Upload
others
View
0
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
WATER FROM THE NORTH
NATURE, FRESHWATER, AND THE NORTH AMERICAN WATER AND POWER ALLIANCE
By
Andrew W. Reeves
A thesis subm quirements itted in conformity with the re
for the degree of Master of Arts
Gradua raphy te Department of Geog
University f Toronto o
© Copyright by Andrew W. Reeves 2009
ii
WATER FROM THE NORTH: NATURE, FRESHWATER
AN WATER AND POWER ALLIANCE
, AND THE
NORTH AMERIC
Master of Arts
Andrew W. Reeves, 2009
phy Department of Geogra
University of Toronto
Thesis Abstract
The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), a high modernist
continental water diversion project drafted in Los Angeles in 1964, is examined for the
impact it had upon social conceptions of nature, the scale of water diversion in North
America, and the extent of American Southwestern efforts at sustaining unsustainable
Northern lifestyles. Drafted to address the anxiety of perceived ecoscarcity regarding
water shortages in the early 1960s, NAWAPA emerged after a century of increasingly
large‐scale diversion projects, and seemed a logical continuation of such grandiose, “jet‐
age” type thinking. It proposed to re‐engineer the North American landscape to provide
water from the North to the arid Southwest. Reasons for the plans failure (including the
monumental shift in scale, and Canadian territorial and environmental opposition) are
xamined in relation to how nature was conceived – or forgotten – in the proposal. e
eywords: freshwater; nature; resources; North America; high modernism; the “West.” K
Thesis Contents
Thesis Abstract – pg. ii
Thesis Contents – pg. iii
List of Tables and Figu rganized by Chapter) – pg. iv res (O
List of Abbreviations – pg. v
Introduction pg. 1 Chapter One Theorizing NAWAPA – pg. 16
Section 1.1 ‐ Nature, ‘nature,’ nature(s) – pg. 17 Section 1.2 ‐ Motivations Behind Domination – pg. 21
Section 1.3 ‐ Capitalist Nature and Value – pg. 26 Section 1.4 ‐ Science and Technology in the Transforma ature – pg. 31
tion of N
g. 36 Chapter Two Water in the American and Canadian Wests – p
Appropriation – pg. 42 Section 2.1 ‐ Frontier Thesis and Metropolitanism – pg. 38
nd Prior 6
Section 2.2 ‐ Early Water Development: Riparianism a Section 2.3 ‐ Water as Resource in the American West – pg. 4 Section g. 49 2.4 ‐ Humans as Managers of Nature – p Section 2.5 ‐ Failure and Rebirth: Elwood Mead, the Bureau,
and the East/West divide – pg. 51 Section 2.6 ‐ Setting the Stage for NAWAPA: The Columb reaty – pg. 56 ia River T
3 Chapter Three The State and Social Conceptions of Nature – pg. 6 Section 3.1 ‐ Problems with Unchecked Development, Growth,
and Northern Lifestyles – pg. 65 Section 3.2 ‐ High Modernism and the Conservation Movement – pg. 72
Section 3.3 ‐ Canadian High Modernism – Diefenbaker’s Northern Vision – pg. 77 Section 3.4 ‐ NAWAPA and the Socio‐cultural Conceptu of ‘nature’ – pg. 81
alization
Proposal – pg. 90 Chapter Four NAWAPA: A Grandiose and Failed
Section 4.1 ‐ Parsons’ NAWAPA Plan – pg. 92
Section 4.2 ‐ Science and Technology in the Rise and Fall of NAWAPA – pg. 95Section 4.3 ‐ Implications of NAWAPA for the Canadian nation‐state – pg. 101Secti ater as Resource II: The Context of Canadian Export – pg. 111
on 4.4 ‐ W
onclusion – pg. 119 C Bibliography – pg. 129
iii
List of Tables and Figures (Organized by Chapter) Table 4.1 – NAWAPA: Benefits by Country – pg. 111 Figure 2.1 g. 52 – River Discharge in Canada – p
igure 2.2 – Columbia River Plan – pg. 57 F Figure 3.1 s – pg. 71 – Breakdown of 1960 Water Withdrawal in the United State
igure 3.2 – Total U.S. Withdrawal by State ‐ Irrigation ‐ 2000 – pg. 72 F igure 4.1 – North American Water and Power Alliance – pg. 94 F
iv
v
List of Abbreviations CeNAW ower Alliance P – Central North American Water and P
WR C A – Canadian Water Resources Association
MR – Ministr E y of Energy, Mines, and Resources
R and Northern Lakes Development Canal G AND Canal – Great Replenishment
JC ission I – International Joint Comm
P – M Member of Parliament
TS – M M inistry of Mines and Technical Surveys
AFTA N – North American Free Trade Agreement
ANR tural Resources N – Ministry of Northern Affairs and Na
ATO – N N orth Atlantic Treaty Organization
AW ce N APA – North American Water and Power Allian
WC – N National Water Commission (United States)
OW k Centre at the University of Toronto P I – Program on Water Issues, Mun
BC – U University of British Columbia
SGS U – United States Geological Survey
SSR U – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WD – United States Special Subcommittee on Western Water Development W
- 1 -
Introduction
"Don't spoil the party, but here's the truth: We have squandered our planet's resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn't going to be one. Sothere ountry
goes the Junior Prom, but that's not the half of it." – Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a C
In September 1964, the Ralph M. Parsons Company, an engineering and
planning firm from Los Angeles, published a pamphlet entitled “North American
Water and Power Alliance” (NAWAPA). It was a proposal for the largest continental
engineering project ever envisioned in North America. In response to a perceived
shortage of freshwater in the American Southwest, the plan called for 100,000,000
kilowatts of power to be produced annually that would have generated over four
billion dollars each year from the sale of hydropower. It would have cost one
hundred billion dollars to complete based on 1964 pricing, rising to over two
hundred billion by estimates from the early 1970s. The projected timeline was an
estimated thirty years to secure the 250 million acre‐feet of irrigation water that
would be divided (based on perceived shortages) between Canada, the United
States, and Mexico. NAWAPA also called for all major river systems across the
Canadian and American West to be canalled with the ultimate goal of generating
shipping revenue from a trans‐Canada canal linking Lake Superior with the Pacific
Ocean.
Yet the most contentious aspect of the proposal was the construction of a
500 mile long storage dam in the Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia that
would flood vast stretches of the mountainous B.C. interior. 1 For a plan of such
magnitude to receive political, scientific, and scholarly attention indicates the extent
of American perceptions of water scarcity by the 1960s. NAWAPA surfaced after a
half‐century of increasingly grandiose water engineering plans formalized by the
Bureau of Reclamation or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was portrayed as the
next logical step in water development in America, designed to increase the
magnitude of water projects while making them more inclusive of water originating
outside the political boundary of the United States.
1 Ralph M. Parsons Co. NAWAPA: North American Water and Power Alliance. Brochure No. 606‐
2934‐19. Los Angeles, 1964.
- 2 -
Water originating in Canadian territory was conveniently relabelled
“continental water” by those in the United States concerned with water’s over‐
consumption in the Southwest, and they set their minds to acquiring it. There was
no alternative to Canadian participation in the plan: with such sizable portions of
the necessary water emanating from within Canadian political boundaries, Canada
became the irreplaceable cornerstone to the Alliance.2 It also generated intense
debate as to the future of freshwater resources in Canada that spawned larger
questions of the nation’s development. “Water is so important in life,” argued B.C.
MP H.W. Herridge in 1964, “that its conservation and distribution must override the
geographical boundaries of private property…[and] the political boundaries of
federal and provincial jurisdictions.”3 Herridge was wise to omit the importance of
water’s distribution flowing seamlessly across national borders given the demand
for Canadian water south of the 49th parallel.
Responses to the plan were extremely varied. In The Coming Water Famine,
Democratic Congressman Jim Wright of Texas argued in 1966 that “the orderly
transportation of water on a growing scale from areas where its overabundance is
both a waste and a curse, to areas where it is desperately needed” was the “obvious”
and “logical” next step in North American water development.4 NAWAPA’s failure to
be dismissed as lunacy implied to James Laxer not only the American thirst for
cheap water but the “imperial grandeur” of the scheme itself, which accounted for
the “terrifying seriousness” with which the proposal was considered.5 Yet as quickly
as the plan appeared in the public consciousness after 1964, by 1973 NAWAPA
would be all but forgotten as a serious solution to any real or imagined water
“crisis” in North America. The decade in which large‐scale water diversion seemed
the logical solution to North America’s water scarcity and pollution problems ended
with water being replaced by oil as the resource whose safeguarding was deemed
2 pearing ter ss Marc Reisner. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disap Wa , Viking Pre ,
1986, 14. 3 erridge. “Criminal Code.” I 6th Parliament. 2nd
Sess ember 11, 1964). Ottawa, 1964, 110 Herbert W. H n Canada. Parliament. Debates. 2i 66.
he Coming Water Famine, Coward‐McCann Inc., 1963, 217. on. Vol. X (Dec4 Jim Wright. T5 James Laxer. The Energy Poker Game: The Politics of the Continental Resource Deal, New Press,
1970, 36.
- 3 -
necessary to both future development and national security. Critically, NAWAPA
came to be seen in retrospect as “a bridge too far” in the commodification and re‐
engineering of nature in the 1960s, despite the preceding century and a half of
large‐scale capitalist interventions. Somehow, after irrigation and damming projects
had grown in size and scope over the course of the twentieth century, the Alliance
was simply more than many North Americans were willing to accept.
NAWAPA did find sporadic and often disjointed praise in North America: the
Alliance was unsurprisingly welcomed in the United States moreso than in Canada,
and nowhere more than in the arid Southwest. Champions of NAWAPA such as
Democratic Senator Frank E. Moss from Utah identified not only the benefits to be
accrued by Canada in resource and energy extraction, export, and increased study of
its water resources, but implied that continental thinking about resources in North
America was the primary method for ensuring future Canadian and American co‐
operation. “Americans and Canadians want to live in constructive peace on this
continent for many centuries to come” Moss argued, and “they can’t do it unless they
take care of the unparalleled natural endowments of North America.”6 Others
demonstrated their skepticism of the plan’s feasibility. Some commentators insisted
that without further study of Canadian water resources and future needs for
industry, agriculture, and municipal consumption, NAWAPA should not proceed.
Canadian commentators from federal and provincial governments, academia,
the media, and the general public argued against NAWAPA from a wide array of
perspectives. They argued against the plan’s economic feasibility, the necessary
weakening of Canadian sovereignty over Canadian resources, and attempted to
overturn the myth of freshwater’s superabundance in Canada upon which the
Alliance rested. Many wondered aloud about the unknown climactic effects of
transferring large volumes of cold water into arid southern regions.7 However,
many Canadian commentators in favour of water export to the United States, even if
not in favour of NAWAPA specifically, felt that some form of the plan should not be
6 Frank E. Moss. The Water Crisis. Frederick A. Praeger Publisher7 Alberta. Department of Agriculture. Water Resources Division. Water Diversion proposals of
North America. Canadian Council of Resource Ministers, 1968, 9.
s, 1967, 252.
- 4 -
discarded altogether. Inter‐basin diversions had a long and established history in
Canada before 1964, but the prospect of international diversions required “a
comprehensive assessment of regional water problems and opportunities” before
the implementation of any transboundary schemes.8 Even Sen. Moss, Chairman of
the U.S. Special Subcommittee on Western Water Development (WWD) was forced
to conclude in 1966 that until a study of the financial feasibility of the plan was
conducted, “it is not possible to say that this NAWAPA concept of water supply
should be either undertaken or abandoned.”9
The precedent to be set for all resource exports by the creation of a
continental market caused many in Canada to cringe at the thought of increased
linkages to the United States. There was also the necessary environmental
destruction entailed in addition to the trading of questionable future prosperity for
short‐term monetary gains and the displacement of Native and non‐Native
communities in northern British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. Trevor Lloyd, a
geographer at McGill University, spoke for many in government and academia when
he claimed that NAWAPA was an example of “sophomore civil engineering.”10 Lloyd
also claimed to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966 that the International Joint
Commission (IJC), an international organization founded in 1909 to oversee
transboundary water disputes between Canada and the United States, might not be
the most appropriate framework to discuss Canadian water export given that
“Canada has not always been sufficiently skillful to maintain its authority in the
partnership.”11 General Andrew McNaughton spoke to Canadians outside of
8 See Frank J. Quinn. Ministry of the Environment. Inland Waters Directorate. Water Planning and
Management Branch. AreaofOrigin Protectionism in Western Waters. Queen’s Printer, 1973, 70; also see W.R.D. Sewell, ‘Inter‐basin Water Diversions: Canadian Experiences and Perspectives’ in Golubev, Gena l dy N. and Asit K. Biswas, eds. Large Scale Water Transfers: Emerging Environmental and SociaExperiences. United Nations Environmental Programme. Tycolly Publishing, 1985, 7.
9 United States Senate. Committee on Public Works. Special Subcommittee on Western Water Devel nd Midw
opment. A Summary of Water Resource Projects, Plans, and Studies Relating to the Western aestern United States. Government Printing Office, 1966, 56.
10 a’ in Nelson, J.G. and M.J. Chambers, eds. huen, 1969, 290.
Trevor Lloyd, ‘A Water Resource Policy for CanadWater: Process and Method in Canadian Geography. Met
11 Trevor Lloyd, quoted in Toronto Globe and Mail. Scheme to Divert Canadian Water Assailed. February 25, 1966.
- 5 -
government and academia skeptical of water export when he infamously labelled
NAWAPA “a monstrous concept, a diabolic thesis.”12
It was impossible to be neutral about the North American Water and Power
Alliance, yet its scale created many uncertainties. Whatever one thought about
water and nature’s role in Canadian history or Canada’s increasing dependence
upon trade with the United States in the 1960s, NAWAPA was either the most logical
and lucrative proposition to ease Western American water woes, or was the
ultimate sellout of Canadian resources to the United States. The unique positioning
of water in Canada’s heritage has embedded itself deeply into the Canadian psyche,
and while some maintain that “water is our heritage and you don’t sell your
heritage,” others are confused by the adamant refusal of many Canadians to
consider water export.13 University of Toronto economist Abraham Rotstein
questioned the special relationship between Canadians and water in 1978, arguing
that it is “as ‘self‐evident’ to Canadians at large, as it is puzzling to everyone else.”14
The work of Andrew Biro, political scientist at Acadia University, is useful in
understanding the ways in which water has figured prominently in the Canadian
national psyche. My work regarding water and the Canadian consciousness fits well
within the framework Biro has created in understanding the importance of
preserving wilderness in maintaining a truly Canadian landscape that enhances the
sovereignty of the Canadian state.15
W.R.D. Sewell, geographer at the University of Victoria, echoed Rotstein’s
sentiment in claiming that “an adamant policy of non‐export of water does not seem
particularly rational when the available resources are so vast.”16 Or seemingly so
vast: in 1964, the Canadian government’s knowledge of its freshwater reserves was
12 Gen. A.G.L. McNaughton in Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resources of Canad to Press, 1967a. Symposia Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toron , 16.
13 nnett, quoted in Abrah nada: The New Nationalism’ in Foreign Affairs; Octo
W.A.C. Be am Rotstein, ‘Caber 1976, 112. 14 Rotstein, ‘The New Nationalism’ (note 13), 112. 15 For an in‐depth discussion of this idea, see Andrew Biro, ‘Half‐Empty of Half‐Full? Water
Politic aren, ed. Eau Canada: The Futus and the Canadian National Imaginary’ in Bakker, K re of Canada’s Water. UBC Press, 2007, pp. 321‐334.
16 W.R.D. Sewell, ‘Pipedream or Practical Possibility?’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 1967. Vol. 23, 11.
