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For most of the past two years, Jesse Allen has worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week operating a crane to move sedan-sized boulders miles out into the mouth of the Columbia River. "You don't want it to slip out and drop," Allen said, sitting in the 240-ton crane's cab Friday. "So when you grab a rock, you just think, 'Yeah, that'll work, that should hold,' and you go for it." Allen and nine others at specialized construction firm J.E. McAmis have already precisely placed about 32,000...
A stopgap update to the 60-year-old Columbia River Treaty between the U.S. and Canada upends flood control and hydropower across the river basin. The U.S. Department of State announced the temporary agreement late last month. It shifts flood risk management mostly to the U.S., which could make it trickier to manage floods on the Lower Columbia. But it also lets the U.S. keep an estimated $100 million in hydropower previously sent north. The new regime will have downstream impacts on hydropower...
A trio of federal agencies are considering whether to pursue additional environmental guidelines for the Columbia River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bonneville Power Administration and the Bureau of Reclamation are conducting the review to comply with an agreement reached late last year after litigation by regional Native nations and environmental groups. Environmental groups and tribes are holding out hope the agencies will recommend the removal of Snake River dams, which seemed likely only a few years ago. But, with Republicans set to...