The Role of Transboundary Agreements in the Columbia River Basin

Abstract

The historical development of the Columbia River Basin and its current reservoir operating policies has been strongly influenced by transbound-ary agreements between Canada and the United States, and particularly by the Columbia River Treaty (CRT) (1964) and adjunct agreements. Following this agreement, a number of major storage dams were built in Canada and the US, and an emphasis on flood control and winter hydro-power production became the dominant water resources objectives in the main stem of the Columbia. The development of the basin for these purposes (and extensive irrigation in some sub-basins) has resulted in pronounced changes in the natural flow regime in the river, and corresponding ecological problems associated with degraded instream habitat that have yet to be resolved. The basin’s operating policies are shown to more fully isolate human systems from climate variability than they do other uses of water in the basin, despite federal legislation calling for equal priority between hydropower and fish, and recent efforts to change the operating policies in the face of Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings of salmon and other endangered fish. Vulnerability of the current management system to low-flow conditions, inability to meet all objectives simultaneously in low-flow conditions, and the conflicting constraints of many existing agreements (among them the CRT), make changes to the basin’s operating policies problematic.