Common Contracts
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A MODERN TREATY FOR THE COLUMBIA RIVERMay 5th, 2020
The Columbia River supports tens of millions of people in seven states and British Columbia through power generation, water supply, fishing, flood control, transportation, and other ecosystem services. Yet the river faces a number of environmental problems that negatively impact those same people. Salmon populations have collapsed, taking with them the commercial fisheries and depressing coastal communities. Salmon conservation efforts cost hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In Canada, reservoirs flood hundreds of square miles of land, causing mudflats and dust storms and transforming beautiful valleys into muddy wastelands. And everywhere on the river and its tributaries, human development has polluted water, destroyed habitat, and degraded ecosystems. Both the United States and Canada have domestic programs to slow or reverse these environmental problems, but the Columbia River Treaty is a large obstacle to these efforts. By the terms of the treaty, 15.5 million acre feet of
