With drought and growing user demands, water shortages loom in the Columbia River Basin
Salmon Columbia River © Dave McCoy
By Nick Engelfried.
October 22, 2026.
Gaze at the expanse of water flowing through the Columbia River Gorge on the Oregon-Washington border, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it represents an endless resource.
From headwaters in the Canadian Rockies, the Columbia River travels 1,200 miles through forests, deserts and agricultural land, delivering more water to the Pacific Ocean than any other river in the Americas.
The Columbia River Basin covers over a quarter-million square miles, distributed across seven states and British Columbia. For a century the river and its tributaries have sustained the region’s agriculture and industry while providing essential wildlife habitat.
However, today these disparate uses are under threat as the Columbia’s apparently endless water becomes a scarce resource.
Climate change is one factor in this shift.
“The total amount of precipitation we anticipate each year isn’t changing significantly,” said Dr. Sasha McLarty, a hydrology researcher at Washington State University. “But how much water is available at different times of year is shifting, with less in summer.”
In fall 2025, Washington’s Department of Ecology restricted water use in the Yakima River Basin, a Columbia tributary. Some 1,500 water rights holders were affected.
Similar restrictions are in effect again this year.
Access to river water in Oregon and Washington is determined by the Prior Appropriations Doctrine, a legal principle that gives first right to the longest consistent users going back to the 19th century. When there isn’t enough to go around, junior rights holders get cut off first.
Both states also recognize a need to keep water in streams for salmon and wildlife.
This requirement was enshrined in law by Washington’s 1971 Water Resources Act and Oregon’s 1987 Instream Water Act, but water rights established before those laws were passed take precedence.
“In times of drought, it’s the farmer with the 1901 right or the city with the 1920 right that trumps the fish or wildlife with a more recent right,” said Kimberly Priestley, senior policy analyst with WaterWatch in Oregon.
Last year’s Yakima River Basin curtailments could be a sign of things to come in the Columbia River Basin, as summer water availability declines and stakeholders vie over the precious resource.
To be clear, the region is not now facing a situation equivalent to that in the American Southwest, where a decades-long water crisis in the Colorado River Basin has led to long-running legal disputes and cuts affecting millions of people.
But the strain on Pacific Northwest agriculture and wildlife is real.
This raises a compelling question: Is the Columbia on its way to becoming the next Colorado
Columbia v. Colorado
“The Colorado drains the arid Southwest,” said Jeremy FiveCrows, communications director at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a Columbia Insight board member. “The Columbia Basin is much more diverse, with deserts but also temperate rainforests. That’s an important difference.”
More than 40 million people depend on the Colorado River, which flows through some of the driest parts of North America. That level of demand would put a strain on the river even without climate change, but declining snowpack in the Rockies exacerbates the problem.
The Colorado’s biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, saw their levels drop to record lows this summer.
Earlier this year, the federal government proposed cutting water access by about 20% across three Southwestern states that rely on the Colorado.
The Columbia River Basin supports a human population less than half that along the Colorado River, and with its wetter climate the Columbia is in no immediate danger of a Colorado-level emergency.
Still, as more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, the region will almost certainly see summer water shortages well beyond anything it has experienced yet.
“This past year, we had essentially normal precipitation levels during the winter months,” said Chris Wilke, executive director of the Seattle-based Center for Environmental Law and Policy. “But snowpack is about 45% below normal.”
Formerly, robust winter snowpack in the Cascades would ensure a steady supply of meltwater flowing into the Columbia’s major tributaries throughout the summer. However, as the climate warms, more precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow.
“More and more, we have rain-dominated, rather than snow-dominated watersheds,” said FiveCrows. “It means higher river flows coming off the mountains in winter, but less water in summer.”
This reduced snowpack has contributed to crises like last year’s curtailments on the Yakima. The mainstem of the Columbia has so far been less affected, thanks to its headwaters in the cold Canadian Rockies. However, this too could change as temperatures continue rising.
In April, Washington’s Department of Ecology issued a statewide emergency drought declaration prompted by historically low snowpack. Seven of the last 10 years have been drought years in Washington.