- 6 -
relatively modest. This position left successive government ministers with little
hard data with which to oppose American requests for feasibility studies of water
projects. Speaking to the House of Commons in June 1966, Jean‐Luc Pépin, the
Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys (MTS), noted that “we do not know
whether we have something to sell. We do not know how much water we have and
we do not know how much water we need. We only know that we are not willing to
sell before we have a good idea what our needs are.”17 To MP Ron Basford, Canadian
uncertainty indicated the extreme prematurity of the export or exchange question
with the United States.18 Frank Moss wondered aloud how Canadians could begin
contemplating water export without first taking stock of its availability, a question
that subsequent generations of Canadians have had to grapple with. The “debate
about water transfers in North America…has never ceased,” notes Sewell, giving
Canadians and Americans an opportunity to inventory not only freshwater as a
resource, but the significant social values humanity attributes to water.19
This thesis may be interpreted as a study of failure, and the competing
notions of what constitutes failure, any lessons to be taken from the plan never
materializing, and the influences upon its failure that come to light in retrospect.
Understandings of NAWAPA’s potentially catastrophic consequences must be
tempered by the knowledge that the plan was never approved, but to assume that
NAWAPA has simply been relegated to the dustbin of history is too narrow. My
thesis sets out to accomplish a more comprehensive understanding of how the
Alliance emerged in order to argue that it changed the very nature of the water
diversion and export debate in North America in the 1960s and 1970s. To achieve
this, I examine human domination and intervention into nature, the impact of high
modernist thought and technological advancement on state planning, competing
understandings of nature and natural value, and the details of the Alliance itself.
17 ament. Hon. Jean‐Luc Pépin, “Water Resources – Sale of Canadian Water.” In Canada. Parli
Debates. 27th Parliament, 1st Session. Vol. VII (June 28, 1966). Ottawa, 1966, 6997. 18 e of Canadian Water.” In Canada. Parl th
66). Ottawa, 1966, 6996. Ron Basford, “Water Resources – Sal iament. Debates. 27
Parliament, 1st Session. Vol. VII (June 28, 1919 Harold D. Foster, and W.R.D. Sewell. Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada. James Lorimer &
Company, 1981, 42.
- 7 -
Yet we cannot ignore – as was so often done – the very real physical aspects
of NAWAPA that would have altered the natural landscape of North America beyond
comprehension. One of my central claims is that nature as an arena in which the
Alliance would have existed was never actively considered by proponents of the
plan, and seldom utilized fully as a tool of resistance by those in opposition. Despite
the relative lack of consideration for nature as a modernist canvas, the Alliance
came to defy easy comprehension in the commodification of a nature that had
previously been rationalized into subservience. To this end, I have incorporated
arguments on the ideals of the Enlightenment, thinking from the Frankfurt School,
and the impact of capitalist expansion on the transformation of natural attributes
into natural resources. Re‐inserting nature into the debate not only over NAWAPA,
but also as an active participant in Canadian perceptions of natural heritage is a
central objective of this thesis.
Considering the iconic status of water in the Canadian imagination, I argue in
Chapter Four that proposals like NAWAPA which threaten the security of nature’s
integrity in Canada help inform the manner of representation nature is granted in
the Canadian psyche. In other words, the ideas that threaten also provide valuable
opportunities for reflection and consolidation of disparate views, in this case on the
place of water in Canadian understandings of the natural world. Writers from the
nationalist left in Canada in the 1960s are put to use here as reactions to the
placement of nature and natural resources at the forefront of American dreams for
continental expansionism in the 1960s and 1970s. A leading cause of this
expansionism across North America was a rush to address the growing anxiety
generated by perceived ecoscarcity. In this sense, NAWAPA was merely a means to
an end, though a disagreement over both the means and the ends ensured that the
Alliance would never be fully dismissed, but also that the real issue – preserving
unsustainable lifestyles in the arid Southwest of the United States at the expense of
the natural world – would never be adequately addressed. An opportunity was
- 8 -
squandered with NAWAPA’s passing to re‐evaluate the “prestige of waste and
consumption” so prevalent in North America.20
It is important to examine NAWAPA as both a grandiose and failed proposal
for the insights it provides into North American thinking about nature, freshwater,
and the ways in which they are impacted upon or dictated by advancements in
science and technology designed to prolong unsustainable growth in the American
Southwest. Paramount to this dual conception of NAWAPA is a re‐insertion of
nature into the debate over the Alliance’s benefits and drawbacks, and to do so
requires a careful consideration of what understanding of “nature” is being used
when the term is frequented, and by whom. I situate my understanding of external
nature within Neil Smith’s conceptions outlined in Uneven Development, which is
examined in relation to its contrasts with first and second nature as conceived by
William Cronon in Nature’s Metropolis. The broad frameworks generated by Smith
and Cronon are valuable for analyzing the subtle differences between the physical
environment and the social dynamic of nature, while realizing that “human beings
and their social behaviours are every bit as natural as the so‐called external aspects
of nature.”21 Eric Swyngedouw’s water/money/power nexus is a useful context
within which to situate my discussion of NAWAPA as a plan intent on the increased
urbanization of the Southwest. NAWAPA emerged at a moment when environmental
and ecological thinking were in their infancy, and the proposal helped many in these
movements find their voice in opposition to the Alliance. Yet as a critical watershed
moment in North American environmental history, one of the central arguments of
this work is to argue that NAWAPA signaled one terminus of James Scott’s
understanding of high modernist state planning within a continental framework. I
also maintain that the Alliance helped usher in a new era of environmental and
national consciousness that sought the ecological and geopolitical preservation of
2 , Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge University 0 Arne Naess
Press, 1991, 31. 21 Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. University of
Georgia Press, 1984, 11‐12.
- 9 -
Canada.22 I use the Alliance to examine the broader problems of growth and
development and of Canadian national sentiment towards freshwater, to highlight
the “structures of feeling” that provide a framework for examining human
interventions into the natural world.23
Crucially, while NAWAPA is an example of Scott’s notion of high modernist
state planning, it is distinctive in that the plan was never realized at a moment in
history when large‐scale, high modernist projects were fashionable. With the
ultimate goal of improving human welfare, NAWAPA’s proponents sought to
radically alter the landscape in potentially catastrophic ways. That they did not
succeed, and that it remains a rare example of high modernist planning rejected by
the people of North America, indicates that NAWAPA is deserving of further study.
Yet as a case study of high modernism in North America, NAWAPA may be limited in
this sense because the plan did not come to fruition. The question to be asked,
therefore, is why choose to examine a failed engineering plan to examine how the
United States, as a high modernist state, re‐conceptualised the North American
landscape. Also worth asking is how NAWAPA ended the drive of high modernist
planning with regards to water projects in the American Southwest, and scrutinize
the role that Canada played in this conclusion.
This work makes extensive use of a broad selection of primary documents.
Hansard debates from the Canadian House of Commons reveal the extent to which
freshwater resources were a critical concern of successive Canadian governments
from Diefenbaker to Trudeau’s administration. From 1964 to 1973 and the
beginning of the OPEC oil crisis, freshwater management and concern for water
export to the United States dominated discussion inside and out of the House of
Commons in statements and debates from the Ministers of Northern Affairs and
Natural Resources (NANR), Energy, Mines, and Resources (EMR), and the
Environment. Conversely, the relative absence of freshwater issues from public
22 At least until the issues of environmental protection and national preservation collided head
on in the 1988 Canadian federal election in which the issue of free trade figured prominently. 23 For the structure of this argument, see Andrew Biro, ‘Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debate
over Canadian Water Exports.’ Capitalism, Nature, Socialism; December, 2002. Vol. 13, No. 4, 30; for the quote, see Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1977, 121.
- 10 -
debate after 1973 indicates the shifting emphasis away from freshwater as the
prime resource of future economic growth towards concern over a stable supply of
oil. Foster and Sewell note that “by the end of the 1960s water export was no longer
an issue discussed by federal or provincial politicians or by the press.”24
But water, like oil, never fully left the public debate. It re‐emerged
throughout subsequent decades in the California droughts of 1977‐78, the 1988
Canada‐U.S. Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA, in addition to the increase in cross‐
border legislation regarding water diversion, consumption, and pollution in the
Great Lakes watershed. Government reports and inquiries from the Canadian
federal government such as the 1973 AreaofOrigin Protectionism in Western
Waters, and provincial reports such as the 1968 Water Diversion Proposals of North
America, prepared by the Alberta Department of the Environment, highlight critical
thinking from both government and academia within Canada and the United States
on key water resource issues. Other reports from the provinces of Ontario, Alberta,
and British Columbia do the same.25 Press releases and speeches from NANR and
EMR ministers throughout the 1960s and 1970s to various interest groups (from
trade and commerce organizations to construction unions) highlight the public
voices of Jean‐Luc Pépin, EMR’s Minister, his Deputy Minister Jack Davis, and NANR
ministers Arthur Laing and J.J. Greene in the Pearson and Trudeau administrations.
South of the border, the final report of the U.S. Senate Special Subcommittee on
Western Water Development, convened in 1966 and chaired by Sen. Frank Moss,
provides valuable insight into American thinking about NAWAPA specifically, and
the frenzied atmosphere of water scarcity in the American West more broadly.
Canada’s Resources for Tomorrow conference, convened in Montreal in 1962
by Alvin Hamilton, Diefenbaker’s Minister of Northern Affairs and Natural
Resources, was the first such meeting of academics, engineers, and politicians in half
a cen o acquire a better understandin ’s natural resources. tury in Canada t g of Canada 24 Foster and Sewell, Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada (note 19), 42. 25 See Ontario Water Resources Association. June 12‐14, 1984. Future’s in Water: Proceedings of
the Ontario Water Resources Association Conference. Toronto, Ontario; Canadian Water Resources Association. June, 1973. 25th Anniversary Conference. Winnipeg, Manitoba; and University of British Columbia. April, 1966. Community and Regional Planning Studies. Student Project 6. NAWAPA: An Impetus to Regional Development in British Columbia. Vancouver, B.C.
- 11 -
Within the context of increased research being undertaken in the Arctic as part of
Diefenbaker’s Northern Vision, the seminars and public debates of the Resources for
Tomorrow conference sparked a flurry of interest in Canada’s natural resources that
coincided with the signing of the Columbia River Treaty and the Alliance proposal.
At the Royal Society of Canada Symposium on Water Resources in 1965, for
example, the debate between Sen. Frank Moss and former IJC chair and
distinguished Canadian Gen. Andrew McNaughton became legendary, as
McNaughton, a titan of Canadian water diplomacy and former soldier and diplomat,
squared off against the loudest proponent of the largest water‐engineering scheme
to date. Conference proceedings emanating from within academia such as the Arid
Lands in Perspective conference convened in 1969 by the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, provide technical insight into the nature of resource
use and water management, and emanating from within government such as the
1984 Ontario Water Resources Association conference. NAWAPA often emerged at
conferences well into the 1980s, either as a model for emulation, or an example of
water management taken too far.
Chapter One introduces the theoretical arguments pertinent to
understanding the Alliance and the ways in which its proponents re‐imagined the
natural world both as a social construction and as a physical environment modified
through human interventions. Drawing upon the work of Noel Castree and Kate
Soper, I replace the idea of a universal nature with a more flexible notion in which
competing models are seen as complementary, rather than adversarial. I analyze the
motivations behind human domination of the natural world in relation to high
modernism and the state’s efforts at nation‐building and improving human welfare.
As such, domination is treated as a “safer” route to overcoming ecological scarcity
than challenges to the tradition of development and growth in the United States. The
works of Neil Smith and David Harvey have been utilized in examining Max
Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in his discussion of Enlightenment ideals in
relation to capitalist conceptions of nature. They raise the issue of competing
conceptions of value in and of the environment, problematizing the use of monetary
systems of valuation in appreciating natural resources. Smith and Harvey also
- 12 -
indicate the increasing importance of science and technology in the achievement of
state objectives at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Chapter Two provides an historical overview of the evolution of water
management and growth in the American and Canadian Wests from the nineteenth
century to the Alliance proposal in 1964. Drawing on the work of historians
Frederick Jackson Turner in America and Donald Creighton in Canada to contrast
the frontier thesis with the theory of metropolitanism, this chapter examines
differing approaches to Western growth and the obsession with development to
understand why notions of “the West” differed so greatly between countries. I also
use the work of Donald Worster to explore the choice of prior appropriation over
riparian rights, and why the more competitive method for dividing natural
resources into property was chosen in the American West. The association between
capital accumulation in the commodification of water and a belief in the infallibility
of science and technology to overcome ecological scarcity is analyzed in relation to
NAWAPA. The work of William Leiss is used to understand how the Alliance
attempted to dominate nature through a regulation of human behaviour. Finally,
Chapter Two will examine the Columbia River Treaty as a precursor to the kind and
degree of water diversions taking place between Canada and the United States
before 1964. The aim of this chapter is to situate NAWAPA within the continuum of
water development projects to examine why the Alliance was understood as a
logical continuation of Western water policy.
Chapter Three examines the role of the state in shaping how nature is
conceived and modified through specific case studies and broadly based theoretical
works. Drawing upon David Harvey’s work, this chapter examines problems of
unchecked development and growth in relation to the Alliance, stressing the
impossibility of continuous population and industrial growth in areas of the United
Sates without access to sufficient water resources. It will explore why massive
socio‐natural re‐engineering schemes were made to seem logical in addition to
analyzing the untouchable role of development in American society. Section 3.1 will
briefly analyze statistical data from the United States Geological Survey in 1960 and
2000 to examine the accuracy of freshwater projections to understand the extent of
- 13 -
the freshwater crisis. James Scott’s theory of high modernism is re‐examined in
relation to the conservation movement of the early twentieth century to make the
connection between the two with regards to scientific rationalization. The
promotion of rational use over reduced consumption is of particular interest. I will
then examine Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s 1957 “Northern Vision”
as an example of high modernist planning in Canada to address the ways in which it
facilitated NAWAPA’s proposal seven years later. Finally, this chapter analyzes the
ways in which social conceptions of nature reflect the dominant ideologies and
identities of the society and era they mirror, and what social understandings of the
nature and the environment that NAWAPA reproduces for contemporary readers.
Chapter Four examines the Alliance in greater depth, outlining key details of
the plan that highlight the magnitude of its financial, political, and environmental
burdens. It examines the role of science and technology in NAWAPA’s rapid rise and
descent, and the correlation between dominating nature with control of human
populations. Notions of nature’s flexibility and the idea of ecoscarcity are also
discussed in relation to technological advancements. This chapter explores how the
Alliance was perceived as a threat to Canadian sovereignty, as a conduit to increased
cross‐border linkages, and as an indicator of Canada’s relative ignorance towards its
natural resources. Lastly, Chapter Four explores the context of Canadian resource
export in the 1960s and early 1970s to parallel water with the export of other non‐
renewable resources such as oil and natural gas. I will conclude by examining why
water resources were understood differently from other natural resources in the
Canadian imagination, and the ways in which this outlook shaped the NAWAPA
debate and assisted in its failure.
What follows is an effort at situating NAWAPA within the larger frameworks
of political ecology and historical geography to examine North American endeavors
at intervening in the natural world. This includes the historical contexts, theories,
ecological debates, and capitalist underpinnings that characterized high modernist
efforts at socio‐natural engineering in the twentieth century. The extent to which
each society was prepared to continue placing human welfare above environmental
protection regardless of “need” or consequences underpinned the NAWAPA debate
- 14 -
in Canada and the United States. My discussion of the extent of the water “crisis” in
the Southwest in the 1960s is situated within David Harvey’s critique of the Western
conception of ecoscarcity in which notions of sustainability are made subservient to
growth, development, and middle‐class lifestyles. Competing notions of natural
value are examined, informed as much by Arne Naess’s conceptions of “shallow and
deep ecology” as it is by Andrew Dobson’s “green theory of value” and the ways they
intertwine.26 Inasmuch as the NAWAPA debate was nominally about freshwater
resources, this was merely the public dimension of a debate that at root was
debating the means through which Western progress had so far been achieved, and
more importantly how this progress would be guaranteed in the future. Yet the
1960s saw the rise of public participation, what Sewell called “a new religion” in
Canada. He argued that “it drew support from those who were disenchanted with
the growing alienation of the individual in public policy making on the one hand,
and from those who were concerned with the environmental effects of resource
development on the other.”27 This spirit of protest and public involvement
influenced how NAWAPA was understood by Canadian society and why it was
ultimately rejected.
