In 1961 Ralph Parsons, a prominent engineer based in Los Angeles, devised a continental-scale project called the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA). Though it was never built, memory of its scale and purpose – to end Southern California droughts forever – remains a beacon of inspiration.
“Water is now our number one continental problem and must be solved on a continental scale,” he declared. “The North American Water and Power Alliance will take advantage of the geography and climatology of the North American Continent, utilizing the excess water of the high yield watersheds of the far northwestern land masses by distributing it to the water deficient areas of Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico in sufficient quantities to assure adequate water supplies [for] the next one hundred years or more.”
NAWAPA proposed to tap Alaska’s Yukon River and British Columbia’s Peace and Fraser rivers and store most of their water in a 500-mile (805 kilometers) valley running the length of British Columbia. By way of comparison, Lake Mead on the Colorado River is 112 miles (180 kilometers) when full. A network of 369 individual dams, canals, pipelines, tunnels and pumping stations would send fresh water 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) east to the Great Lakes and to the inland Pacific Northwest, the Great Basin, Southern California, the desert Southwest, and northern Mexico. Worth noting, the Panamint Reservoir on the map includes Death Valley.
Parsons and his staff estimated the cost would not exceed $200 billion (in 1961 dollars) over 30 years ($2,140,000,000,000, or $2.14 trillion in 2025 dollars). NAWAPA would move 158 million acre-feet (194.9 cubic kilometers) to the three countries, more than 10 times the annual flow of the Colorado River. The Southwest would become an oasis, the Great Basin would turn into productive farmland, the hydroelectric dams would generate electricity, their reservoirs would create a new tourism-oriented industry, people would flock to the new economy, and property values, buoyed by new spectacular views without the inconvenience of rain and higher demand, would improve.
Sen. Frank “Ted” Moss, a Democrat from Utah, introduced a measure, co-sponsored by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, to refer the matter to the U.S. – Canadian International Joint Commission, an organization that dealt with shared waters.
Canadians, passionately protective of their water, viewed the project as an infringement of their sovereignty disproportionately designed for the benefit of the United States. To make a long story short, the plan died with Parson’s passing in 1974.
Today climate change is exacerbating the problem: enormous wildfires, longer-lasting droughts, skyrocketing property insurance, rapidly depleting aquifers, and the specter of declining food production threaten the country’s economy at a time when the ballooning federal deficit has all but paralyzed the government’s ability to act.