The Columbia Treaty is basically an international catch and release agreement for water.
Canada. as the upstream partner, build large reservoirs to hold the water back and agreed to release it in accordance with US needs for flood control, energy production, fish flushes and – very importantly – irrigation. The US paid for the construction of the Canadian dams and pays Canada for downstream benefits based on very low, hydroelectric generation rates, despite the fact that the use they put that water to often has considerably higher value.
The irrigation of 500,000 acres of land in the Columbia Basin that was transformed from “heat, wheat and rattlesnakes” to high-valued, irrigated crops (potatoes, onions, tree fruit, vegetables) virtually overnight. Ripening a few weeks earlier than their farther north BC cousins, these newly irrigated competitors displaced BC crops in their home market and reduced the income of BC farmers.
As an Agrologist, I was asked to look into the economic impact the Columbia Treaty had on BC farmers. Below are a few of my columns summarizing those findings:
Aug 1994 – Lament for a Nation Part II: the taking of Canada’s water.
Apr 1995 – Questions on the Columbia Treaty downstream benefit.
Aug 1995 – Dare to be… A soliloquy to the CITT.
Oct 1995 – The Holm Stretch – ensure farmers get their share of Treaty benefits.
Apr 1996 – poz’e tive eks’tern al’ etes.
Dec – Give BC farming a super present.
Sep 1997 – Paleolithic economics – time for new stone age.
More recently, in 2013, I was asked by Columbia Basin residents to weigh in on Canada’s interest in the future of the Columbia Treaty, ratified in 1964. As negotiations are on pause in the face of Trump’s attack on Canada, I pulled it out to look at some of the implications of terminating the agreement. Click the link below for 60 Years On… Options for the Columbia and the Community at the end of the Treaty Period
