Winter Drought

For a while now, I have been following a remarkable turn of events in the upper Columbia River region. The Columbia River Treaty (CRT) is an international agreement between the US and Canada, for flood control and enhanced hydroelectricity. The CRT was entirely designed to provide spring storage of winter snowmelt, so that summer and autumn water supplies are assured in the United States. Yes, it’s true, the treaty benefits Canada as well as the US, if Canada has enough water to work with. But Canadian benefits come second to American requests. And at no time in my 25 years of studying and writing about the Canadian headwater mountains, have I seen what is happening now.

Neither have the residents of the CRT reservoir valleys. I encourage those who are interested to have a look at the “Slow the Flow” Facebook page, where those who actually live on the land of the Columbia River Treaty are speaking up. It’s tragic yet heartening; horrifying yet brave. They love where they live, and their anguish is real. https://www.facebook.com/groups/814627200072009/

I feel for them.

This year so far, the watershed’s snowpack in the surrounding mountains that feed the reservoirs is estimated to be at about 70% of normal. Not so bad, perhaps. But this is a second year of low snowpack, and it exposes uncomfortable truths about the Columbia River Treaty. These truths include historic farms and orchards of displaced residents; boats and their docks, foundations from settler homes, churches, townsites; scuttled ferries; and piles and piles of reservoir silt. This exposed silt has transformed the once rich and abundant landscape into a sort of great northern Sahara.

Not to mention all the lithics from Sinixt culture – more arrow points and pounders exposed, and likely burials too. These Indigenous people of the upper Columbia River and its tributaries have suffered far more losses even than those detailed on the Slow the Flow facebook page. Declared erroneously extinct in 1956 (immediately prior to the construction of treaty dams) they have recently won back their Aboriginal Rights in Canada. Only after a decade of trials and appeals, and a mountain of legal expenses they have had to fund. Even this just restoration of their natural rights holds injustice in its depths.

Deep water, full reservoirs, abundance through human control on a massive scale – these tricks have been suspended for a few years – due to weather – perhaps longer – due to weather. We can’t control that. What lies bare now for all to see is the great presumption behind the Columbia River Treaty. That we thought we could govern natural systems at a huge scale. That we could design a system to take and take and take for 60 years – without giving back. That we could banish those who love the land, or, ignore them. As the two governments prepare to announce an updated treaty, residents of the landscape where it all happens are wide awake now. They will be watching and talking. We all need to listen to them.