What an international Nooksack agreement means (and doesn't mean)

Just before the two-year anniversary of the 2021 Nooksack and Sumas Prairie floods, the BC and Washington State governments have finally signed an agreement that sets out how they, several First Nations, and local governments will work together to try to prevent a future disaster.

On Friday afternoon, the BC and Washington State governments each sent out press releases heralding a new agreement that will “build flood resilience” in areas flooded by the Nooksack River in 2021.

The agreement, called the Transboundary Flood Initiative, comes more than 18 months after the two governments announced they would try to team up to deal with the Nooksack’s repeated flooding. When the plan was first announced last March, the governments said details would be announced later that spring. But those details never came.

Although Friday’s announcement confirms that an agreement has finally been signed and lays out the participants, details beyond that are still relatively scarce.

The agreement essentially lays out the terms through which nine different governments will work to find ways to reduce the consequences of the Nooksack’s flooding.

On top of the province and state, the agreement has been signed by the City of Abbotsford, Whatcom County, the Semá:th, Máthxwi, and Leq'á:mel First Nations in Canada, and the Nooksack Indian Tribe and Lummi Nation in the United States.

"The 2021 flooding devastated communities on both sides of the border and made clear we must plan for more disasters like this one fuelled by climate change,” Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee said in a joint press release issued by the governments. “We must work collaboratively with Tribes and local governments on both sides of the border to comprehensively address flooding in the Nooksack and Sumas watersheds, restore salmon habitat, and build community capacity against climate change."

The release says the initiative aims to manage the flood risk and restore ecosystems in the Nooksack and Sumas Rivers.

“It will work collaboratively to evaluate flood hazard, share data and research, and leverage funding opportunities to advance flood-mitigation projects,” the release says.

The initiative has a “three-tiered governance structure: leadership, policy and technical.”

The release says policy and technical experts began meeting last September and the first meeting of leaders occurred in June when the framework of the agreement was reached.

The release says the members are working together to find potential ways to reduce flood risk, enhance habitats, and “identify sources of funding.” They say that improvements include better monitoring of and communication about the Nooksack River levels and improved hydrologic modelling of the Nooksack and Sumas drainages.

Why it’s important

The Nooksack River’s floodplain is incredibly complicated both geographically and politically. The river’s normal drainage basin is entirely in the United States, and most of its water comes from the flanks and foothills of Mt. Baker.

But during extreme rain events, particularly in the late fall and winter, the river can rise to such a level that it breaches its banks at Everson, Wash., just south of Abbotsford, and begins to flow north into the Sumas River drainage basin. Once it flows into the Sumas’s basin, the water flows downhill toward, then through, Sumas Prairie before finally reaching the Fraser River.

(The precise geography has changed repeatedly over time. The Nooksack once entirely flowed north before it changed direction a few hundred or thousand years ago. You can read about that here. Sumas Prairie was once a massive wetland and lake, which better soaked up floodwaters. You can read about that here.)

The Americans have decided not to build a levee at Everson because blocking the flow of water north would aggravate flooding downstream in Whatcom County. You can read about that political conundrum here.

The complexity of the geography and the politics means that different governments have sharply different interests in how the flood risk is managed—and different powers to deal with that rising water. The history of the region also means several different First Nations and Indigenous communities have a stake in the protection of fish populations, natural habitats—and their homes from floodwaters.

What it actually means

The new initiative would seem to lay out the method by which the various governments can co-operate to find solutions that benefit all those involved.

But the agreement does not, actually, seem to involve any decisions about tangible actions that will arise. Instead, it’s a plan to keep talking.

The actual agreement has not been made public. (The Current asked Friday if a copy could be shared; a provincial spokesperson said a copy would be available on Monday—we will try to include that in Tuesday’s Current newsletter.) But what seems clear from history is that talking about addressing the Nooksack’s cross-border flood threat is one thing. But actually doing it will be a completely different challenge. Previous crossborder discussions about the Nooksack have fizzled out because governments and residents on the two sides of the border have very different interests at play. The Americans balked at taking action to reduce the amount of water flooding towards Canada while the Canadians just mostly seemed to forget about the threat posed by the river.

With nine governments at the table, the parties aren’t seeking to find win-win solutions. They’re going to be looking for win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win situations. It’s unclear just how many of those exist beyond the benefits that come from increased communication and expert knowledge.

The funding aspect is one example. British Columbia could offer to pay for some flood prevention measures in Washington State that might keep the water south of the border. But the problem in Whatcom County is not the cost of flood infrastructure to prevent flooding to the north, but the potential impact on American homes, farms, land, and roads where the water would go, if it didn’t go to Canada.

There is, however, one key task the participants may be focused on.

Rather than stopping the Nooksack from flooding into Canada, the parties seem likely to focus on how to best route that water from one country to the next.

On both sides of the border, governments have outlined “floodways”—areas or channels where floodwaters can be allowed to move and where infrastructure and homes can be moved or raised to minimize the damage when it does so. (The Canadian floodway is a result of the expectation that the Americans won’t stop the flooding entirely.)

The Transboundary Flood Initiative will likely provide a channel through which those floodways line up, so that Abbotsford and Whatcom County’s floodways don’t end up mismatched at the 49th Parallel.

The Initiative won’t fully determine the fate of Abbotsford’s floodway projects and dike improvements. Those will require provincial and federal governments anteing up hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars to pay for new dikes and a new pump station. But crossborder discussions and a framework for joint decisions could ensure that the Canadians don’t build a floodway to the 49th parallel only for the floodwater to end up routed in an unforeseen direction.