The Past, Present and Future of the Columbia River Treaty A Case for Modernization
[SQUEAKING] [RUSTLING] [CLICKING] GEMMA HOLT: So hi, everyone. Today I'm new talking about the ongoing efforts to modernize the Columbia River Treaty, sort of the agenda. The Columbia River Treaty was originally signed in 1961, so I'm going to go through the historical context that led to that. Signature-- talk about the 1961 treaty negotiations and outcomes. And then I'm also going to talk about the ongoing case for modernization and the ongoing treaty negotiation process. So covering a lot of time periods here. So a little bit of a geographical overview. The Columbia River Basin is over 250,000 square miles, which is larger than the entire area of France. The Basin includes more than half of Washington and Oregon, almost all of Idaho, and parts of Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. And approximately 15% of the Basin is in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where the Columbia River, which you can see here on this map in purple, originates. And then i...