engineering

North American Water and Power Alliance

North American Water and Power Alliance is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand North American Water and Power Alliance rather than just read about it. In short: The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWPA or NAWAPA; also referred to as NAWAPTA, after the 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 rou…

Key takeaways

North American Water and Power Alliance belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect North American Water and Power Alliance to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of North American Water and Power Alliance from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWPA or NAWAPA; also referred to as NAWAPTA, after the 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, entailing 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 and the Yellowstone. 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. Western historian William deBuys wrote that "NAWAPA died a victim of its own grandiosity."

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

Water management The Parsons plan would divert water from the Yukon, Liard and 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. The project would provide 75 million acre-feet (93 km3) of water to water-deficient areas in the North American continent, including Canada and the United States, as well as irrigation water for Mexico, which Parsons claimed would receive enough water to reclaim 7 or 8 times more land than Egypt reclaimed with the Aswan High Dam. It would provide increased water flow in the upper Missouri and Mississippi rivers during periods of low flow, increased hydropower generation along the Columbia River, and stabilize water levels in the Great Lakes. Parsons originally proposed using peaceful nuclear explosions to excavate trenches and underground water storage reservoirs for the system.

Power generation The project would generate a vast amount of electricity from a number of hydroelectric and nuclear power facilities (the latter of which would be required to power the multiple pumping stations needed to move the water across the continent). 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.

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.

Environmental impacts The engineering of the project and the creation of a large number of new reservoirs — many of them in designated wilderness areas — would have destroyed vast areas of wildlife habitat in Canada and the American West and would have required the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people — including the entire city of Prince George, British Columbia. A number of federally designated Wild and Scenic Rivers in Idaho and Montana would be submerged under reservoirs, including the Salmon, Lochsa, Clearwater, Yellowstone and Big Hole. The amount of electricity required to pump the water over the Rockies would require the construction of as many as six nuclear power plants. Significant negative consequences were also predicted for 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."

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with North American Water and Power Alliance

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what North American Water and Power Alliance claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to North American Water and Power Alliance before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about North American Water and Power Alliance ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of North American Water and Power Alliance

In research: North American Water and Power Alliance appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses North American Water and Power Alliance in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: North American Water and Power Alliance is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Abandoned canal projects, Canada–United States relations, Cancelled projects, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for North American Water and Power Alliance outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study North American Water and Power Alliance in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what North American Water and Power Alliance means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain North American Water and Power Alliance out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is North American Water and Power Alliance in simple terms?

Why does North American Water and Power Alliance matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study North American Water and Power Alliance?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on North American Water and Power Alliance.