Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington began in 1933 and was completed in 1942. It is the largest hydropower producer in the U.S. and also part of the Columbia Basin Project, irrigating more than 600,000 acres. (Courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation)
The U.S. has paused negotiations with Canada on a keystone management plan that governs flood control, water supply and hydropower in the shared Columbia River Basin as President Donald Trump escalates his trade war and threats to Canada’s sovereignty.
British Columbia’s energy ministry said in a news release this week that Trump administration officials notified them they would pause and review their engagement with Canada on final updates to the 61-year-old Columbia River Treaty. The U.S. Department of State did not respond to questions from the Capital Chronicle by Thursday evening.
Under the terms of the treaty, Canada controls the flow of the Northwest’s largest river from its headwaters in British Columbia, ensuring enough water is sent downstream to meet U.S. hydropower needs.
Canada also provides water storage that helps prevent flooding, supports irrigation and protects fish habitat. In exchange, Canada is entitled to some of the hydropower generated by the Bonneville Power Administration’s 31 Columbia River Basin dams.
The Bonneville Power Administration, in charge of marketing the hydroelectricity produced by the U.S. dams, directed Capital Chronicle questions about the pause to the U.S. State Department. The Columbia River Basin and the dams within it generate 40% of the United States’ hydropower, irrigate $8 billion in crops and carry 42 million tons of commercial cargo every year.
Barbara Cosens, a professor emerita at the University of Idaho College of Law and an expert on water law, said a breakdown of the treaty will be harder on the U.S. than Canada.
“If the two parties really get in a tit-for-tat over this river, Canada is the winner,” Cosens said. “There’s a saying in water law that says: ‘It’s better to be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a right,’ because you can just stop that water.”
A history of negotiations between the U.S., Canada on the Columbia River Treaty
The Columbia River Treaty, first ratified in 1964, was set to expire late last year. In July 2024, Biden administration officials and Canadian officials reached a tentative agreement, under which Canada would receive less hydropower from the U.S., but would get more flexibility when it comes to water storage. Canada would also receive over $37 million in direct payments from the U.S. under that agreement.
But Biden officials could not get the tentative agreement finalized and in front of the U.S. Senate for a vote before Trump took office. Instead, a series of interim agreements have extended, for several years, certain provisions of the 2024 treaty updates.
Those interim agreements are non-negotiable, according to John Wagner, an environmental policy professor at the University of British Columbia and an expert on the Columbia River Treaty.
“Trump cannot just pause these because they were approved by an exchange of notes between Canada and U.S. governments before Trump took office,” Wagner said in an email.
But if Trump and administration officials decide not to resume negotiations on a final agreement, Wagner said, “(it) will be dead in the water.”
Among updates to the Columbia River Treaty being negotiated were more engagement on decision making with tribal governments and more investment in fish habitat and recovering threatened salmon populations in the basin.
Joseph Bogaard, executive director at the Washington-based nonprofit Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, said the updates weren’t perfect, but worsening relations between Canada and the U.S. over the basin will hurt people and fish.
“If we’re not working together, we’re not collaborating, we’re not finding ways forward together. It’s going to lead to bad outcomes for both countries. And certainly salmon are going to be increasingly a casualty, and the health of the river will be a casualty of those broken down negotiations and broken down relationships if that occurs,” Bogaard said.
If the U.S. misses deadlines for negotiating a final agreement, the earlier 61-year-old treaty would be reinstated, with no resolution to the issues the updates were meant to solve. If either nation decides to terminate the treaty, it will set off a 10-year process of dissolving the nations’ co-management infrastructure.
“Another way of putting it is: our two nations, which share a long border together and share the Columbia Basin watershed, are going to best be served in the near term and over the long term by healthy, collaborative, constructive, reciprocal relationships,” Bogaard said, “And that tradition, it seems, is sort of in peril at the moment.”
Oregon Capital Chronicle, like the Idaho Capital Sun, is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.
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