The origins of the environmental movement, coupled with the “new religion”
of public participation in Canada in the 1960s, ensured that any effort at
environmental degradation in the name of resource development would be met
with increased public awareness and outcry. And by the end of the 1970s, public
participation as a means of gauging social support and airing concerns was widely
adopted in the realm of water management.28 This method was also used with great
success by Justice Thomas Berger in his 1976 inquiry of the environmental and
demographic impacts of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline. The pipeline, as
with NAWAPA, would have had catastrophic impacts upon the environment and
certain populations of Northern Canada and Alaska; as such, those who opposed
26 Dobson, Green Political
Thou See Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle (note 20); and Andrewght. Routledge, 2000. 27 ewell, in National Resource Conf rry, ed. Water Policy for Western
Cana sue of the Eighties. University of C 2, 77. W.R.D. S erence. Sadler, Bada: The Is algary Press, 19828 Sewell, Water Policy for Western Canada (note 27), 77‐78.
- 15 -
NAWAPA depended heavily upon public concern expressed through the media and
their local government representatives. Yet in the background, amongst discussions
of acre‐feet, consumption patterns, and mechanized irrigation, was the natural
world, central to such high modernist plans though conspicuously absent from
discussions on continental water diversion. NAWAPA will serve as the common
thread that winds though the often disparate themes of this work, tying together the
various ways in which nature, freshwater, society and culture, capitalism and value‐
theory, and science and technology have and will continue to shape efforts at
understanding how a proposal to radically alter the natural foundations of North
merica entered the public spotlight. A
- 16 -
Chapter One – Theorizing NAWAPA
“As we look towards the end of the twentieth century…we see…this diversity [of the natural world] threatened by dominant societies pursuing go ls that, though they have produced a rich material
c t‐Cowan a
ulture, are already eroding the sources of their original stimulus.” – Dr. Ian Mctagger
Study of the North American Water and Power Alliance is valuable for
understanding the broader social changes taking place in Canada in the 1960s.
Public, government, and academic responses to NAWAPA will stand as examples of
the ways in which Canadians attempted to address many challenging issues that
coalesced in the 1960s, including questions of nature and the role of natural
resources in society; a changing environment and environmental ethos; Canada’s
continued dependence on resource exports and the growing threat of foreign
ownership; jurisdictional struggles between the federal government and the
provinces; the nature of Canadian sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of
American interests; and the sustainability of Western lifestyles. Many of these issues
came together at the federal level during the Resources for Tomorrow Conference,
held in Montreal in 1961. Organized by the Diefenbaker government, the conference
provided not only a framework for federal‐provincial cooperation regarding natural
resources and national development, but also “marked the beginning of a new
concern for the environment in Canada.”1 The discourse that emerged on natural
resources as a result of the conference was useful in providing many Canadians with
an opportunity to help determine what manner of country Canada would become.
Within a broader social context, NAWAPA sits astride the division between a
more traditional concept of nature with deep roots in Enlightenment thought, and
an increasingly environmental and social conception of nature that maintains
anthropocentric notions of human agency as central to natural processes, while
understanding that human needs are only one part of the equation. In this sense,
NAWAPA is examined as an intriguing example of more traditional thinking on
nature halted by changing environmental, social, and political priorities. This
chapter will situate NAWAPA within theoretical arguments that will assist in making
1 Patrick Kyba, Alvin: A Biography of the Honourable Alvin Hamilton, P.C. Canadian Plains
Research Center, University of Regina, 1989, 140.
- 17 -
clearer issues of critical importance to understanding NAWAPA. My wider aim is to
examine how these issues impacted upon and were influenced by the social
ambitions of Canadians in the 1960s.
1.1 – Nature, “nature,” nature(s)
My work falls within the broadly defined fields of political ecology and
historical geography. In situating the North American Water and Power Alliance as a
state‐sponsored effort at the continental domination of nature through socio‐
engineering, it may be seen as an effort at the former, while its historical emphasis
on the evolution and importance of water development in the American and
Canadian Wests upon the future of freshwater as a resource in North America
situates this paper firmly within the latter field.
Of critical importance to both fields is an understanding of “nature,” a term
that defies easy comprehension. Underpinning the entire NAWAPA debate, though
seldom brought to the forefront, “nature” – as a concept – or “nature” – as a
physically constituted space – was ultimately the (seldom active) subject of
discussion, whether or not the various framers of the NAWAPA debate chose to see
nature as that which they were intending to alter. Its omission speaks to the degree
which humanity is already prone to considering nature, if at all, largely as a pool of
available resources awaiting human extraction or use. Water is only one part of that
natural world: as the scope of water development projects began encroaching upon
nature in increasingly violent ways, it is surprising the NAWAPA debate did not
consider nature in the same way that financial, political, and occasionally social
matters were discussed. Throughout the debate, nature maintained a relatively
benign presence, allowing Western society to alter the natural landscape as it saw
fit. Nature as the arena in which the NAWAPA proposal was situated never emerged.
The ultimate demarcation of the land by NAWAPA’s framers was one based solely
on political divisions.
While the scope of this section will not allow for an intricate reading of the
multiple competing definitions of nature, a basic knowledge of William Cronon’s
notion of first and second nature and external nature as theorized by Neil Smith will
- 18 -
suffice for my purposes.2 For Cronon, first nature exists as those elements of the
natural world that operate without direct impact or intervention by humanity: those
elements entered the realm of second nature once the influence of humanity became
apparent. A river flowing to a larger body of water may be part of first nature until it
is canalled and dammed (or otherwise impaired) to suit the needs of human beings.
While the distinctions between first and second nature became increasingly blurred
for Cronon, there is nevertheless a moment when the impact of humanity becomes
so great that an aspect of the natural world can no longer be understood
independent of humanity’s influence. Conversely, Smith rejects this traditional
division of nature to argue in Uneven Development that the premise of first nature,
however marginal, no longer exists. External nature, for Smith, was so intrinsically
produced by capitalism and bound to its needs that there was no natural realm
untouched by the vagaries of capital to speak of.3 For Smith, universal nature
reflected the exchange values accredited to natural attributes rendered through the
process of commodification.
Noel Castree assists Smith’s understanding by defining external nature as
“that which is inherently non‐social and nonhuman,” and universal nature as “a way
of seeing natural characteristics as… something encompassing of everything there is
– humans included insofar as they too, being biological entities, are part of a…global,
ecological system.”4 For the purposes of this paper, it is this hybridized
understanding of external nature outlined by Smith and Castree that will inform the
ways in which NAWAPA’s proponents conceptualized nature. Universal nature’s
exchange values do not significantly influence my thesis.
Beyond asking “what is nature?” as Soper does in her 1995 book of the same
title, we may also begin questioning how political ecology impacts any examination
of NAWAPA. Arturo Escobar offers an anti‐essentialist definition that provides a
useful starting point. Political ecology is “the study of the manifold articulations of
2 “Nature/‘nature’” in Robertson, George, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. Routledge, 19
Kate Soper,Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. 96, pp. 22‐34.
3 Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. University ofGeorgia Press, 1984, 11‐12.
4 Noel Castree, 'Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics' in Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, eds. Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. Blackwell Publishing, 2001, 7.
- 19 -
history and biology,” he argues, “and the cultural mediations through which such
articulations are necessarily established.”5 Escobar maintains that his definition will
help displace the predominant discourse on nature and society from the privileged
grasp of Western analysis.6 One may read into this definition a space for NAWAPA
as a cultural mediation through which the articulations of society to preserve a
constructed second nature at the expense of first nature were established. For
NAWAPA’s drafters, American history offered to reinforce their need for large‐scale
diversion. They cited the centrality of water diversion projects throughout history in
America and around the world in the process of nation‐building. In the United
States, nowhere was this idea more applicable than in the American West. It was
only later that biology – and science more broadly – came to be used as a tool
against the high modernist state planners and engineers who saw first nature
ecology as malleable to second nature’s social needs.
It now seems like a short step from claiming societies socially construct
notions of nature to the argument that those same societies physically reconstitute
nature in intentional and unintentional ways. 7 The idea of the production of nature
has gained increasing attention since Smith first suggested that capitalism was
responsible for transforming nature into a universal mode of production, and that
“the natural – in a very material way – is seen to have become internal to social
processes, particularly in advanced western societies.”8 For Smith, “the production
of nature implies a historical future that is still to be determined by political events
and forces, not technical necessity.”9 In other words, political events will determine
the capitalist mode of production, which in turn will determine the future
productions of nature to suit those decisive political and capitalist purposes. In an
idea that will be taken up in greater detail later, it is society in this sense that
determines the extent of the production of nature: technology is merely a means to
this cted onto end. David Harvey concurs that “the metaphors and patterns proje 5 scobar, ‘After ps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’ in Current
Anth 99, 3‐4. Arturo E Nature: Steropology. Vol. 40, No. 1. February 196 ‘After Nature’ (note 5), 4.
on this idea, see C lizing Nature: Th ote 4). Escobar 7 re eory, Practice, and Politics' (n
, 'Socializing Nature tice, and Politics' (note 4), 15. Italics original. For mo astree, 'Socia8 Castree : Theory, Prac9 Smith, Uneven Development (note 3), 48.
- 20 -
nature are derived precisely from the human social institutions that thereby become
naturalized through biological enquiry.”10 Science and technology are complicit in
this socio‐economic project, working within boundaries set in place by nature “in a
realist sense,” but it is society that ultimately determines what actions are ethically
acceptable within these elastic boundaries.11
In a similar vein, Castree maintains that particular natural spaces will have
varying social implications, changing with values and ambitions. “The physical
characteristics of nature are contingent upon social practices,” he argues; “they are
not fixed.”12 In another work, Castree maintains that “nature is simply a name that is
‘attached’ to all sorts of different real‐world phenomena.”13 Yet “on the ontological
level,” he argues, “nature does not exist.”14 With this in mind, it is crucial to
understand that this conception of the physical attributes of the natural world being
contingent upon social practices extends only to those uses that the human world
finds for external nature. What is the limit, however, to which one can modify nature
before it ceases to be external? In the case of NAWAPA, are scientifically managed
rivers, dammed to provide regulated electricity and irrigated water, natural? The
idea of nature’s production raises serious questions about the nature or naturalness
of this physically reconstituted landscape.
Robert Goodin, for one, has argued that this is not a black and white binary
between natural or unnatural, but a matter of equally natural human interventions:
not of kind, but of degree. He maintains that “not all human interventions into
nature are equally natural. Some may be more natural than others. It is important to
recognize that humanity is part of nature and that human interventions are natural,
too.”15 Goodin qualifies this statement by adding that “it is wrong to leap to treating
all human interventions as if they were equally natural,” however.16 Or equally
beneficial; or equally destructive. Yet this is not a universally shared assumption
10 rvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography
/’natu David Ha ence. Blackwe
11
li e, and Politics' (note 4), 13.
of Differ ll Publishing, 1996, 166. Soper, “Nature re,’” (note 2), 33.
12 'Socia eory, Practice, 2005, 3
Castree, zing Nature: Th13 re. Routledg
ote 13), 35. Noel Castree, Natu 5.
14 Nature (n. Goodin, Green Politica ty Press, 1992, 48.
Castree, 15 Robert E l Theory. Poli16 Goodin, Green Political Theory (note 15), 48.
- 21 -
among scholars. Erik Swyngedouw has built upon David Harvey’s discussion of the
naturalness and ecological properties of New York City in arguing that “there is
nothing a priori unnatural about produced environments such as cities, lakes, or
irrigated fields.”17 While it may be true that the landscape NAWAPA would have
produced might not have been a priori unnatural, this does not guarantee that the
built environment atop first nature would have been a priori natural, beneficial, or
even ecologically neutral at best. The Alliance could have stood as a momentous
example of socio‐environmental engineering in the 1960s had it been constructed,
but there is nothing a priori valuable in this.
1.2 – Motivations Behind Domination
William Leiss traces the modern history of this survival motivation to the
twin Enlightenment ideals of emancipation and self‐realization alongside the advent
of scientific discovery. The widespread acceptance that continued mastery over
nature “would effect beneficent social transformations” through new and more
efficient means of science and technology became a powerful force in Western
societies.18 Some form of this was present at the beginnings of the modern
American hydraulic empire in the nineteenth century, in which the greatness of the
nation was built upon a foundation of manipulated water systems. In some measure,
the idea of America as a modern hydraulic empire still exists today.19
Yet there remains for this chapter a fundamental question that needs
addressing: in the American Southwest, was it a simpler process to plan for the re‐
engineering of a continental hydraulic system for water engineers, state planners,
and politicians than it was to interrogate the excesses of their social, economic and
political lives? Thom Kuehls would argue it was, given his in‐depth analysis of
Nietzsche’s philosophizing on nature. According to Kuehls, Nietzsche suggested that
the mechanization of the world was an attempt by Western society to re‐establish
order and power over what little they could – nature, in this case – following the
17 uw, Social Power and the s of Power. Oxford
Univ 23. Erik Swyngedo Urbanization of Water: Flowe
ination of Nature. George Braziller, 1972, 94. rsity Press, 2004,
18 William Leiss, The Dom19 Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Oxford
University Press, 1985, 263.
- 22 -
death of God. Re‐stabilizing the natural order thrown out of sync with Western
beliefs would bring security, prosperity, and power through knowledge over
nature.20 Nietzsche maintained that the bulk of Western thought on nature had not
progressed from within the “shadow of God,” arguing in The Will to Power that for
humanity, “nature remained nothing but a created object, created, moreover, for
mankind’s explicit and narrow uses.”21
In the same way that many in nineteenth century Western society could not
begin to fathom a world without God in which the earth might not have been made
for humanity’s divine use, NAWAPA must have struck Western politicians and
engineers as an infinitely safer and more stable option than introspection. To
implement NAWAPA did not risk revealing the shallowness of a society based upon
unchecked consumption and capital accumulation for its own sake. And NAWAPA
would not have exposed that the proposed solutions to the problem of ecoscarcity
were the same as the causes of the ecological crisis Americans were attempting to
rout. The notion that “the individual naturally prefers those measures that add to his
pleasure but cost him nothing,” and “hesitates when a desirable objective involves
much personal expense” was commonplace. 22
The Alliance would also have struck commentators interested in the
preservation of American lifestyles as the ultimate method with which to achieve
their goals without any requisite behavioral modifications. In 1985, Canadian Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney called for an inquiry into federal water policy, the findings
of which would help inform Canada’s trade negotiations with the United States
during the free trade debates in 1988. In The Economics of Water Export Policy, one
research paper among many presented to the Inquiry on Federal Water Policy, UBC
economist Anthony Scott argued that “the impoundment, storage and delivery of
Canadian water…would be a very attractive alternative to developing the political
will to make better use of the water supplies already available in the south and
20 uehls, Beyond Sovereign Te ce of Ecopolitics. Borderlines, Vol. 4.
Univ Thom K rritory: The Spaersity of Minnesota Press, 1996, 7. 21 Kuehls, Beyond Sovereign Territory (note 20), 11. 22 Raymond Dasmann in ‘The Conservation Foundation.’ Darling, F. Fraser and John P. Milton,
eds. Future Environments of North America. The Natural History Press, 1965, 327‐328.
