The Columbia River Treaty is being rewritten, and Washington's power is part of the deal

How the treaty runs the upper river

If you pay a power bill in Washington, part of what keeps your lights on traces back to water stored behind dams in British Columbia. The Columbia does not begin at the border; it falls through Canada first, and since the 1960s the two countries have operated the upper river together. Under the 1964 treaty, Canada built three large storage dams (Mica, Duncan, and the Hugh Keenleyside dam on the Arrow Lakes) that hold back the spring melt so dams downstream in Washington can generate more steadily, and so places like Vancouver and the lower river flood less in June.

That storage is the quiet machinery behind Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph. Holding water in Canada over winter and releasing it on a schedule, rather than letting it run off all at once, is flood storage, and it also lets United States dams produce more electricity than they could alone. In exchange, Canada is owed a share of that extra power, which is where your bill enters the picture.

The number that is set to shrink

The share returned to Canada is called the Canadian Entitlement. At last public report by Bonneville Power Administration, it has run on the order of several hundred average megawatts a year (an average megawatt is one megawatt delivered steadily for a full year, enough for a few hundred typical homes). Bonneville, which markets the federal power and arranges the delivery at the border, has argued for years that the Entitlement returns more than the storage is now worth, and Washington ratepayers help fund it.

In July 2024 the United States and Canada announced an agreement in principle to modernize the treaty, and under the public summaries the Entitlement is set to fall, by roughly a third in the near term per Bonneville's description, with further step-downs over time. Be honest about the limits here: this is an agreement in principle, not a signed and ratified treaty, so the exact figures and schedule can still move, and nothing is final until a treaty text is approved. The per-household effect on a Washington bill is likely small and gradual, not a line you will spot next month.

Who is at the table

Several hands shape this river. The State Department leads the negotiation for the United States, Bonneville and the Army Corps of Engineers operate and market the system, and across the border British Columbia and the Canadian government hold the storage and much of the leverage. Columbia Basin Tribes have pressed for years to put salmon and river health into a pact that was originally written almost entirely around power and flood risk.

What is new in the 2024 framework, per the public summaries, is more flexibility in how Canada operates its storage, language on ecosystem function, and a larger role for tribal and Indigenous voices. How much of that survives into the signed text depends on the implementing agreements still being written, and on each country's approval process. If the honest answer is that it depends, it depends mostly on ratification and on the detailed operating rules that come after it.

Worth watching this month

1. Watch for the State Department and Bonneville to post updated negotiation summaries as the two countries work toward a signed treaty text, since the timing is not fixed and has slipped before.

2. Watch Bonneville's rate and power-cost materials for how a smaller Canadian Entitlement is folded in, because that flows toward Washington bills, though the effect per household is expected to be small and slow.

3. Watch the spring runoff and snowpack forecasts from the Northwest River Forecast Center, since a low snowpack changes how much the upper-river storage matters in a given year.

4. Watch for statements from Columbia Basin Tribes and from British Columbia on ecosystem and salmon provisions, which are routine to issue but can genuinely move the final terms.

5. Watch whether an interim arrangement keeps current operations in place while ratification waits, since the previous stopgap was meant to be temporary.