NAWAPA: the ultimate green crime

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) is 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]

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 Jim Wright, in his book, The Coming Water Famine, wrote that "NAWAPA has an almost limitless potential if we possess the courage and the foresight to grasp it."[11] In 1967, Senator Frank Moss of Utah wrote The Water Crisis, in which he called NAWAPA the most comprehensive water diversion proposal to solve supply and pollution problems.[12]

n 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 environmental movement, which viewed the plan as the "hydrologic anti-Christ,"[14] gained momentum in the early 1970s, and is credited with playing a major role in halting the project.[2][15]