- 23 -
southwestern United States.”23 This is understandably consequential. At the 1975
Pacific Science Congress, Dr. Ian McTaggart‐Cowan observed that “as we look
towards the end of the twentieth century…we see…this diversity [of the natural
world] threatened by dominant societies pursuing goals that, though they have
produced a rich material culture, are already eroding the sources of their original
stimulus.”24 Yet many, including Democratic Congressman Jim Wright of Texas, felt
that the problem originated in nature’s illogical distribution of water resources.
“Too much of the best water is available in the wrong places,” he argued, adding that
“since we can’t move all the people to where the water is, obviously we need to
move the water to where the people are.”25 The paradox is that NAWAPA would
have helped to produce a larger society in the American Southwest while continuing
to erode the temporarily larger water resource base they acquired through the plan.
Despite Congressman Wright’s flippant disregard for the natural world, the relief
many in the Southwest so hoped for would not have come without its own set of
problems for those living where water was scarce.
James Scott would argue that from the state’s perspective, those same
politicians and engineers who fixated upon NAWAPA had more than safety and
stability in mind. The ideas behind high modernist intervention into nature were
shaped by a modern faith in science similar to that function previously performed
by God. No small part of the legitimacy and appeal of the state depended upon a
faith that was sold to society as vouchsafed only by scientists, engineers, planners,
and the politicians who instituted these policies.26 How did it come about that
politicians came to embrace high modernist planning as engineers and scientists
had before them? Considering the power of large‐scale engineering projects to unify
society towards a common objective, it is unsurprising that politicians should have
embraced the power of high modernism given its value in the process of nation
23 Anthony Scott, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research
Paper #7. The Economics of Water Export Policy. Queen’s Printer, 1985, 21‐22. 24 ggert‐Cowan, quoted in Ju pply and Services
Cana ntier, Northern Homelan Dr. Ian McTa stice Thomas R. Berger. Ministry of Sud d. Queen’s Printer, 1977, 199.
ine, Coward‐McCann Inc., 1963, 216‐217. a. Northern Fro
25 Jim Wright. The Coming Water Fam26 James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed. Yale University Press, 1998, 342.
- 24 -
building. Grand socio‐political objectives contain the ability to captivate and
mobilize a nation: cross‐continental railroads, space programmes, undersea tunnels
linking islands to continents, and massive damming proposals. NAWAPA fits with
the grandiose theme in state planning prevalent in Western society since the
nineteenth century, and typical of the 1960s, despite this being a moment of
transition in the twentieth century. In this sense, it was capable of providing so
much more than “irrigation and power systems.”27 NAWAPA, to borrow Scott’s
phrase, was an example of “industrial strength social engineering” whereby the
American state attempted to remove limits to growth in regions where development
had historically been encouraged. 28 Yet Scott has genuine respect for the planners
and engineers who created these plans, despite the hubris with which they
approached external nature and society. “Their actions,” he claims, “far from being
cynical grabs for power and wealth, were animated by a genuine desire to improve
the hum es.an condition” – however misguided, and regardless of the consequenc
However, Soper notes ironically that “the same mythologies about our
common heritage and the common land,” which helped develop the land in the
name of larger socio‐political purposes, “have helped to sustain the power and
property of those most directly responsible for ecological destruction.”
29
30 She
grounds this argument in a concept she refers to as “nature in the realist sense”: “the
nature whose structures and processes are independent of human activity…and
whose forces and causal powers are the condition of and constraint upon any
human practice or technological activity, however Promethean in ambition.”31 It is
valuable to parallel this humbling check to human ambition with engineering
schemes like NAWAPA: that regardless of what humanity does to manipulate and
27 hy Mitchell, Rule of , TechnoPolitics, Modernity. University of California Press, 2002, 44.
Timot Experts: Egypt
28 Scott, Seeing Like a State (note 26), 91. 29 Scott, Seeing Like a State (note 26), 342. 30 For similar arguments regarding organizations who have created problems of ecological
destruction and capitalized on them, only to suggest themselves as impartial agents best situated to solve the environmental crisis, see Soper, “Nature/’nature,’” (note 2), 24; Simon Dalby, ‘Threats from the South?’ in Deudney, D., ed. Contested Grounds. State University of New York Press, 1999; Daniel H. Deudn ’ in Deudney, D., ed. Contested Grounds. State University of N an, Imperial Nature. Yale University Press, 2005.
ey, ‘Environmental Security: A Critiqueew York Press, 1999; and Michael Goldm31 Soper, “Nature/’nature,’” (note 2), 31.
- 25 -
master nature for human purposes, “however Promethean in ambition,” nature in
the realist sense is always present and immutable, capable of destroying everything
that humans have mobilized nature to create. Yet “if values are socially and
economically anchored” as Naess argues, “then the philosophical task” for humanity,
according to Harvey, “is to challenge those instrumental values [within society]
which alienate.”32 Human and natural values are not static, nor should they be
interpreted as straight‐jacketing humanity into a world predetermined by
technological advances.
Whereas early characterizations of nature depicted an environment in which
humans had to struggle for survival against an inhospitable landscape, Smith
reminds us that “the humanized nature lionized by the late 19th century ‘back to
nature’ movement was quintessentially friendly. Hostile or friendly, nature was
external: it was “a world to be conquered or a place to go back to,” and never a place
where you actually were. 33 This detachment from nature played no small role in
convincing humans that in order to benefit from the emerging industrial capitalist
state and its global ambitions of wealth, nature had to be made over into something
existing to subsidize human welfare, and not left as a place where one could belong
as one can to a nation constructed by human ambition and design. These are quite
different concepts to be sure, but they are linked in fundamental ways: the idea that
natural resources could be used to further the cause of human welfare does not
necessitate the scale with which humanity has exploited nature, nor has it required
the psychological separation of nature‐as‐home from nature‐as‐commodity. It
questions whether western societies made nature external to simplify the process of
exploitation for capitalist gain. What needs to be understood is that for NAWAPA to
have succeeded as a component of the larger efforts of capitalism to conquer the
natural world, nature must be overwhelmingly conceptualized in North America as
nothing more than a set of commodified resources, or as tools utilized in the
realization of Enlightenment ideals.
32 Harvey ence (note 1033 Smith, Uneven Development (note 3), 21.
, Geography of Differ ), 168.
- 26 -
1.3 – Capitalist Nature and Value
In its ability to produce nature, capitalism is not unique among ideologies:
Marx himself had little objecton to the overall Enlightenment project and its vision
of dominating nature as a means of emancipation from social want (though he did
take exception to the particular ways in which this domination had been manifested
under capitalism).34 In fact, as Harvey points out, it appears that the two most
fundamental streams of modern socio‐political thought appear to possess at least a
common acceptance of the domination of nature as their basis.35 What is unique to
capitalism in the production of nature is the global scale at which it has been able to
accomplish its feats: concerned only with fulfilling the singular need for profit,
capitalism has been unable (or unwilling) to conceive of natural attributes as
anything but natural resources, attaching arbitrary exchange values to them which
determines their fate.36 In Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Harvey
references a passage by Emile Zola in which “money, aiding science, yielded
progress,” a claim that Harvey argues “has been at the centre of capitalist culture
and its Promethean historical geography of environmental transformations.”37
The real question, as Frankfurt School philosophers noted, is “how the
Enlightenment ideals have been frustrated by the very philosophical and political‐
economic shifts and practices designed to realize them.”
38 In shifting their critique
from capitalism specifically to Western civilization more broadly, Frankfurt School
thinkers moved beyond the traditional Marxist critique of capitalism to focus on the
domination of nature through the domination of man.39 Max Horkheimer, one of the
principal members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, argued that
“nature is today more than ever conceived as a mere tool of man. It is the object of
total exploitation that has no aim set by reason, and therefore no limit.”40 This
34 , ), 127.
Geography of Differ Harvey ence (note 10
35 ence neven Development (not
Geography of Differ Harvey, (note 10), 127.
36
graphy of Difference Smith, U e 3), 28.
37 (note 10), 133. graphy o
Harvey, Geo38 Harvey, Geo f Difference (note 10), 134. 39 lectical Imagina kfurt School and the Institute of
Socia 50. Little and Bro Martin Jay. The Dia tion: A History of the Franl Research, 192319 wn, 1973, 53.
40 Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason. Continuum, 1987, 108.
- 27 -
thinking sought to “challenge the hegemony of instrumental rationality” and replace
it with an “alternative rationality that had the power to give a deeper sense of
meaning to life.” Additionally, the Frankfurt School replaced the Marxist emphasis
on class struggle with a broader struggle “between man and nature both without
and within.”41 In so doing, the Frankfurt School broke with a more traditional
critique of capitalism to focus instead on the more critical human‐nature
relationship, a conflict Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno felt pre‐dated capitalism
and would continue, if not intensify after capitalism ended.42
One of the ways in which the Enlightenment ideals have been frustrated,
according to James O’Conner, is that capitalist restructuring today takes place at the
expense of production conditions, chief among them nature. One of the ways in
which nature can be made increasingly profitable is to generate more from scarcer
resources. The “second contradiction of capitalism” is making nature as a universal
mode of production all the more difficult to sustain as a resource, let alone as a
mode of production.43 One example of this can be seen clearly in the dropping water
levels at the Hoover Dam.44 Infrastructure built to further utilize nature as a mode
of capitalist production – not to mention the further demonstrated mastery over
nature – is now working too well: the Enlightenment ideal of human emancipation
was achieved long ago for some, but the equally crucial pillar of self‐realization
through self‐preservation is beginning to crumble under the scale of capitalist
conquest. Another example of the second contradiction of capitalism is ecoscarcity
as a veil for continued bourgeois domination of the labouring classes within the
West and the entirety of the Global South. Enlightenment ideals have been
frustrated in their realization because their proponents could not have accounted
for the impact and scale of humanity’s greed in search of security and profit, and the
quick shift from safeguarding for needs to safeguarding desires. A detailed
understanding of what constitutes ecoscarcity – or even if there indeed was a
41 e 10), 135.
e 10), 133; Ja e 39), 256. Harvey, Geography of Difference (not
42 y of Difference (not y, The Dia Harvey, Geograph lectical Imagination (not43 James O’Conner, quoted in Escobar, ‘After Nature’ (note 5), 7. 44 Glen MacDonald, Address to the President’s Plenary Session. American Association of
Geographers Annual General Meeting. Las Vegas, Nevada. March 22, 2009.
- 28 -
shortage of freshwater in the American Southwest at the time – is unnecessary here.
What is critical to understand, however, is that in the 1950s and 1960s there existed
a palpable anxiety over water scarcity in North America regardless of its actuality.
Water, or even historically cheap freshwater, did not have to be in short supply for
many North Americans to adopt an attitude of fear over water’s perceived
shortages, which many in government and academia in both Canada and the United
States. In assuming that freshwater resources were dwindling, and that
preservation efforts, lifestyle changes, and pollution abatement would prove
insufficient or impossible to solve the crisis, these proponents of NAWAPA – or
NAWAPA‐like water diversion schemes – thereby expanded the realm of acceptable
consequences to be incurred in the securing of water resources at a moment of
profound ecoscarcity.
David Harvey has argued that “to speak in money terms is always to speak in
a language which the holders of social power appreciate and understand.” 45
Because of this, any discussion of the capitalist impact upon the production,
conception, and ultimate domination of nature must begin with an understanding of
value and the competing ways in which it is currently conceptualized. Robert
Goodin has outlined three theories of value, and while the capitalist (consumer‐
based) and Marxist (producer‐based) theories are worthwhile, it is Goodin’s green
theory of value that informs my work. Goodin is interested in the outcome found at
the crossroads of Capitalist and Marxist theories of value on one hand, and the
notions of value implied in Naess’s notions of shallow and deep ecology on the
other. This hybridized theory of value – what Goodin labels a “green theory of
value”– is defined as “a natural resource based theory of value, more properly – but
awkwardly – theorized as a natural attribute based theory of value,” in which the
value of things is linked to “some naturally occurring properties of the objects
themselves,”46 or what is referred to hence as the “intrinsic value” of natural
properties.
45 Harvey, ce (note 10), 1546 Goodin, Green Political Theory (note 17), 24.
Geography of Differen 0.
- 29 -
It is necessary to discuss the importance of understanding Goodin’s green
theory of value in relation to NAWAPA for the contrast it provides to the more
traditional understanding of value that many of NAWAPA’s proponents utilized.
Those who argued for the logical necessity of the Alliance actively linked natural
value to a capitalist understanding of nature whereby natural attributes and
resources possessed value only in relation to the arbitrary exchange values attached
to them. Goodin’s theory is of particular note here for its belief that natural
attributes are held to be valuable regardless of the price they might fetch on the
market, and any discussion of value introduces ecological, social, emotional,
spiritual, and even aesthetic appreciations of nature that are missing when the
central method of valuation is money. Conversely, it remains necessary to
demonstrate the various ways in which nature does possess an intrinsic value to
both the natural landscape and the human populations who live as dependents on
that land, though if the green theory of value were the dominant method of
valuation, the pressure to prove nature’s non‐commercial worth is lessened. As a
theory focused on natural attributes (resources) and the ecological/ capitalist
manner of their extraction or securing, the green theory of value is an excellent
approach for understanding the complex interactions between capital and ecology
and the ways these became manifest in the NAWAPA plans.
The process of attributing value to a natural object or resource is often less
than scientific: “value” itself is scientifically compromised, too socially and
individually implicit in the “metaphors deployed in mounting specific lines of
scientific inquiry.”47 Goodin turns his attention to the ways in which the green
theory of value draws unashamedly upon the shallow notion of ecology in arguing
that “things can only have value ‘in relation to us’” while distancing his theory from
the idea that things in nature can only have value “to us or for us.”48 In formulating
his green political theory, Goodin drew upon Arne Naess’s theory of deep and
shallow ecology, using characteristics of each to demonstrate that the two are not
mutually exclusive.
47 Harvey, ce (note 10), 162. 48 Goodin, Green Political Theory (note 15), 44. Italics original.
Geography of Differen
- 30 -
Goodin’s analysis deviates from Naess’s deep ecology when he maintains that
“natural objects…actually create value when – only when – in the presence of
(human) consciousness.”49 It is here that he introduces his idea that “values
presuppose valuers,” and that the process of “valuing involves active consciousness
– and that human beings are the only creatures on earth with adequately
sophisticated consciousness for this purpose.”50 Harvey concurs that “the ability to
discover intrinsic values depends, then, on the ability of human subjects endowed
with consciousness and reflexive as well as practical capacities to become neutral
mediators of what those values might be.”51 In other words, by placing human
beings alongside a nature that possesses an intrinsic value determined by humans
and some undetermined higher notion at the centre of his value theory, Goodin is
seeking to bypass the often inescapable binary that can develop between capitalist
and Marxist theories of value, and shallow and deep ecological perspectives.
The green theory of value fits into the already multi‐layered conception of
NAWAPA as a capitalist project, one intent upon the socio‐natural re‐engineering of
the North American landscape and the societies therein. Yet by understanding
NAWAPA within a green theory of value framework that already presupposes an
inherent value in natural landscapes and attributes, there exists “an immediate
sense of ontological security and permanence” already present in the nature under
analysis.52 While Castree may take exception to this, arguing that nature does not
exist at the ontological level, the hope and promise that societies invest in nature
accords it value above and beyond being a mere name attached to “real‐world
phenomena.”53 Nature, whatever its conception, is vital in all ontological efforts in
pursuit of understanding the nature of existence and the role that humanity plays in
shaping the natural world.
Finally, according to Naess, while advocating for a deep ecological framework
through which to consider the human‐nature relationship, and not explicitly for the
49 (n
Green Political Theory (n Goodin, ote 15), 45.
50
ra e
Green Political Theory Goodin, ote 15), 44.
51 (note 10), 157. ra e (note 10), 157.
Harvey, Geog phy of Differenc52 Harvey, Geog phy of Differenc53 Castree, Nature (note 14), 35.
