood control and for optimizing hydropower production at downstream US dams. Source: US Army Corps of Engineers.

To Trump, the treaty may seem like a bad deal, another example of Canada “ripping us off.” After all, the treaty requires the US to send cash payments and electricity to Canada; what are we getting in return? The answer is simple: the Canadians are operating their dams to protect us from flooding and allow us to generate more hydropower at our own dams. That is the whole logic of the treaty: expand the pie (by operating the system collectively) and share the benefits. Without the treaty, both Canada and the US would be worse off.

That’s not to say that the treaty is perfect. The “Canadian Entitlement” – the portion of US hydropower that is sent to Canada, meant to equal half of the increased US power generation that is attributable to Canadian dams – has probably been overestimated over the years, and the new agreement does reduce that.

More significantly, the treaty – signed in an era when neither tribes nor environmental concerns had a seat at the table – focused on building large dams, not protecting other values of this river system, in particular the migratory salmon that are so culturally, ecologically, and economically important to the whole region. In both the US and Canada, tribes now play an important role in co-managing fisheries (e.g., through CRITFC), but tribes – despite being sovereign nations – have not been significantly included in the treaty negotiations.

For background on the Columbia River Treaty, see this report from the Congressional Research Service.