WACD Reading List

Politicians are celebrating the tentative agreement, while activists and tribal leaders say it doesn’t do enough to protect endangered salmon runs.

The modernized Columbia River Treaty agreement-in-principle provides certainty hydropower certainty, flood risk management and salmon and ecosystem health, U.S. officials said in a July 11 media call. Changes include a new body to allow tribes and indigenous nations to make recommendations on the timing and quantity of flows for salmon in the Columbia River Basin, and more conservative flood-risk management in the U.S. in wetter years — changes which would have been more extreme without the modernized treaty.