- 31 -
green theory of value, “there is prestige in consumption and waste in our society,”
concluding that “present ideology tends to value things because they are scarce and
are assumed to have a greater market‐value because of this.”54 The idea of
consumption and water possessing prestige in North American society will be
further explored in subsequent chapters where the preservation of unsustainable
lifestyles is discussed in depth.
The essential question here is why is it assumed that scientific and
technological domination over nature will inevitably and logically lead to both the
satisfaction of human needs and desires and its negative consequence, the
domination of human beings. We may also ask why governments have so frequently
assumed that the scientific and technological domination of nature would never
generate resentment amongst certain elements of the population (those alienated
from resources, ecologists, human populations unconsidered in the planning
process, among others) and reactions from external nature itself? In North America,
it was rightly assumed that if nature could be tamed, and the rivers‐as‐resources
made to pay, then the human labour needed in its wake could be controlled and
managed by those who held social power over those who had only their labour to
sell. Scientific rationality, a social concept that made altering the landscape by
taming the rivers possible, also made possible the domination of people dependent
upon tamed nature for their livelihoods. This is capital and science walking hand in
hand.
1.4 – Science and Technology in the Transformation of Nature
The advent of large‐scale scientific and technological advancements during
the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century led to a world in which natural
resources, or natural attributes more broadly, came to be regarded largely as tools
to help further the cause of human welfare. This had the effect of creating societies
in which human desires gradually came to replace human needs: or what
Horkheimer understood as a world of “means rather than of ends,” itself a
54 Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge University
Press, 1991, 31.
- 32 -
consequence of the “historical development of the methods of production.”55 He
goes on to associate the need to fulfill human desires with the need to fulfill the
human ego, a “boundless imperialism” that is never satisfied.56 Yet as Smith
indicates, the “combined reification and mystification that result from equating
nature with use‐value are hallmarks of the bourgeois concept of nature,” evidenced
in the rising disparity between those classes that could afford human desires, and
those that could not. 57
It was difficult for many Canadians (and some Americans as well) to accept
NAWAPA’s declaration, espoused by its champions such as Frank Moss, Jim Wright,
and Ralph Parsons, that it meant only to acquire surplus Canadian freshwater for the
purposes of increased irrigated agriculture to feed all Americans (and some
Canadians, too), and increase the industrial output of the American Southwest to
ensure employment for those who had nothing more to offer than their labour.
Many remained skeptical. “‘Nature transforming’ projects of any sort have
distributional consequences,” according to Harvey, “and the patent inequity of many
of these has been the source of powerful conflicts.”58 It was clear that NAWAPA’s
“distributional consequences” included many of the proposed benefits under the
plan (increased acre‐feet irrigation, construction and maintenance contracts, canal
and barge tolls, etc.). This must also include matters of sovereignty, power, wealth,
and ecologcal burden more broadly. The flexible identity of water(itself the resource
awaiting redistribution) also impacted the nature of the NAWAPA debate. At root,
those contesting the merits of the Alliance were debating the extent to which nature
as a means of preserving unsustainable Northern lifestyles was to be transformed in
the process. Water became a useful substitute for larger issues such sovereignty,
development, and growth: and while nature seldom emerged throughout the debate
as the issue under consideration, water stood in as the focal point for an issue that
transcended simpler matters of acre‐feet and dam construction.
55 imer, 102.
mer, Eclipse of Reas Horkhe on (note 40),
56 on (nneven Development (not
Eclipse of Reas Horkhei ote 40), 108.
57 Smith, U e 3), 44. 58 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 10), 137.
- 33 -
The natural world was not formed with individual attributes and resources
in mind – this was only a human categorization of nature placed atop the natural
world once humans had successfully completed their shift towards nature’s centre.
Natural attributes simply remained components of the environment upon which
humanity could draw for subsistence. The “application of scientific and social
scientific expertise,” according to Timothy Mitchell, would change that.59 He argues
that “the resources and limits of nature…were to be transformed by the dynamic
activity of technical development,” an act that ensured a binary view of the world in
which “science was opposed to nature and technical expertise [could] claim to
overcome the obstacles to social improvement.”60 In many ways, this binary has
never definitively ended, and the high modernist alliance between science and the
state became a crucial agent in NAWAPA’s proposal and nature’s re‐engineering.
What, therefore, are the socio‐technical processes involved in transforming a
natural attribute into a “natural resource,” burdened as it is with the “cultural,
technical, and economic appraisal of elements and processes in nature that can be
applied to fulfill social objectives and goals?”61
Swyngedouw argues that water became a commodity by virtue of its ability
to express “the social relationships within the space through which it circulated and
to which it gave form and content,” adding that “the biological necessity of water
ensured that urbanization was predicated upon organizing, controlling, and
mastering its socio‐natural circulation.”62 The urbanization process in the American
Southwest presupposed that water would be perpetually available, that growth
would be manageable, and that technology could be used to solve any problems that
threatened growth. It was a system premised on the assumption that nature, once
tamed, would continue to co‐operate as it always had despite increased demands
upon it. Swyngedouw’s work on social power and its relation to water in the
urbanization process posits water (ecology), because of its “life giving and
sustaining use‐value,” as central to comprehending the power relationships
59 (note 27f Experts (note 27
Mitchell, ), 50. 60 ), 51.
phy of Difference (note 10), 147.
Rule of Experts Mitchell, Rule o
61 Harvey, Geogra62 Swyngedouw, Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (note 17), 30.
- 34 -
(politics) of everyday life.63 The water/money/power nexus which he introduces as
a “conceptual triage” to lay bare “the political economy of the urban fabric” also
helps to position the central importance of water circulations to the wider political,
economic, social, and ecological processes that influenced the NAWAPA plan.64 The
benefits of manipulating the natural world became obvious: guaranteeing the
security of the species through the mastery of nature and the security of the
individual through access to productive labour, the spoils of capitalist gain, the
advent of urbanization, and the marvels of modern technology.65
Keeping in mind that ecoscarcity was predominantly more a prevailing social
anxiety than a physical reality throughout the American Southwest in the 1960s,
California was hit with the worst drought in its history almost a decade after
NAWAPA slipped from public consciousness. “Had it lasted one more year,” Marc
Reisner notes wryly, “its citizens might have begun migrating back east, their
mattresses strapped to the tops of their Porsches and BMWs.” 66 For Reisner, this
indicated the “hollowness” of the Southwestern American triumph over nature. It
was a triumph built upon a shifting foundation, one in which a stable supply of
water was assumed, though never guaranteed. It was also a triumph in which “logic
and reason have never figured prominently” according to Reisner, because “as long
as [America] maintains a civilization in a semidesert with a desert heart, the
yearning to civilize more of it will always be there.”67 That the American Southwest
did not face water shortages on the scale prophesized by NAWAPA’s proponents,
and that almost five decades later the region still continues its almost unparalleled
growth without the North American Water and Power Alliance in place, is evidence
of the West’s dubious desire for Canadian freshwater. It also demonstrates that little
has been learned of the hazards of unchecked growth in a region which has been
unable to support a large population without massive individual and later state
63 edouw, (note 17), 2.
Social Power and ater (note 17), 2. Swyng the Urbanization of W
64 the Urbanization of Wination of Nature (note 18), 101‐102.
Social Power and ater Swyngedouw,
65 Leiss, The Dom66 sner. Cadillac D rican West and Its Disappearing Water, Viking Press,
1986 Marc Rei esert: The Ame, 14.
67 Reisner, Cadillac Desert (note 66), 14.
- 35 -
intervention into the natural world. This idea will be taken up at greater length in
the following chapter.
A water diversion proposal that disregards its social impacts and a society
that denies its utter dependency upon water are “radically incomplete as portraits
of their shared world.”68 Questions of nature (its production, its value, its
conceptions) will be considered alongside their relationship with science and
technology, the role of Capitalism in nature, and perceptions of the environment in
relation to sovereignty and territoriality, considered within the context of Canada in
the 1960s. But it is now necessary to look back to the history of water projects in the
West in both America and Canada to understand how NAWAPA fits into the
ontinuum of North American water development. c
68 William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, W.W. Norton and Company,
1991, 51.
- 36 -
Chapter Two – Water in the American and Canadian Wests
“The West is our most myth‐shrouded region, so much so that we often cannot say where its actualf Nature
physical boundaries are.” – Donald Worster, The Wealth o
When the North American Water and Power Alliance first entered the
continental consciousness in the mid‐1960s, it was no isolated case of socio‐natural
reengineering. Rather, NAWAPA became a prime example of the American state’s
effort at what James Scott termed ‘high modernist’ state planning.1 The post‐World
War Two American landscape helped Western residents proclaim that their efforts
at re‐engineering water systems was enough to ensure that the myth of the
American West as an Empire in its own right was now fact.2 And after the Columbia
River Treaty was ratified in 1964, it appeared as if the doors were open to the
continued expansion of the American hydraulic Empire, and that NAWAPA would be
its Trojan Horse into the northern regions of the continent.3 But before a proposal of
NAWAPA’s scope and scale can be understood as the logical extension of Western
water development in the 1960s, NAWAPA must be situated within the comparative
histories of Western water development in Canada and the United States since the
beginning of the nineteenth century.
My emphasis will be on the role of water in the American West. Donald
Worster’s discussion of water and nature in Rivers of Empire has struck an
important balance between understanding the influence of capitalist underpinnings
inherent in these efforts at socio‐natural re‐engineering and never losing sight of the
natural world re‐imagined under threat of routine violence. It is Worster’s nuanced
approach to western water development that I have adopted for my discussion of
nature and capital in NAWAPA. The focus on the American Southwest is deliberate:
when the Alliance was proposed, it was by an American engineering firm based in
Los Angeles, one of the most highly populated cities in the region. Any examination
of the United States as an hydraulic empire must begin and end in the American
1 eing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Conditi
98. James C. Scott, Se on Have
Failed. Yale University Press, 192 orster, Rivers of r, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. Oxford
Uni ss, 1985, 14‐15. Donald W Empire: Wateversity Pre 3 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 15.
- 37 -
West, though this is not to say that its influence does not extent well beyond what is
understood as the American Southwest, crossing both state and national boundaries
in the process. Parallels between the Canadian and American Western experiences
will be drawn as water and the West pertain to the formation of distinct national
mythologies. In the United States, national identity in the West was based on rugged,
frontier individualism and the spread of democratic values as theorized by
Frederick Jackson Turner. While problematic on its own as a theory of American
development, the frontier thesis is crucial for understanding how the American
West evolved in the late nineteenth century because of the extent to which
Americans truly believed the frontier thesis to be an accurate portrayal of American
values and ideals. This is the sense in which the frontier thesis will be used in this
chapter. In Canada, it was the maintenance of law, order, and metropolitan ideals as
argued by Donald Creighton and J.M.S. Careless that gave Western development a
distinguishing Canadian flavour.4 While half a century divides the work of Turner
from that of Creighton and Careless, their efforts at using the relationship of the
people to the land in understanding how American and Canadian identities
developed in their respective Western regions warrants further comparison.
The first half of the twentieth century belonged to the Bureau of Reclamation,
the Army Corps of Engineers, and their increasingly grandiose re‐engineering
schemes in the United States. It was believed by boosters of Western development
in government and business that in remaking the West, the Bureau of Reclamation
(or simply the Bureau, as it was commonly known) was remaking America. In
continuing their historic march westward begun with the earliest pioneer efforts to
control small rivers and streams for subsistence purposes, it was felt that the
Bureau was attempting to control all aspects of the land to bring wild nature to heel
before the mighty presence of American technological power. The litany of water
development projects which emerged on the heels of the Bureau’s official founding
in 1902 kept water developers, engineers, and planners busy through to the 1960s
4 See Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Penguin Books, 2008; also see Paul Fox’s interview with Donald Creighton, ‘Alternatives to the Frontier Thesis’ in Cross, Michael S., ed. The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas: The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment. Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970, 40‐41.
- 38 -
and beyond. Yet despite decades of increasingly intensive projects by the Bureau in
which the goal was nothing short of ensuring water security for the Southwest vis‐à‐
vis the re‐engineering of the American landscape, the perils of unchecked
population, industrial, and agricultural growth and their increasing pressures upon
water r esources began undermining America’s traditional sources of development.
While most plans dealt with rivers solely within American territory, such as
the completion of the Hoover Dam in Nevada in 1936 and the authorization of the
Central Valley Project in California in 1933, the possibilities for continued domestic
projects in the West became increasingly limited. The Columbia River project, which
entered the drafting stage in the late 1940s and was ratified in 1964, was the
immediate precursor to NAWAPA and was a Bureau project. The enlarged Columbia
River Treaty between Canada and the United States is notable for the crucial
precedent it set regarding water withdrawal between the two nations, and the
subsequent scepticism among Canadians when NAWAPA was proposed the same
year the Treaty was ratified. Some draw a direct connection between the selling of
Canadian water at “distress prices” found in the Columbia Treaty with the swift
reaction of Parson’s company in drafting and releasing the NAWAPA plan.5 As such,
there is a clear progression in the evolution of water development in the American
West from the first efforts at water diversion for small‐scale irrigation to the re‐
engineering of a continent’s water systems.
2.1 – Frontier Thesis and Metropolitanism
The promises of westward expansion in the early nineteenth century carried
all the pomp and glory of a sacred myth of national origin. It is unsurprising that the
legacy of conquest and western expansion would become immortalized in both the
concept of American manifest destiny and Frederick Jackson Tuner’s frontier thesis,
which, though highly scrutinized by subsequent scholars, has never left the centre of
debate on the West in American history. Turner himself asks “what is the West?,”
and argues that to understand the answer to this question is to understand the most
5 Laratt Higgins, ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources: The Case of the Columbia River Treaty’ in
Lumsden, Ian, ed. Close the 49th Parallel: The Americanization of Canada. University of Toronto Press, 1970, 237.
- 39 -
significant issue in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.6 The
frontier thesis was Turner’s consolidated musings on the importance of the West in
shaping not only the American political scene, but the identity of the American
nation. The people of the West were, above all, idealists: their efforts at developing
the West were crucial to the advancement of truly American values. The people who
populated the West, unlike urban dwellers in the East, “dreamed dreams and beheld
visions. [They] had faith in man, hope for democracy, belief in America’s destiny,
[and] unbounded confidence in his ability to make his dreams come true.”7 When
Turner speaks of the West, he is speaking of the frontier, though not of wilderness,
which Turner felt disappeared with the advent of the West. But the frontier thesis is
more than an attempt to explain the West to an Eastern audience who simply cannot
understand the lifestyles west of the Appalachian mountains. “The West, at bottom,”
Turner argues, “is a form of society, rather than an area. It is the term applied to the
region whose social conditions result from the application of older institutions and
ideas to the transforming influences of free land.”8 In this, as in other passages, the
emphasis is routinely on the social and national character of the West, much more
than any discussion of what physically constitutes “the West” as a geographic
region. Turner is more interested in how the West as an idea is responsible for
creating new imaginative geographies, new opportunities, and new institutions and
ideals that can only prosper in an environment where freedom from state, legal, and
social restraints is paramount.
Turner’s thesis is comforting and alluring, allowing one to easily visualize the
vastness and glory of the Western landscape. But while the frontier thesis as an
adequate theory of Western development has largely been discredited, Turner and
the frontier thesis “as a process, as a symbol of the continuing American
commitment to progress and improvement,” remains a powerful way in which to
understand the strength of the West, its lifestyles, and its demands. 9 As William
6 Tuner, (note 4), 39. 7
Frontier Thesis Tuner, Frontier Thesis (note 4), 49. 8 Tuner, Frontier Thesis (note 4), 39. 9 Michael S. Cross, ‘Introduction’ in Cross, Michael S., ed. The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas: The
Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment. Copp Clark Publishing Company, 1970, 1‐2.
