Since I first discovered the story of the heavily dammed international Columbia River back in 1998, I knew it was a really BIG story. When David Moscowitz and the Seattle-based publisher Braided River Press approached me about collaborating on a book, it was easy to say yes. Collaborations are always rich experiences, and sometimes fraught. […]
Columbia River Treaty
600-Strong: whoever would have thought?
On Tuesday, March 25, the Columbia River Treaty negotiating team and associated politicians held a webinar about the status of the 2024 Agreement in Principle (AIP), which might also be termed the Agreement in Limbo….Since the imagined faucet comment, made by a certain US politician (see my November post), and since the tariff conflicts between […]
Salmon and Columbia River Treaty flood control
If you haven’t listened to Wide Open, an audio series about the 1973 US Endangered Species Act by Montana journalist Nick Mott, it’s worth a listen. His episode about the Tennessee Valley Authority and the small fish that almost stopped a dam being completed made me think of the Columbia River salmon populations. Before dams, […]
Columbia River Treaty Agreement-in-Principle!
Indigenous people will have input on management of what the tribes have long referred to as “one river.” There is no legal muscle here. Just a different set of values in the mix. A foot in the door, opening out into a more compassionate home for fish and other voiceless residents of the basin?
Coming Together in Portland
How will a new Columbia River Treaty flood control agreement find balance between American and Canadian interests?
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 […]