There Would Be Food Forever: Leveraging the Culvert Case to Fight Toxic Fish Contamination in the Columbia River

Authors

Sarah Van Voorhis

Abstract

The Native American Tribes of the Pacific Northwest signed treaties in the 1800s with a representative of the federal government that purported to protect their right to fish in their usual and accustomed places. Despite this explicit pro-vision of their treaties, the Tribes have struggled to exercise this right to fish. Through a series of court cases spanning decades, culminating in The Culvert Case in 2017, the Stevens Treaty Tribes have secured their right to access their tradi-tional fishing grounds, their right to an equal share of the harvestable fish, and finally, their right to the continued existence of the fish. However, a recent report uncovered a worrying new threat to the Tribes’ source of sustenance: chemical contamination due to unchecked pollution of the Columbia River. The fish that make up a sizable portion of the Tribes’ diet are contaminated with levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls that render the fish unsafe to eat in the amounts typical of the Tribes. In the face of this cancer-causing contamination, this Note examines how the Stevens Treaty Tribes could sue the federal government and the individual states through which the Columbia River runs to enforce their treaty rights and ensure action is taken to address the contamination and keep the fish safe for human consumption.

Recommended Citation

Sarah Van Voorhis, There Would Be Food Forever: Leveraging the Culvert Case to Fight Toxic Fish Contamination in the Columbia River, 31 Hastings Envt'l L.J. 153 (2025)
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_environmental_law_journal/vol31/iss2/3