- 40 -
Cronon maintains, “we have not yet found a way to escape him.”10 Yet Donald
Worster claims that the frontier thesis was largely based on Turner’s experience in
the forested region of Wisconsin. According to Worster, it remains a theory that “has
no water, no aridity, no technical dominance in it, that indeed has very little in it of
the West as it is geographically defined today.”11 Its distance from what is
commonly considered as “the West” today, and its failure to address issues such as
aridity ensures that for Worster, the frontier thesis holds little significant value.
Yet in less concrete ways, the frontier’s strength rested on its appeal to the
American imagination.12 The same allure that the frontier possessed in America was
paralleled in the Canadian notion of metropolitanism, the idea that “culture, capital
investment, political ideas, [and] social organization,” flow outward from the
metropolis to the hinterland, conveying the more Canadian ideals of law and order
based squarely in governmental structures, rather than frontier individualism.13
Both concepts recognized the importance of democratic ideals, as well as the
interconnections between the frontier/hinterland and the metropolis, though each
found a different source for that democracy, and emphasized dissimilar directions
for the flow of ideas. Despite the divergence in emphasis and their relation to the
Old World, Worster is quick to indicate that both the American and Canadian
conceptions of the West and wilderness ended in “a powerful industrialist‐capitalist
economy ransacking the land for raw materials.”14
Each understanding of Western expansion shared a common, consuming
passion with development. According to Worster, “development became a transitive
verb” in the nineteenth century, “with humans as the subject, and nature as the
object.”15 It was now the responsibility of humanity to ‘develop nature’ as a means
10 ronon, ‘Revisitin ing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner’ in
The 7, pp. 157‐176. William C g the Vanish Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 18, No. 2. April, 19811 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 11. 12 fstadter, ‘Turner and the Frontier erican Scholar; Vol. 18, No. 4.
Aut Richard Ho Myth.’ The Am
umn 1949, 435. 13 Creighton ‘Alternatives to the Frontier Thesis’ (note 4), 41. 14 Donald Worster, ‘Two Faces West: The Development Myth in Canada and the United States’ in
Hirt, Paul W., ed. Terra Pacifica: ce in the Northwest States and Western Canada. Wa te University Press, 1998, 76‐77.
People and Plashington Sta15 Worster, ‘Two Faces West’ (note 14), 73.
- 41 -
of ensuring not only its physical survival, but the survival and ultimate growth of the
nation‐state. This is the common thread of development that weaves through the
history of the West in both Canada and the United States, but both nations
approached it from unique perspectives. For Turner, Americans saw development
as a means of “multiple new beginnings,” free of the prejudices and problems of the
Old World. “Decade after decade, West after West,” Turner claimed, This perennial rebirth… this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish[es] the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic Coast, it is the Great West.16
Canadians were inclined to approach development as a more “straightforward
march, controlled and directed by metropolitan forces far removed from the
interior,” while witnessing their development as such.17 In the United States, while
Western growth was also directed from Eastern metropolitan centres of finance and
government, Western Americans were much less inclined to understand their
progress as something being directed by the East.18 In many respects, little has
changed. W.T. Easterbrook, a political economist at the University of Toronto, built
upon the earlier work of Harold Innis in arguing that Canada had locked itself into a
resource extraction cycle dating back to the earliest days of colonial expansion,
when development was guaranteed only through the use of foreign capital to feed
raw materials to foreign markets.19 And despite dramatic shifts in the Canadian
resource base, this “narrow channeling of resource investment,” in addition to the
colonial mentality, has remained.20
Other historians shy away from the frontier/ metropolitan discussion, or
choose to downplay Worster’s emphasis on development. In Colony and Empire,
William Robbins argues that capitalism, not development, is “the common factor
essential to understanding power, influence, and change in the American West from
16 Tuner, Fr te 4), 40. 17 ote 14), 75.
ontier Thesis (no Worster, ‘Two Faces West’ (n
18 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 281‐284. 19 quoted in Resources for Tomorrow C treal, Quebec. October 23‐
28, dings of the Conference. Queen’s Pr . W.T. Easterbrook, onference, Mon
1961. Vol. 3 – Procee inter, 1961, 1720 W.T. Easterbrook, Resources for Tomorrow Conference (note 20), 18.
- 42 -
the onset of the fur trade to the present.”21 Robbins argues that major expansion in
western America – and Canada, to a lesser extent – stemmed from the constantly
shifting dynamics of domestic, and later global capital and the pressures that
specific needs at specific moments in time placed upon the capacity of the West to
meet those needs. The fur trade, the demographic shift westward, the
transportation and industrial revolutions, the explosion of science and technology
as life‐altering forces, the exploitation of nature, and the creation of a new
infrastructure designed to achieve this exploitation were all “manifestations of the
influence of global capital.”22 Taking these arguments as two examples among many,
it is possible to begin understanding the similarities and differences in western
experiences in Canada and the United States.
2.2 – Early Water Development: Riparianism and Prior Appropriation
In the American West, early settlement in what is now Utah, California,
Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Wyoming all began with
small‐scale efforts at river diversion to provide adequate irrigation for crops. Those
arriving in this region in the mid‐nineteenth century found their water needs and
interests butting heads with the needs of settlers already on the land. Large groups
of miners and prospectors who moved west for the 1849 Gold Rush operated under
the mantra of “whatever you can use, use, because God will be pleased by your
enterprise and society forever in your debt.”23 Various Native populations whose
entitlement to the land and water was never considered beyond reservations also
had designs upon western rivers.
Yet the influx of settlers seeking land and water to establish new homesteads
reached its first barrier in determining access to increasingly scarce river water
when previously established settlements possessed much of the existing land
adjacent to the river. Here the Old World English notion of riparianism, maintaining
that only those living on the banks of the river could obtain access to its use, was
pitted against the more American doctrine of prior appropriation based on “cowboy
21 . Robbins, Colony and e Capital Transformation of the American West. Uni ansas Press, 199
William G Empire: Thve
Colony and Emprsity of K 4, 7.
22 Robbins, ire (note 21), xi. 23 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 89‐90.
- 43 -
logic,” according to Vandana Shiva, which argued that the first person to lay claim to
the water adjacent their land took a vested interest in that water, making it a form of
personal property.24 The conceptual difficulty of thinking of rivers in terms of
property and ownership is matched only by the greater – and more socially and
politically sensitive – task of hierarchically organizing the various and competing
social uses of that river, be it for farming, mining, ranching, or municipal uses.25
This is exactly the task which fell to the state when Americans, not of the Old
World and uninclined to place arbitrary limits upon their freedom, opted to
implement the competitive notion of prior appropriation over the more co‐
operative riparian doctrine. 26 For Turner, settlers’ location west of the Eastern
Seaboard made them “free from European precedents and forces.”27 The impacts of
prior appropriation had far reaching and long‐lasting implications: not only did it
help foster a general acceptance of nature and natural resources as detached from
the human world, but it reinforced the notion of manifest destiny as an unstoppable
force in American agricultural, industrial, demographic, and territorial development.
It transformed water from a communal resource into private property while
developing within water law a “curious doctrine of waste.”28 And this impression of
nature, coupled with the whirlwind scientific and technological improvements to
dam building, irrigation, and crop cultivation brought about by the industrial
revolutions, ensured that American expansion should know no earthly bounds.
Belief in the infallibility of technological progress over nature (including
human nature) became the backbone of American strength in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. While known for his anti‐American leanings, Canadian
philosopher George Grant argued that “American supremacy is identified with the
belief that questions of human good are to be solved by technology; that the most
24 pire (note 2), 88; also see Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatiza
ss, 2002, 22‐23. Worster, Rivers of Em tion,
Pollution, and Profit. South End Pre25 . Limerick, The Le quest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. W.W.
Nor any, 1987, 7 Patricia N gacy of Conto p
f Em 89. n & Com 2‐73.
26 pire (note 2), esis (note 4), 45.
Worster, Rivers o27 Tuner, Frontier Th28 Robert Glennon, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters.
Island Press, 2002, 17.
- 44 -
important human activity is the pursuit of those sciences which issue in the
conquest of human and nonhuman nature.”29 Post‐Revolution America had made a
definitive break with the Old World in particular, and with the past in general.
According to David Lowenthal, “Jefferson’s ‘sovereignty of the present generation’
applied no less to law than to landscape,” an attitude which permeated the American
relationship with the land.30 Devoid of history, Americans set out to “deify nature”
by substituting it for a past they had rejected in favour of a future of their own
making.31 In staking their future to a pliant nature, it is little wonder that many felt
every effort should be made to ensure that nature would co‐operate with the
American project. Yet the seeming irrationality of nature in directing vast quantities
of resources to regions of the continent devoid of human settlement, and other
natural checks to human welfare, were seen as direct challenges to the nation which
Americans had consciously created for themselves.
Science and technology, in the form of engineering methods capable of
forcing nature into behaving rationally, began as of the late nineteenth century
guaranteeing the provision of unlimited plenty so long elusive to the state planner.32
In fact, as Irving Fox and Lyle Craine argued at the Resources for Tomorrow
Conference, held in Montreal in 1961, it was “technological advances that made
possible the construction of large dams and canals.” They added that “the concept of
the multiple‐purpose project” – such as damming a river for hydro development,
flood control, and irrigation, for example – “and of the river basin as the meaningful
geographic unit for organization was dependent upon the emergence of modern
engineering.”33 Armed with this knowledge, to submit to the desert demonstrated
weakness and a lack of engineering prowess. To allow Western progress to halt in
the face of obstacles both natural and human‐inspired would be to admit that the
29 George Grant, Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America. House of Anansi Press,
1969, 71‐72. 30 David Lowenthal, ‘The Place of the Past in the American Landscape’ in Lowenthal, David and
Mart ds. Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical our of John K. Wr iversity Pres
yn Bowden, e Geosophy in Honig Un
American Landscape’ (note 30), 102. ht. Oxford s, 1976, 94.
31 e Lowenthal, ‘The Place of the Past in th32 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 52. 33 Irving Fox and Lyle Craine, quoted in Resources for Tomorrow Conference, Montreal, Quebec.
October 23‐28, 1961. Vol. 1 – Conference Background Papers. Queen’s Printer, 1961, 287.
- 45 -
course of American history to dominate utterly the entire North American continent
– in one way or another – was unachievable, or worse: that American progress could
be limited by obstacles created by American progress such as resource scarcity. The
desert, the arid plains that Western settlement had halted against, was the most
imposing complication for the waves of settlers moving westward. Where
mountains could be traversed, plains crossed, and streams waded through, the
desert as a destination for homesteading would have been a demoralizing prospect.
And this Westward expansion, the most “dominant fact in American life,” had come
to a halt at the Pacific coast with the occupation of all available ‘free lands.’ 34
Worster argues that the moment irrigation as a means of ensuring American
growth seemed guaranteed at the turn of the twentieth century, the history of
factual, objective, verifiable description was substituted for that of the more
spacious, intriguing world of myth. The concept of irrigation in the American West
cannot be considered completely without this ideological, mythical component,
which holds that irrigation will ensure far more than greater crop yields, and
embodies the very self‐redemption of humanity.35 Yet the unachievable
expectations placed upon this advancement in agriculture, coupled with the national
preoccupation with unlimited growth, created a vicious cycle of water dependency.
To reach the ultimate goal of unfettered control over North America and its
resources, America needed people. To ensure enough food to feed the burgeoning
Western (and Eastern) populations in the last quarter of the nineteenth century
depended on a stable and large volume of water for irrigation. Large‐scale irrigation
could only happen with guidance and finance from Washington and other Eastern
businesses, and Washington stood to gain materially and financially from control
over an increasingly large expanse of territory. Yet the security of this territory
could only be ensured through the securing of increasingly scarce water resources.
55. 34 Tuner, Frontier Thesis (note 4),
35 Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination. Oxford University Press, 1993, 117.
- 46 -
2.3 – Water as Resource in the American West
It is important to consider how it is that water in its natural, flowing form
became commodified, and entered the realm of “resources.” Water, according to
Patricia Limerick, was “the key aspect of property in an arid or semiarid region,” the
cornerstone upon which the control of most other resources depended. 36 If the
stable and abundant supply of animal pelts, minerals, cattle and livestock, timber,
and oil was dependent upon an equally secure and stable supply of water, it was a
short leap to secure an adequate supply of water by making it property.37 In so
doing, it was possible to apply a price tag to a resource indispensible in its own
right, and in the creation of so much else of value. Part of this was the realization of
the Enlightenment ideal of self‐preservation: the commodification of water went a
long way towards securing so much else vital to the survival of the species.
Jamie Linton pinpoints 1909 as the date when water was first officially
labelled a resource in America by W.J. McGee, a member of the Roosevelt
administration responsible for national water issues.38 Yet the nineteenth century
was full of small‐ and increasingly large‐scale water diversion advances made with
the ultimate goal of commodifying water through the process of acquisition and
ownership, and the awarding of exchange value. We have seen this already in the
form of prior appropriation, in which water in its natural form was made an
extension of the land. Erich Zimmermann goes so far as to argue that the word
‘resource’ itself is merely “an abstraction reflecting human appraisal,” and, as such, a
“purely subjective concept.”39 While McGee’s prophesizing about the control of
water being necessary to the total conquest of nature taking place in turn‐of‐the‐
century America highlights the fullest extent to which people are capable of
commodifying water, Linton’s choice of date seems too rigid.40 However, he also
highlights this date because of the advent of hydroelectric development as a critical
36 Limerick, Legacy of Conquest (note 25), 72. 37 Limerick, Legacy of Conquest (note 25), 71‐73. 3 l Nature of Natural Resources – the Case of Water.’ Reconstruction. Vol.
6, N Journal.8 Jamie Linton, ‘The Sociao. 3. Summer 2006. Online <http://reconstruction.eserver.org/063/linton.shtml> 39 . Zimmermann, World Resources a es: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability
of Agricultural and Industrial Materials. Revised rper & Brothers Publishers, 1951, 3, 7. Erich W nd Industri
Edition. Ha40 Linton, Social Nature of Natural Resources (note 38).
- 47 -
moment in water’s being made a tradable good.41 Once the prospect of large‐scale
damming of rivers took on the added weight of electricity generation, in addition to
the benefits of flood control and irrigation, the process of making water marketable
was irreversible because the advantages were too great to let waste. And the
“hydrosocial” nature of water ensured that any meaning conferred upon it would be
the product of human interaction with the now‐resource through mega‐dam
construction, the social force of irrigation, and its central role in growth and
development. 42
As the twentieth century began, the interest in water diversion as a means of
ensuring against ecoscarcity while securing growth and progress was seen less as a
possibility, and increasingly as a necessity. To buckle in the face of natural
limitations in the desert and its barriers to irrigation would be to stymie the twin
pillars of growth and progress inherent in the American imperial project, and admit
that the ideals of development had limitations that humanity could not outfox.
Taken further, overcoming the desert was in this flurry of commodification seen as
logical, or what Andrew Biro argues was seen as the “common sense (or, to put it
more pointedly, natural) solution to the problem of (apparently natural)
ecoscarcity.”43 Perhaps the twin Enlightenment ideals of emancipation from want
and self‐preservation could not be guaranteed in America if the desert was strong
enough to halt the American march westward.
In many ways, the history of water development in the American West is a
story about the domination of nature carried out to ensure the survival of those
willing to live in inhospitable environments. The North American Water and Power
Alliance, when it arrived on the scene, was nothing more than a continuation of this
effort to survive: only the scale and scope had expanded, but the intention was the
same. In the late nineteenth century, when efforts at large‐scale water diversion
were only just beginning to stabilize, it seemed that the power of modern science
and technology to transform the very landscapes in which humanity lives might
41 Linton, Social Nature of Natural Resources (note 38). 42 Linton, Social Nature of Natural Resources (note 38). 43 Andrew Biro, ‘Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debate over Canadian Water Exports.’ Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism; December, 2002. Vol. 13, No. 4, 38.
