North American Water and Power Alliance
The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) was a 1960s engineering scheme — developed by the Ralph M. Parsons Company — to redirect northward-flowing rivers of Alaska and British Columbia southward through a vast system of dams, canals, and reservoirs, irrigating Canada, the US Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and northern Mexico.
Scale
- Would have moved ~20% of the Yukon/Mackenzie/Peace river flows; irrigated millions of acres; generated tens of gigawatts of hydropower.
- Never built: environmentalist opposition, cost, and the 1970s turn away from continental development projects killed it; it survived as the LaRouche movement's signature proposal.
Infrared usage
Infrared cites NAWAPA (alongside the World Land Bridge) as proof that the physical-economic solutions to American decline exist and always have — what is missing is a political force capable of executing them against financial and environmentalist veto. It exemplifies the "American System" tradition of continental development (Lincoln, Carey, FDR's TVA and Grand Coulee) versus the British free-trade/oligarchical tradition.