North American Water And Power Alliance
Do you think the
Grand Coulee Dam is big?
For that matter, do you think the
Tennessee Valley Authority is big?
By
1964, most of the water resources available to
Southern California
had been utilized. Still,
California continued to grow. People
could see that one day, demand would exceed supply, and retard growth.
Since a capitalist economy survives only by growth...
Then, the
Pasadena, California engineering firm of
Ralph
M. Parsons Limited came up with
NAWAPA: A scheme for
continent-wide
control of water resources, much like the continent-wide electrical power
grid already in place.
The centerpiece of the scheme was to dam the
Fraser River, the
Columbia
River, the
Yukon River, the
Liard River, and the
Peace River where
they left the
Rocky Mountain Trench in eastern
British Columbia, turning
that fault zone into an immense freshwater inland sea.
This would have provided 178 million acre-feet (22 million hectare-meters)
of water every year, and
gigawatts of hydroelectric power. The
water would be sent to the
Prairie Provinces,
California, and
Mexico
for
irrigation and urban use, and would be diverted via canals to the
Great Lakes, to control the level of the
St. Lawrence Seaway and the
amount of hydroelectric power produced at places like
Niagara Falls.
And, of course, lots of money for Canada from the sale of said water and power.
However:
-
The scheme in its entirety would have cost 100-200 billion dollars to implement.
-
Damage to the environment. Diverting any amount of water from one
place to another affects the ecosystems in both locations, and this is
a really big diversion.
-
The largest consumer of this water and power would be California. The idea
of Canada selling water to the United States1 has wide political
ramifications, ranging from the US becoming dependent on (and thus unwilling
to relinquish) resources Canada may one day need, to some Canadians' fear
of losing their national identity.
-
Even this amount of water can sustain a finite amount of growth.
What next?
NAWAPA is a very bad idea, but it may yet happen.
Sources:
Vaguely-remembered Geography lectures, plus
http://www.jdkoftinoff.com/canal8.html
http://www.sd83.bc.ca/stu/9906/vanj-home.html
1 And if you don't believe that the entire US wouldn't be
seen as the villain instead of just California, you're fooling yourself.