- 48 -
save Enlightenment ideals from failure or irrelevance. Once emancipation and self‐
realization came to be accepted alongside modern science as enabling the incursion
into nature as a means to elevate humanity from the persistent insecurities of
scarcity and want, the idea of nature as a supplier of resources invaluable to
humanity’s very existence became widespread.
Of an earlier time, Harvey argues that “one side effect of 18th Century
political economy was that the domination of nature was viewed as a necessary
prerequisite to emancipation and self‐realization,” a precursor to the nineteenth and
twentieth century domination of nature under discussion here.44 Although Smith
referred to this as capitalism’s making of nature “in its totality [an] appendage to the
production process itself,” societies began to conceptualize it as a ‘necessary
prerequisite’ to self‐realization, rather than a reciprocal relationship with a finite
limit of gifts to give. 45 Indeed, for state planners in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries who followed in the Enlightenment’s wake, “the scientific domination of
nature (including human nature) was emancipatory.”46 As populations flourished
and expectations grew of that which would constitute ‘the good life,’ reason and
rationality began dictating the debate about the domination of nature. In 1893,
Ohioan author James Reeve argued that “one who has complete faith in the destiny
of our country can only believe that that destiny will be best accomplished by
developing to the utmost every material resource as rapidly and fully as it can be
done.”47 And as the pace of exploitation quickened, it became irrational to consider
a slowing of the process: growth was progress, and progress meant civilization.
Science and technology, under the employ of social pressures, had determined an
efficient manner in which to extract necessary resources. The question for a new age
of scientists, planners, and engineers was how to ensure that nature, a bastion of
44 y, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell Pub 21‐ David Harve lishing, 1996, 1
122. Italics added. 45 ith, Uneven Devel re, Capital, and the Production of Space. University of
Geo Neil Sm opment: Natur
, 96. gia Press, 1984, 71.
46 Scott, Seeing Like A State (note 1)47 James Reeve, quoted in Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 115.
- 49 -
irrationality and irregularities, began to behave in a “uniform, legible, manageable,
harvestable, and Fordist” manner. 48
2.4 – Humans as Managers of Nature
The concept of humans as managers of nature was ordained to continue the
mission of ensuring the survival of the species through efficient and rational
ordering of nature. The homogenizing pressure of capital accumulation to simplify
an ‘irrational’ nature in the nineteenth century ensured that the natural world must
provide for the species while ensuring that the simplification of nature remained
lucrative.49 “Large‐scale capitalism,” according to Scott, “is just as much an agency of
homogenization, uniformity, grids, and heroic simplification as the state is, with the
difference being that, for capitalists, simplification must pay.”50 William Leiss
identifies two problems with this human‐managerialist approach to first nature. In
situating humans as managers, the exploitation of nature is not only internalized as
the logical progression of instrumental reason and Enlightenment thought, but it
has been made irreplaceable to the twin capitalist pillars of the good life
(production and consumption). So much so, in fact, that the idea of dominating
nature is no longer extractable from that which constitutes the necessities of life.51
“In his activity man changes the natural world” while changing himself, according to
Leiss, “opening up new possibilities for utilizing nature’s resources, and the process
continues indefinitely.”52 In the West, government efforts at changing the landscape,
coupled with parallel advancements in science and technology, allowed for an
increasingly dramatic alteration of the natural world as a result of humanity’s
labour inputs. Humans changed as a result of their labour because they had to in
order to remain solvent. This also allowed for a dramatic shift in how Western
Americans perceived themselves: many became more technically minded, and those
48 cobar, ‘After to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’ in Current
Ant 9, 7. Arturo Es Nature: Steps
h y. Vol. 40, No. 1. Fe Nature’ (n
ropolog bruary 19949 ote 48), 7.
te (note 1), 8. Escobar, ‘After
50 Scott, Seeing Like A Sta51 Leiss, The Dominat eorge Braziller, 1972, 83; also see Smith, Uneven
Development (note 45), 86. William ion of Nature. G
52 Leiss, Domination of Nature (note 51), 83.
- 50 -
agriculturalists who lacked the necessary skills were pushed aside in favour of large,
monop . oly landholders possessing capital to purchase land, water and technology
Another issue Leiss identified is that in the twentieth century a sufficient
level of production and exploitation had already been attained to ensure the needs
of Western society were met well before NAWAPA surfaced in 1964.53 In other
words, NAWAPA was not guaranteeing the survival of Western Americans, so much
as the survival of their extravagancies, because the base needs of society had long
been realized. Yet the blind drive towards perpetual growth continued, and
continues to this day. If the control over nature necessary to ensure Western well‐
being had already been guaranteed before 1964, what basis existed for the need of
perpetual and unlimited growth at all costs that NAWAPA represented?54 Knowing
as humanity has for the last century that limitless development can and does
possess consequences other than capital gain, and that “unlimited growth is, prima
facie, impossible,” what possible motivation for something as ecologically,
economically, and politically illogical as NAWAPA existed other than unbridled
capitalist gain from natural properties?55 Soper concurs, arguing that fabricated
ecological ‘crisis’ stems from the human need for what she refers to as “cultural
transcendence,” the urge to “productivity, innovation, [and] the escape from cyclical,
reproductive and traditional modes of being.”56 Stability had been achieved, yet
growth prospered. “Capitalism, industrialization, Western ‘civilization,’” Soper
argues, can all be viewed in the broadest sense as originating from the “modes of
satisfaction” intended to achieve “cultural transcendence.”57 Yet the progress
inherent in the “transcendent drive of capitalist modernity,” she maintains, is
“deeply contradictory,” and rests on “uncivil and ecologically disastrous” habits that
those in Western societies continue to ignore at their peril.58
53 Leiss, Domination of Nature (note 51), 153. 54 alby, ‘Threats from the ney, Daniel H., ed. Contested Grounds. State
Uni Simon D South?’ in Deud
ve te 44), 15.
rsity of New York Press, 1999, 165.55 Harvey, Geography of Difference (no56 per, ‘Representing N ism, Nature, Socialism; December, 1998. Vol. 9, No. 4,
62. Kate So ature.’ Capital
Representing Nature57 Soper, (note 56), 62. 58 Soper, Representing Nature (note 56), 64.
- 51 -
Moreover, the paradigm of humans as managers of a docile nature is shifting
radically in a warming world. The mere exploitation of nature for its own sake is
slowly giving way to a more nuanced approach to environmental resource
management, seeking a balance between sustainability and capital accumulation.
Yet there is still reason to believe, as Leiss did as far back as 1972, that it is
becoming increasingly difficult (or unpopular) for the general public to separate
scientific and technological advancements “from the actual institutional network
that plans and directs the successive stages of that activity.”59 As a result of decades
of socio‐natural reengineering to achieve security and growth, the American public
has remained skeptical of the Bureau and Western states when they argued more
water was necessary to continue the industrial and irrigational growth necessary
for greater human welfare. The mere excuses intended to protect comfortable
methods of capital accumulation are gradually being laid bare. But in looking back
from the present ecological crisis to the beginning of the twentieth century, it
seemed as if the Bureau was set to begin a new phase of water diversion projects in
America – a road, it would turn out, that had pitfalls of its own.
2.5 – Fa est Divide ilure and Rebirth: Elwood Mead, the Bureau, and the East/W
After the Bureau’s founding in 1902, the alliance between water
development, power, and profit began to unravel. The support of staunch
conservatives in Eastern, urban centres for
Western water projects began to
demonstrate to an increasingly sceptical
public that the accumulation of power and
profit was the real driving force behind
water diversion schemes intended to
supply already powerful men with tools to
further ensure stabilized
production and social peace. This
Figure 2.1 River Discharge in Canada (Source: From W.R. Derrick Sewell, "Water Resources Across the American Continent,"
Geographical Magazine, June 1974, pp. 472479; and data supplied by Inland Waters Directorate, Environment Canada)
59 Leiss, Domination of Nature (note 51), 171.
- 52 -
was particularly true after the First World War ended, and during the Great
Depression.60 Numerous efforts by the Bureau to initiate innovative diversion plans
met with disaster between 1902 and 1923. By the latter year, four in ten farmers
who had begun farming as a result of grants received by the federal government
were delinquent on their water‐construction payments, generating $84 million in
crop value as opposed to $153 million only three years previously. Roughly $16
million, only 11% of the $143 million spent on federal irrigation efforts to help
small‐scale farmers stay in business against the onslaught of agribusiness was
repaid to the government.61 In 1923 it appeared to many that the Bureau of
Reclamation’s efforts to help kick‐start federally subsidized Western irrigation
projects had failed, due in large measure to the short‐sightedness, poor decisions,
and unrealistic expectations of those controlling the Bureau. By 1930, according to
Worster, “it was so manifest a failure that, had there not been powerful groups and
strong cultural imperatives supporting it, federal reclamation would have died an
ignominious death.”
62
Yet a new age of ambition and a new leader saved the Bureau from itself.
Named commissioner by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Elwood Mead was more
responsible than any other person for restoring the prestige of Western irrigation
and diversion projects in America. His success in bringing about the most heroic and
impressive engineering feat in the United States at the time in completing the
Hoover Dam in 1936, and his subsequent efforts at underwriting the remaking of
the waterways of the American West with hydroelectricity dollars helped Americans
to think positively about water diversion once again. Marq de Villiers argues that the
completion of the Hoover Dam sparked a torrent of other large‐scale dam
constructions around the world, most notably in the USSR, China, and across Africa.
Setting in motion a “change in the character of the world’s waterways, permanently
altering the ecosystems of entire drainage basins,” the Hoover Dam’s completion
60
f Empi Worster, Rivers o re (note 2), 166‐167.
61 Worster, Rivers o re (note 2), 178. 62 Worster, Rivers of Empire (note 2), 169‐170.
f Empi
- 53 -
began a new global age of large‐scale water diversion projects.63 As de Villiers
indicates, “the numbers are startling”: there were no dams larger than 15 metres
anywhere in the world by 1900, and in 1950 the number had reached 5,270 – by
1980, there were 36, 562 such dams world‐wide, over half of them in China alone.64
Under Mead, the era after 1924 became, as Robert Glennon argues, the “heyday of
dam‐building” in the United States, when “engineers, with considerable bravado an
technological wizardry, dammed the most formidable and wildest rivers in North
Americ
d
a.”65 More importantly, Mead made it acceptable, even practical, for
Americans to think big again in relation to water development plans after years of
Bureau mediocrity and failure.
A strange irony of water development in the American West is that it was
entirely an Eastern project: both the Bureau and the Corps were branches of the U.S.
Department of the Interior in Washington, and the increasingly vast sums of money
needed to carry out these Western water plans were bankrolled by Eastern
governments and businesses. This fact was apparent to Turner himself, writing in
1896 that “the West has been built up with borrowed capital.”66 What frustrated
Western irrigators, according to Samuel Hays, were the interventions they sought to
ensure that water projects were initiated, yet came replete with complications and
controls beyond their ability to resist.67 Without the East – Eastern government,
Eastern financing – there could have been no West, a fact difficult to accept, yet
impossible to ignore in the West. The differences in perception between East and
West go deeper than financing, striking at the heart of what makes Western
impressions of survival and prosperity bound to the land and its resources. “Lack of
water is the central fact of existence” in the West, according to Marc Reisner, “and a
63 r. Stoddart Pu Marq de Villiers,64 de Villiers, Water (note 63), 146. 65 r Follies (note 28), 20.
r Thesis (note 4), 56.
. Harvard University Press, 1959, 241.
Wate blishing, 1999, 145.
0
Glennon, Wate66 Tuner, Frontie67 Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation
Movement, 1890192
- 54 -
whole culture and set of values have grown up around it,” values that Easter
residents could simply not grasp. n
es
r
68
One of the common threads that wove together the arguments in favour of
NAWAPA were the twin concepts of “unused” and “wasted” water, an idea that
found expression in every discussion about the benefits of the Alliance. The
argument was that any freshwater flowing into the sea as opposed to being
harnessed for hydroelectric power or consumed for agricultural or municipal us
was not being used as efficiently or rationally as possible. It was, without human
intervention to regulate usage, being wasted. Figure 2.1 provides some indication of
where the myth of “wasted” water emerged: the largest rivers in Canada drain
outwards to the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific oceans, in addition to Hudson Bay,
rather than southward to the United States, with the exception of the Columbia,
though it too ultimately finds its way to the Pacific. In one typical example found in
the November 1965 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, Edmour Germain claimed
that “the general idea behind NAWAPA is to make maximum utilization of the now
unused water, or water likely to remain unused over the foreseeable future, by
employing it in a manner to bring fuller life to the peoples of the entire North
American continent.”69 In strikingly similar language, the U.S. Special Subcommittee
on Western Water Development (WWD) also indicated that “the [NAWAPA]
proposal is predicated on the utilization of only that water which now, or in the
foreseeable future, is going unused.”70
Such a misunderstanding was argued in multiple venues by advocates of the
NAWAPA plan, each attempting to situate the water under scrutiny as valueless
without some manner of human valuation to give it meaning. Some American
commentators, such as Gordon Eliot White of the Austin, Texas journal American
Statesman, argued that hostility in Canada towards Sen. Moss had been elevated
because the waste he spoke of was accurate. “At least four billion acre feet of wate
68 Marc Reisner. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Viking Press, 1986, 12.
69 Public Utilities Fortnightly. Importing Water from Canada. November 11, 1965, 30. 70 Committee on Public Work ittee on Western Water
Dev f Water Resource Projects, elating to the Western andMid
United States Senate. s. Special Subcommelopment. A Summary o Plans, and Studies Rwestern United States. Government Printing Office, 1966, 13.
- 55 -
run uselessly into the sea” according to White, a figure never sourced.71 Canadians,
in this sense, were hesitant either because their waste of freshwater was true, or by
virtue of their ignorance of water resource availability and needs within Canada.
Regional variations on the theme of “waste” are interesting to consider here: in
Cadillac Desert, Reisner argues that “in the East, to ‘waste’ water is to consume it
needlessly or excessively. In the West, to waste water is not to consume it – to let it
flow unimpeded and undiverted down rivers.”72 Without human intervention to
associate “unused” water with value, water as a resource would cease to be a
resource, resigned to remain simply part of the natural world.
U.S. President Herbert Hoover echoed this predominantly Eastern sentiment
in 1926, claiming that “true conservation of water is not the prevention of its use.
Every drop of water that runs to the sea without yielding its full commercial returns
to the nation is an economic waste.”73 But this accounts solely for economic uses. As
such, it is incomplete as a method for thinking about the full uses of river systems
and watersheds from the perspective of those who seek the inclusion of non‐
economic factors in the valuation of natural systems. Regarding water export, Rorke
Bryan argues that “the conservationist’s role is not to stop water transfer but to
ensure that its necessity is objectively examined, that all options have been heard,
and that all social and monetary costs considered.” This is the tempered approach to
conservation missing from East/West characterizations. The variation in thinking
about how and why water is consumed is crucial to understanding how differing
perceptions of reality can impact resource use. Arne Naess introduces the obviou
but ofte
s,
of
n neglected relationship between ontology and ethics, arguing that “the
difference between the antagonists [regarding environmental intervention] is one…
ontology than of ethics. They may have fundamental ethical prescriptions in
common, but apply them differently because they see and experience reality so
differently.”74
71 American Statesman. Experts Eye Water in Nor , 1966. 72 illac Desert (note 68), 12.
, quoted in Glennon, Water Follies (note 28)
th. October 3 Reisner, Cad
73 President Herbert Hoover , 13. 74 Arne Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge University
Press, 1991, 66. Italics original.