In Oregon, much of the state east of the Cascades has been in a drought this year, due to a combination of low snowpack and less-than-average summer precipitation.
A draft water availability forecast for the Columbia River Basin, released by Ecology this year, predicts more dry summers ahead. For example, by the 2040s, the Lower Yakima watershed is projected to see a 47% reduction in surface water.
“These findings aren’t meant to make people panic,” said Melissa Downes, project sections manager for Ecology’s Office of Columbia River. “But they help us as water managers identify vulnerabilities in our region.”
Is the Columbia Basin headed toward a Colorado River-style emergency in the not-too-distant future? Not exactly. However, the potential for harm is great.
“It’s a different situation here than on the Colorado, but we are already in crisis,” said Priestley of WaterWatch. “We’ve got fish kills during drought. We’ve got junior farmers getting their access to water shut off. And it’s just going to get worse unless we change things.”
Salmon survival
Most years, the Colorado River peters out completely in the Southeast desert before ever making it to the Pacific Ocean.
The Columbia and its larger tributaries won’t reach that state soon—but impacts from lower river levels begin long before the water runs out.
“In general, if salmon spend more than 24 hours in water above 68 degrees, they have a lower chance of survival,” said FiveCrows.
Unlike the Colorado, the Columbia supports vibrant salmon fisheries of immense cultural and economic importance.
Less snowpack leads to shallower, warmer rivers.
“Salmon need cold, clean water and in times of drought their survival is greatly compromised,” said Priestley. “This affects entire aquatic habitats where fish are part of the food chain.”
In June, Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife cancelled the sockeye fishing season in the upper Columbia River, citing salmon returns far below the 10-year average.
While humans can’t directly control snowmelt, there are steps we can take to partly mitigate impacts from climate change.
The Columbia’s many dams present barriers to salmon, but also opportunities to control the flow of water in times of drought.
“One thing we can do to protect fish is increase flow over the dams,” said Wilke. “If we can keep cool water flowing through the chain of reservoirs on the Columbia, we can help prevent the most severe temperature changes.”
That’s just one of many steps that could help prevent a Colorado-scale crisis along the Columbia.
Data centers and demand
“We’re in a challenging moment where we have to massively increase energy resources to meet demand, even as we deal with diminished capacity from our rivers,” said Tanya Riordan, policy and advocacy director for Save Our Wild Salmon.
As water levels in the Columbia River Basin shrink, demand for water in energy generation is rising.
Regional population growth, electrification of heating and transport systems and the data center construction boom all contribute to this trend.
At least 11 new data centers are proposed for development in Washington, with 36 in Oregon. The data center buildout has exploded so quickly, regional planners are still in the early stages of grappling with the implications.
“When our last Tribal Energy Vision came out in 2024, it didn’t even address data centers,” said FiveCrows. “This is something that’s happening so quickly, everyone’s still scrambling to understand what it means.”
Increasing spill from dams to help salmon conflicts with the goal of maximizing energy generation from those same dams.
An obvious solution is to take advantage of the Northwest’s abundant wind and solar energy resources. But despite aggressive state laws to encourage renewables in Oregon and Washington, lack of transmission line capacity has hamstrung the industry’s growth.
Access to existing transmission lines in the Northwest is largely controlled by the federal Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), which processes applications from renewable developers at such a slow rate it has stymied development.
“If BPA would support meaningful solutions to our energy problems, it would be a win-win,” said Riordan.
A future Columbia River crisis wouldn’t look exactly like the current Colorado emergency, but many of its impacts could be similarly dire.
In the meantime, there are actions individuals, communities and state and local government can take to reduce strain on the water supply.
For example, many municipalities promote voluntary watering schedules in summer designed to reduce residential water consumption.
“Find out where your water comes from and work with your community to address the challenges we face,” said Emily Tasaka, communications manager for Ecology’s Office of Columbia River.
There is likely no silver bullet for water problems in the Columbia Basin. However, there is time to prevent it becoming the next Colorado River.
