The Columbia River Treaty Revisited: Transboundary River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty by Barbara Cosens

 OHQ vol. 114, no. 3 Although much of the goal of TheAllotment Plot is to account for Nimiipuu perspectives on allotment, such viewpoints are not always as extant as those contained in the memorial. The story is still largely that of Alice Fletcher and Jane Gay.Readers familiar with the history of allotment will nonetheless appreciate the literary interpretation; those less familiar will gain a nuanced understanding of the policy and personalities involved. Elizabeth James Clarkston, Washington The Columbia River Treaty Revisited: Transboundary River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty by Barbara Cosens Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2012. Maps, tables, bibliography, index. 464 pages. $29.95 paper. For most of the history of human occupation in the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia River has been a defining geophysical and socioeconomic feature. For indigenous peoples, it historically provided economic sustenance and a trade corridor, and is still a cultural icon. For Euro-Americans, the river was important for those purposes as well, but on a development slope that angled dramatically upward during the twentieth century. Since the deployment of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) in the 1930s, thirty-one major dams and the associated transmission grid have powered the region’s growth and shaped communities , industries, and politics. After the New Deal–era decision to build the two original dams — Bonneville and Grand Coulee — perhaps the most significant point in the history of the FCRPS was the 1964 Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada. Doubling the reservoir storage capacity on the hydropower system,the treaty enabled growth apace with the region’s population and post-WWII economic surge.It also allowed interconnection with,and support for, an even more rapidly growing American Southwest. The new storage capacity afforded protection for downstream communities from the destructive power of floods, such as the one that had earlier erased Vanport, Oregon, in 1949. It also dramatically altered the hydrograph of the river, holding back snowmelt during the spring months (when, before dams, it moved millennia of salmon smolts downstream) and reallocating it to meet the region’s year-round (and winter-peaking) power appetite. The Columbia River Treaty Revisited is a timely volume of essays offered in anticipation of the renegotiation of that treaty, possibly as early as 2024.For determined readers,the essays offer detailed examinations of almost every facet of the treaty’s history and consequences, and they opportunistically propose revisions that would patch the original treaty’s holes, which the passage of time has disclosed. At theirbest,theessaysanticipatefutureneedsand opportunitiesandsuggesthowanewtreatyand governance architecture might adapt. Several essays (Mary L. Pearson, Matthew McKinney,PaulW.Hirt andAdam M.Sowards, Chris Peery, John Shurts) address the widely acknowledged shortfall in the treaty: the exclusion of ecological concerns. In the politics of the 1960s, only power generation and flood control were considered, and the treaty makes no mention of salmonid stocks or other river biota.Thatomission,byinference,alsoexcluded Native American and First Nation tribes from representing their highest cultural and economic concerns in the process of shaping outcomes. Importantly, it also excluded them from a meaningful role in river governance. Of course there are inevitable issues surrounding the reallocation of benefits, since the treaty has remained largely static while  OHQ vol. 114, no. 3 the needs and appetites of the parties have evolved. The essays note efforts to remedy some of those issues in the years since ratification . The Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act of 1980 established the Northwest Power and Conservation Planning Council (Power Council) as a policy body south of the Canadian border, albeit one with little authority over river operations and no status in interpreting the treaty. The Power Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program planning process elevated ecological concerns to co-equal status with power and flood control, but flows out of Canada remained solely the province of the treaty. Agencies in both countrieshaveacknowledgedtheneedforadditional stakeholders,and they now hear concerns other than just power and flood control. Occasionally a shift in river operations for fish has been manipulated, as is consistent with the twodimensional terms of the treaty. Part 4 of this volume is usefully devoted to rethinking river governance, yet it reveals the largest failure...

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