Columbia River Treaty renewal won’t just go with the flow: Salmon, environment, First Nation interests on the table

Flood control measures are set to expire next year in the Columbia River Treaty, an international agreement that governs the flow of water between B.C. and half a dozen U.S. states.

Beginning in earnest in 2018, Canada started work to hammer out a new treaty with the U.S. that would go beyond flood management and hydro-power sharing covered by the existing deal to include the environment, First Nations interests and salmon.

The U.S. has new demands as well, including potentially more water releases to protect the environment and a reduction in hydro-power payments, $140 million a year on average in the past decade, that flows to British Columbia.

The payments come from a share of additional power generated in the U.S., most of which B.C. sells back to the U.S.

Add in climate change and the two sides are addressing much more complex issues than in the first agreement created nearly six decades ago that covers a drainage area the size of France.

When the treaty was completed in 1964, its main aim was simply to provide flood control and power, with three new dams in British Columbia providing huge water storage capacity.

Negotiations have moved slowly.

The B.C. government announced  this week a 15th round of talks had been completed but revealed little of substance.

While Canadian negotiators say there is no official deadline to reach a new agreement, measures in the existing treaty for flood storage in B.C. expire in September of 2024. When they expire, the U.S. would have to request water storage for flood control on an ad hoc basis.

“I think it’s common knowledge that some kind of agreement will be reached in 2023,’’ said Jon O’Riordon, an associate fellow at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies and a former assistant deputy minister in the B.C. government.

O’Riordon, who has decades of experience in water policy, said the push to have an agreement reached in 2023 is because of the September 2024 expiration of the flood storage measures.

He noted time is of the essence as any agreement also needs public review and ratification by governments on both sides of the border that could, for example, be affected by the U.S. federal election in November of 2024.

Barbara Cosens, a professor emerita at the College of Law at the University of Idaho, said if the two countries don’t reach an agreement by September 2024, it’s possible that the existing flood control measures in Canada and the payments could be extended while negotiations continue.

Cosens said there is need for a more complex agreement, but it is a recognition of environmental and other issues ignored 60 years ago.

She said she believes both sides have done their homework to prepare for that.

And she noted that areas of mutual interest around the environment and salmon should help facilitate an agreement and broker trade-offs over water flows and power payments.

“These things are not impossible to work out,” said Cosens, a long-time observer of the treaty and Columbia River basin interests. “I think you have real opportunities for a modernized treaty that accounts for the complexity going forward.”

Richard Paisley, director of the global transboundary international waters governance research initiative at the University of B.C., said it still not clear to him that a new treaty can be reached.

He said if an agreement is not reached before the flood control measures in the treaty expire, there will be much less impetus to do so.

He noted that including environmental and ecological issues in the treaty add a significant level of complexity, as defining those issues will be different to the many parties affected, including First Nations on both sides of the border.

“There is as many visions of what ecosystem management is as there are people who have those visions,” observed Paisley, who has helped to negotiate international water agreements around the world.

Following the latest round of negotiations, the B.C. government cited some confidence on reaching an agreement.

Said Katrine Conroy, the B.C. minister responsible for the treaty: “Although there are still outstanding issues to be resolved, there is cause for optimism as the negotiating teams move closer to a consensus on some of the main issues.”

ghoekstra@postmedia.com

twitter.com/gordon_hoekstra

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