North American Water and Power Alliance

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.

[4][5] 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.

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.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

"[13] In 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.

Nonetheless, the Canadian position on free trade exempted water exports, in part specifically to pre-empt any attempted completion of Reisman's long-time pet project.