North American Water and Power Alliance

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Map of the NAWAPA project (right), as compared with the GRAND, a continental water management scheme of similar scale

The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWPA or NAWAPA, also referred to as NAWAPTA from proposed governing body the North American Water and Power Treaty Authority) was a proposed continental water management scheme conceived in the 1950s by the

US Army Corps of Engineers. The planners envisioned diverting water from some rivers in Alaska south through Canada via the Rocky Mountain Trench and other routes to the US and would involve 369 separate construction projects. The water would enter the US in northern Montana. There it would be diverted to the headwaters of rivers such as the Colorado River and the Yellowstone River. Implementation of NAWAPA has not been seriously considered since the 1970s, due to the array of environmental, economic and diplomatic issues raised by the proposal.[1][2] Western historian William deBuys wrote that "NAWAPA died a victim of its own grandiosity."[2]

The plan

A technical and economic blueprint for the plan was developed in 1964 by the Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, California.[3] The total cost was estimated in 1975 as $100 billion, comparable in cost to the Interstate Highway System.[4][5]

Water management

The Parsons plan would divert water from the

Peace River systems into the southern half of the Rocky Mountain Trench which would be dammed into a massive, 500 mi (805 km)-long reservoir. Some of the water would be sent east across central Canada to form a navigable waterway connecting Alberta to the Great Lakes with the additional benefit of stabilizing the Great Lakes' water level. The rest of the water would enter the United States in northern Montana, providing additional flow to the Columbia and Missouri–Mississippi river systems, and would be pumped over the Rocky Mountains via the Sawtooth Lifts in Idaho. From there, it would run south via aqueducts to the Colorado River and Rio Grande systems. Some of this water would be sent around the southern end of the Rockies in New Mexico and pumped north to the High Plains, stabilizing the Ogallala Aquifer. The increased flow of the Colorado River, meanwhile, would enter Mexico, allowing for greater development of agriculture in Baja California and Sonora.[1][6]

The project would provide 75 million acre-feet (93 km3) of water to water-deficient areas in the North American continent,

peaceful nuclear explosions to excavate trenches and underground water storage reservoirs for the system.[10]

Power generation

The project would generate a vast amount of electricity from a number of

pumping stations needed to move the water across the continent).[1] The issue of electricity generation created some controversy, with some commentators such as Marc Reisner arguing that the plan would be a net consumer of energy, while others estimated a net gain of 60 to 80 million kilowatts after meeting the needs for pumping.[7]

Transportation

The plan would potentially have included a navigable waterway in Canada from Alberta to Lake Superior, to be called the Transcontinental Canal. In addition to increasing availability of water, the canal would address problems of water pollution.[7]

Environmental impacts

The engineering of the project and the creation of a large number of new reservoirs — many of them in designated

Pacific salmon runs in the many Alaskan and Canadian rivers that would be dammed and diverted, reducing their flows. Luna Leopold, a conservationist and professor of hydrology at the University of California, Berkeley said of NAWAPA, "The environmental damage that would be caused by that damned thing can't even be described. It would cause as much harm as all of the dam-building we have done in a hundred years."[1]

Reception

NAWAPA garnered early support from some Western political figures, who viewed its promise of increased water supplies as key to continued growth in the Western United States. In 1966, Congressman

Lester Pearson was quoted in 1966 saying of the plan that “This can be one of the most important developments in our history."[13]

In the 1970s, the plan began to encounter fierce opposition by a number of different groups on both sides of the border, based on concerns with its financial and environmental costs and the international implications of exporting Canadian water. The

Free Trade Agreement, the precursor to the North American Free Trade Agreement, was one of its backers and main promoters. Nonetheless, the Canadian position on free trade exempted water exports, in part specifically to pre-empt any attempted completion of Reisman's long-time pet project.[citation needed] The NAWAPA Foundation, which Parsons had founded to promote the scheme, closed its doors in 1990.[17]

Environmental writer Marc Reisner noted in Cadillac Desert that the plan was one of "brutal magnificence" and "unprecedented destructiveness."[1] Historian Ted Steinberg suggested that NAWAPA summed up "the sheer arrogance and imperial ambitions of the modern hydraulic West" and credited rising costs and the rise of the environmental movement with killing the idea.[15] One author called it "the most outlandish water development scheme to emerge in the past 50 years".[18]

Beginning in 1982, some efforts were made to revive the plan, including by Parsons engineer Roland Kelley, who authored a report called NAWAPA Plan Can Work.[19] The LaRouche movement has supported the project, making efforts to revive NAWAPA in 1982 and again in 2010.[2][20]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert revised edition, 1993
  2. ^ a b c d deBuys, William, A Great Aridness:Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, Oxford University Press 2011, p. 329
  3. ^ Captured Rain: America's Thirst for Canadian Water, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2000
  4. ^ Barr, L. (1975). NAWAPA: A Continental Water Development Scheme for North America? Geography 60(2), pp.111-119.
  5. ^ Nelson, J.G. and Chambers, M.J., Water, Methuen Publications 1969, p.375
  6. ISBN 1-55028-166-6
    .
  7. ^ a b c Engelbert, Ernest A, and Scheuring, Ann Foley, Water Scarcity: Impacts on Western Agriculture, Berkeley, University of California Press 1984, p. 113
  8. ^ Ebeling, Walter, Fruited Plain: The Story of American Agriculture , Univ of California Press (February 1980), p. 319
  9. ^ Nelson, J.G. and Chambers, M.J., Water, Methuen Publications 1969, p. 371
  10. ^ Forest, B. & Forest, P. (2012). Engineering the North American waterscape: The high modernist mapping of continental water transfer project. Political Geography 31, pp. 167-183.
  11. ^ Wright, Jim, The Coming Water Famine, Coward-McCann (1966), p. 222.
  12. ^ Moss, Frank, The Water Crisis, F. A. Praeger 1967, p. 245.
  13. ^ Congressional Record, Volume 112, Part 5 - Page 6474
  14. ^ Annin, Peter, The Great Lakes Water Wars, Island Press 2006, p. 58
  15. ^ a b Steinberg, T. (2002). Down to Earth: Nature's role in American history.
  16. ^ McCool, Daniel, Command of the waters : iron triangles, federal water development, and Indian water, University of Arizona Press, 1994. p. 108
  17. ^ Guide to North American Water and Power Alliance Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
  18. ^ Landry, C., Payne, M. & Root, S. (2012). Grandiose water development plans. Water Resources Impact 14(2). p. 18.
  19. ^ "Kelly, Roland P., NAWAPA Plan Can Work, Energy Report, National Energy Research and Information Institute, La Verne, California, June/July 1982.
  20. ^ Welsh, Francis J., How to Create a Water Crisis, Johnson Books 1985, p. 213

External links

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