Six years and 19 rounds of negotiations to nail down an updated treaty are at stake with the change of administrations

Rising concern: Among other provisions, an updated Columbia River Treaty would impact flood control in the Gorge. Assuming it’s ratified. Photo: U.S. Dept. of State

By Kendra Chamberlain. December 12, 2024. Officials in the United States and Canada are scrambling to finalize the Columbia River Treaty before President Joe Biden leaves office on Jan. 20.

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly told reporters in Lima, Peru, last month that she and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about getting the treaty across the finish line before the next administration takes over in the United States.

However, with Congress focused on must-pass, end-of-the-year legislation, including funding the federal government, the prospect of getting the treaty ratified before Jan. 20 seems unlikely.

The Senate would need to vote on the final text of the agreement sometime in the next month, and it would need a two-thirds majority to be approved. Before the Senate can consider a new treaty, the president must submit it for formal consideration, something President Biden has not yet done.

Even so, Minister Joy seemed hopeful that bipartisan support for the agreement can be found in Congress in her comments in November.

“We think it’s a win-win situation for both sides of the border. British Columbia is on board, First Nations are on board and we know we have the support of key senators, also on the American side,” she said, according to The Canadian Press.

Sec. Blinken echoed Joy’s commitment to finalizing the deal in a statement, but didn’t mention any bipartisan support for the agreement.

“The Columbia River is the lifeblood of our region. It has been more than 60 years since the Treaty was agreed to, and updates are critically needed as our communities have evolved and the challenge of climate chaos has intensified,” Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon told Columbia Insight. “I will be working with my colleagues and the incoming administration to update the Columbia River Treaty, which is needed to boost our local economy, honor the sovereignty and leadership of the Tribes who have been stewards of the Columbia Basin since time immemorial, and increase renewable energy production to help us meet our clean energy goals.”

Lengthy process, uncertain future

The two countries have been working at finalizing an updated version of the treaty for six years. It took 19 rounds of negotiations between the parties during that period, but in July the two countries finally announced an agreement in principle, laying out some of the details of the new treaty that cover flood management and hydroelectric power sharing across the border.

The updated treaty will see a 50% reduction in power the United States sends to Canada by 2033.

The United States will have access to “reservoir storage space” behind Canadian treaty dams for flood management, but will have to fork over roughly $37 million over the next 20 years, according to the Government of British Columbia.

Several flood management provisions expired in September. The United States and Canada are currently operating under an interim agreement until the new treaty is ratified.

Stakeholders in the United States say the update doesn’t go far enough to protect salmon, as previously reported by Columbia Insight.

Both the United States and Canada brought tribal nations to the table for the first time in the treaty’s 63-year history. That input aimed to steer the two countries toward a more equitable compromise—for both Tribes and the ecosystems involved.

Bob Heinith, who served as a technical advisor on the treaty for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), pointed out some bright spots for Tribes.

“The agreement in principle is a good thing because it gives Indigenous nations a fair chunk of storage—between 4 and 7 million acre feet—and they get to decide how they want to use that, in terms of enhancing flows for [salmon],” Heinith told Columbia Insight.

The update establishes a new tribal and Indigenous-led body to offer recommendations on how to better support Indigenous cultural values, and commits to sustaining “healthy” salmon populations by maintaining minimum flows during dry years to ensure salmon can complete their annual migrations.

But in the United States, the Columbia River Treaty Non-Governmental Organization Caucus and CRITFC have called for ecosystem-level function to be included as one of the primary purposes of the agreement, arguing that the current update doesn’t change much for salmon. Heinith said more could have been done to increase water flows for fish.

“I’m not sure what happened with negotiations, but it seems like particularly the U.S. should have been negotiating for more water,” he said.

How an unfinished treaty would fare under the Trump administration is unclear.

Given president-elect Trump’s comments about the Columbia River being a “large faucet” of the Pacific Northwest, the incoming administration could attempt to renegotiate parts of the treaty before signing off on it.

Senate Republicans could also derail the update by simply refusing to bring it to a vote.