United States
Unlike the Columbia's Canadian reach, the US portion of the river had already been heavily developed by the time the treaty entered into force. Because the US role in the agreement was largely to supply power generating capacity, and that capacity was already in place, it was not obligated to construct any new dams. While in the Upper Columbia, treaty dams meant the filling of large reservoirs, submerging large tracts of land, on the Lower Columbia no new dams had to be built. The local effects of dam construction were limited to those of the Libby Dam in Montana. The US was authorized to build this optional dam on the Kootenay River, a tributary of the Columbia. Lake Koocanusa, Libby Dam's reservoir, extends some distance into Canada.
Because this project involved a transboundary reservoir, it was slow to move from planning to construction. By 1966, when construction began, the environmental movement had begun to have some political currency. Environmental impact assessments found that this dam would be deleterious to a variety of large game animals, including big-horned sheep and elk. While the Libby Dam opened the possibilities of downstream irrigation, scientists determined that it would also destroy valuable wetland ecosystems and alter the river hydrology throughout the area of its extent, in the reservoir and far downstream.
Under pressure from environmental activist groups, the Army Corps of Engineers developed a mitigation plan that represents a major departure from the previous treaty dams. This plan addressed concerns about fish by building hatcheries, acquired land to serve as grazing areas for animals whose normal ranges were submerged, and implemented a technological fix as part of the dam project that enabled control of the temperature of water released from the dam.
The local environmental impact of the Libby Dam was to flood 40,000 acres (around 162 square kilometers), altering downstream and upstream ecosystems. This was the greatest direct environmental effect of the treaty in the United States. While the Libby Dam and Lake Koocanusa were the most visible results of the treaty in the US, there were long-ranging environmental implications of the new management regime. The increased storage capacity in the Upper Columbia dams afforded river managers a much greater degree of control over the river's hydrograph. Peak flows could now be more dramatically reduced, and low flows bolstered by controlled releases from storage. Peak power demands tend to occur in midwinter and midsummer, so river managers calibrate releases to coincide with periods of high demand. This is a dramatic change from the snowmelt-driven summer peak flows of the river prior to its development.
Read more about this topic: Columbia River Treaty, Impacts, Environmental Impacts
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