- 56 -
In the case of NAWAPA, it is clear that when considering the antagonists
(state planners, politicians, and engineers on the hand and ecologists, politicians,
and many members of the academic and scientific communities on the other) that
there is no way of convincing a state planner or engineer to save a watershed or
river from being dammed so long as they retain their conception of the river as
merely water. The task of dissuading them becomes more challenging if they view
this river in terms of its potential energy being wasted without human intervention
Discussing the “land ethic” of Aldo Leopold, Tina Loo maintains that “thinking in
.
wholly on
ecologi d the poverty of a conservation system ‘basedcal terms reveale
economic motives.’”75 Finally, we
NAWAPA had human welfare at le
ontologies differed inasmuch as th
the best means were to that end.
2.6 – Setting the Stage for NAWA
The controversy
surrounding the Columbia River
Treaty is a fundamental context
through which to understand the
anxiety already present in
Canadian society before the
North American Water and
Power Alliance became known.
Some commentators draw more
direct connections between the
two events than others, though it
is undeniable that NAWAPA
followed immediately
on the heels of the
Columbia River Treaty’s ratification and sought to expand upon treaty details
must remember that those both for and against
ast as their common ethical foundation: their
ey held competing conceptions of what they felt
PA: The Columbia River Treaty
Figure 2.2 Columbia River Plan (Source: 'The Proposed Columbia River Treaty' by A.G.L. McNaughton in International Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, Spring 1963)
75 Tina Loo, States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century. UBC Press,
2006, 156.
- 57 -
pertaining to water diversion and export already agreed to in the document. If
nothing else, the Columbia Treaty was responsible for removing the constitutional
barrier to the promotion of subsequent large‐scale water export proposals, but also
for introducing the concept of Canadian water export as something achievable in
American eyes, and as something to be avoided in Canada. 76 Whether intentional or
not, the he Columbia Treaty set in place a precedent between the governments of t
United States and Canada, whereby the former had justifiable reason to suspect that
the latter could be persuaded, or might even willingly enter into discussions about
large‐scale water export. As such, the Columbia Treaty was one of the first overtures
to the idea of “continental resources” in North America ever made.
The Columbia River Treaty also succeeded in securing the acceptance of
“continental resources” as an avenue of resource extraction in need of further stu
What the Treaty showed, if nothing else, was the sheer possibility of similar
proposals being discussed: perhaps bigger, grander plans could become feasible,
even logical, given the right persuasion. As General Andrew McNaughton, an
engineer, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States, and head of the
Canadian contingent to the International Joint Commission (IJC) argued in 1963,
“the U.S. intention is…to create an inducement to draw Canada…into an integration
arrangement which would be primarily of advantage to the United States.”
dy.
77
Research into the potential of the Columbia River for damming had begun nearly
two decades before the treaty was ratified in 1964, involving both Ottawa and
Washington, in addition to the British Columbia provincial government under
Premier W.A.C. Bennett, the U.S. Congress, and the Army Corps of Engineers. What
was so remarkable about the Columbia River, according to Philip Sykes, was the
manner in which it flowed from the interior mountains to the sea: a 2,652 foot drop
which made it not only one of the greatest potential sources of both consumptive
water and hydroelectricity output in North America, but also “an engineer’s
76 ykes, eaway of Canada’s Energy Resources. Hurtig Publishers, 1973, 65.
G.L. McN e Proposed Columbia River Treaty’ in ; Vol. 18, No.
Philip S Sellout: The Giv77 Gen. A. aughton, ‘Th 2. Spring 1963, 158.
International Journal
- 58 -
dream.”78 A more detailed understanding of the physical scope and relations of the
plan is evident in Figure 2.2.
At root, the Treaty was a $410.6 million plan to dam the Columbia River. For
Canada, the plan was to build three dams on Canadian soil capable of storing
upwards of 15.5 million acre‐feet, backing over 40 miles from the border into
Canada r and stretching into the Rocky Mountain trench.79 While administration fo
the project would remain in American hands, the issue of any international
wrangling over treaty minutiae was bypassed by the Canadian acquiescence of
power to “international control,” control based on what Larratt Higgins, an Ontario
Hydro economist and one of General McNaughton’s closest confidants during the
Columbia debate, refers to as “the greatest good for the basin as a whole.”80
Political problems began over the controversial construction of the Libby
Dam in Montana in 1948, which would have be responsible for flooding over 17,00
acres of British Columbia land to a depth of 150 feet.
0
81 After the plan received
Congressional approval in 1950, it was sent to the IJC for consideration in 1951
while Corps engineers began the laborious process of land surveying. Pressure from
the United States on Canada to accept the plan without adequate knowledge of
existing Canadian water resources, let alone any detailed projections of future
Canadian water needs, ensured that Canada was gambling on the future economic
prosperity of British Columbia, in addition to accepting American expertise despite
the imbalance in acquired knowledge.82 As the IJC considered the treaty, the poor
economics of the plan became known to the public. The Libby Dam struck many
North Americans as little more than empire or legacy building on the part of the
Corps, while others objected to the competitive uses for those rivers and lands for
wildlife, recreational, and agricultural purposes.83 As opposition to the dam grew,
78 llout (not
ocking, Canada's Water: For Sale? Jam Publishing, 1972, 90, 91. Sykes, Se
79 muel Alienation of Canadian Resources’
e 76), 50. Richard B es Lewis & Sa
80 (no Alienation of
Higgins, ‘The te 5), 224, 225. 81 Higgins, ‘The Canadian Resources’ (note 5), 230. 82 ins, ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resour ton, ‘The
Pro ia Riv 77), 155; and See Higg ces’ (note 5), 228, 229; McNaugh
posed Columb er Treaty’ (note Sykes, Sellout (note 76), 49. 83 Higgins, ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources’ (note 5), 231; and McNaughton, ‘The Proposed
Columbia River Treaty’ (note 77), 150.
- 59 -
Washington was persuaded to abandon Libby in favour of smaller‐scale alternatives.
W.A.C. ed Bennett was conscious of the short‐term financial compensation to be gain
by the province and sacrificed Canadian interests in the Columbia Treaty by vetoi
Ottawa’s alternative proposal in favour of the Libby Dam. He chose what Richard
Bocking refers to as “operational co‐operation,” which he maintains is tantamount
to “the US stating how much water it wants to cross the border in the Columbia river
at a given time, and the Canadian authorities turn[ing] the tap accordingly.”
ng
thus
r
lt
st
84
Rather than continue negotiations with Washington and Victoria, Ottawa
opted instead to accept Bennett’s veto and a Columbia plan which included the
construction of the 422 foot Libby Dam.85 Federal politicians astonished their
American counterparts by acquiescing to Bennett’s proposal without comment,
ensuring that the short‐term financial gain of British Columbia would win out ove
the long‐term financial, ecological, agricultural, or recreational interests of the
province or the country as a whole. In the wake of the Columbia debacle, Prime
Minister John Diefenbaker solidified the weakened bargaining position of the
federal government by putting forth a view on federal‐provincial relations that
claimed that in any international dealing where provincial jurisdiction was
concerned, it would be the responsibility of the federal government to ensure all
international protocol was observed while blindly deferring to the wishes of the
province(s).86 It was an act that, according to Higgins, “would destroy the
credibility, relevance, and consequently the power of the Ottawa government,” a
view which, despite its strength, has been partially substantiated by the continued
failure of the Canadian federal government to formalize a coherent national policy
with the provinces regarding shared water resources.87
Attempting to put a monetary value on Canadian gains and losses as a resu
of the Columbia Treaty, Sykes tabulated the financial gains to Canada at roughly
$455 million when considering flood control, access to American markets, intere
84 Canada’s Water (note 79), 42; J.S. Cram dian Needs and Resources. Harvest
House, 1971, 140. Bocking, , Water: Cana
‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources’85
‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources’ Higgins, (note 5), 233.
86 Higgins, (note 5), 234. 87 Higgins, ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources’ (note 5), 234.
- 60 -
payments, and some power generation. With regards to total Canadian losses as a
result of the Columbia Treaty, Sykes acknowledges the futility of his effort. The
results were staggering: Canada lost control of the Columbia and Kootenay River
flows and the untold profits to be made by potential growth and development,
40,000 square miles to inland flooding, billions in consumptive uses never to be
recuperated, and the humiliating realization that Canada could never again utilize
the optimal flows of the Columbia and Kootenay rivers without incurring financial
penalty from the United States. Sykes admits that “these items add up to a total that
has never been and perhaps never can be computed.”88 For Frank Quinn, the imp
of the Columbia Treaty was pronounced in its “economic” and “psychological effects
regionally and nationally.”
act
ed
89
Though the Columbia River Treaty had little to do with water transfer, it set
off alarms in the Canadian consciousness with regards to water export, and the
extent of the American demands and their efforts to secure them.90 The Calgary
Herald on October 4, 1965, maintained that “the lack of formally enunciated
Canadian policy on water is encouraging U.S. interests to press for adoption of a vast
scheme to divert Canadian water.”91 The Herald and others were drawing a direct
link between Ottawa’s uncertainty over Canadian water resources and the ability of
the United States to exploit this to their gain. In this sense, they are reinforcing the
centrality of resources to the relationship between Canada and the United States. It
also highlighted the sheer necessity of federal‐provincial co‐operation on matters of
water resources to ensure that competing designs upon Canadian water resources
could be met with compromise, rather than domestic wrangling. The Columbia
Treaty “not only weakened the position of Canada in future dealings with the Unit
States, it also managed to weaken the position of the federal government vis‐à‐vis
ectorate. Water Pla88 Sykes, Sellout (
. note 76), 61.
89 Ministry of the Envh. AreaofOrigin Prot
Frank J. Quinn nning and Management Branc 1973, 27.
90 ryan, Much Remains: Canadian Issues in Environmental Conservation. Dux ss, 197
ironment. Inland Waters Directionism in Western Waters. Queen’s Printer,
65.
Rorke B Much is Taken,bury Pre 3, 121. 91 Calgary Herald. October 4, 19
- 61 -
the provinces.”92 After all the hallmarks of uncertain resource management present
in the Columbia negotiations, the situation in Canada was anything but ripe for the
scale of water diversion that the Ralph Parsons Company was proposing with
NAWAPA.
ensure
Ye Canadian
te tes the
93 It was bold, even callous to release the continental plan with its
dramatic implications for Canadian freshwater and sovereignty so soon after the
Columbia Treaty’s conclusion. Other high‐ranking American politicians were also
quick to make the connection between Columbia and larger cross‐border water
diversions. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, a Westerner himself,
recommended in 1964 that Canada and the United States create a series of common,
continental resource markets to achieve the greatest efficiency at the lowest cost.
Udall identified the Columbia River Treaty as an example of how such an
arrangement might look.94 Utah Senator Frank Moss became NAWAPA’s most avid
supporter, rallying support for the Alliance at speaking engagements in both
countries. He also headed the U.S. Special Subcommittee on Western Water
Developm ay to
water sec
ent in 1966, which endorsed NAWAPA as the most practical w
urity for the foreseeable future in the American West.95
t the scepticism over the nobility of American intentions towards
r had taken root. Donald Waterfield, in Continental Waterboy, stafreshwa
connection between the finalizing of the Columbia Treaty and the advent of
NAWAPA in the clearest terms: It is no coincidence that NAWAPA’s predatory intentions were not published before May, 1964. There were already plans on the American drawing boards for watering the United States with northern streams before acceptance [of the Columbia Treaty] by Canada; but no engineering firm had had the temerity to publish such schemes.”96
92 James Laxer. The Energy Poker Game: The Politics of the Continental Resource0
), 63. am
Deal, New Press,
mmary Controversy
197 , 40. 93 76
t of the Interior Press Release, quoted in J.S. Cr
note 70).
Sykes, Sellout (note94 United States Departmen , Water: Canadian
Need ces (note 84), 136. s Senate, A Su
. Clarke, Irwin and Com
s and Resour95 ate of Water Reso
aterfield, Continental Waterboy: The United St urce Projects (
96 Donald W Columbia Riverpany Limited, 1970, 214.
- 62 -
aterfield immediately adds that “it was then entirely logical to assume that, if
anadians were willing to give the Americans Kootenay’s water, they would surely
e even more keen to sell flows from other rivers.”97 Larratt Higgins notoriously
laimed – conservatively, it turns out – that “it will cost Canada about $100 million
o give the Columbia away.”98 The precedent had been set with America that
anadian water, for all the nationalist rhetoric to the contrary, might be for sale
fter all.
W
C
b
c
t
C
a
97 Waterfield, Continental Waterboy (note 96), 214. 98 Higgins, ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources’ (note 5), 236.
- 63 -
Chapter Three – The State and Social Conceptions of Nature
“We behave as though we were in a desperate war for su nly enemy is our own unwillingness to adapt our patte of our environment.”
rvival, and we are, but our orn of living to the shape
erica’
– Raymond Dasmann, ‘Man in North Am
NAWAPA was a private sector plan, but one espoused largely by those in
government, such as Senator Frank Moss, who would have been responsible for
implementing the proposal had it been accepted. Thus, it is necessary to turn now to
the state as an active agent in the transformation of the North American
environment. The manner in which high modernist planning shaped the state’s
relationship to both people and natural attributes will be examined in two ways:
through the processes of rendering water technical, and the means by which the
state used control over nature to regulate its citizens. And while the populations and
the environment, the twin targets of high modernist planning, are often discussed as
separate entities, this has not always been the case. For Alvin Hamilton, Canadian
Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources (NANR) from 1957 to 1960, it
was the responsibility of a “strong political state” to manage national development
of natural resources within a loosely defined framework of “human betterment,” an
equation Hamilton felt would ultimately lead to “equitable social justice” for all
Canadians.1 These issues are explored here first through a broader discussion of
high modernism in the mid‐twentieth century in relation to the early twentieth
century conservation movement in the United States. Secondly, high modernism will
be examined through Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s “Northern Vision” of
resource and human development in the Arctic, a national policy first articulated in
the late 1950s.
Water did not fit easily into resource debates in the 1950s and 1960s. Its
fundamental importance in maintaining human and other biological life set it apart
from comparable resource commodities such as oil or natural gas, yet it retained
enough similar properties to be considered a marketable good. Water’s central place
in the Canadian imagination and its constant labelling as a point of national heritage
1 Alvin Hamilton, unpublished ‘Declaration of Principles by the Progressive Conservative
National Convention,” quoted in Patrick Kyba, Alvin: A Biography of the Honourable Alvin Hamilton, P.C. Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, 1989, 102.
- 64 -
ensured that in any debate about water diversion or withdrawal, whether for
domestic or international use, the stakes would be higher than for other resources.
After Hamilton, subsequent NANR ministers in Canada connected water (and
resources more broadly) to the future vitality of the country, but also to natural and
political legacies. When convincing John Diefenbaker to make his vision of resource
development a central pillar in the 1957 election campaign, Alvin Hamilton drew
upon the advice of his close friend Dr. Merril Menzies, arguing that “only by great
thought and effort can we prevent the unconscious betrayal of the national heritage
bequeathed to us by Sir John A. Macdonald.”2 Hamilton’s eventual successor at
NANR, Liberal Arthur Laing, positioned the wise management of water resources in
Canada as central to the strength or weakness of the Canadian nation, and as the
linchpin of the “prosperity or the adversity of all our generations.”3 Such positing of
water as the ‘ultimate resource’ upon which Canada’s future hinged made it
increasingly difficult to consider water diversion using reason before passion.
It was easy to preach about the vital importance of water to Canada’s future
development, and even easier to speculate about the worth of water to the United
States and the extents some would go to in that country to secure access to Canadian
water. Saskatchewan MP Tommy Douglas touched on both points on May 4, 1964,
arguing in the House of Commons that “we have great resources of water, more
water than our friends to the south, and that is why our friends to the south would
be very happy to spend a few billion dollars in Canada if they could get access to our
water resources.”4 These and other statements on the centrality of water to
Canada’s great future indicate the significance which the American and Canadian
states ascribed to water and other resource development, and the often emotional
attitudes brought to bear on the decision‐making process. Among the many mid‐
2 Dr. Merill Menzies, personal letter to Dr. Glen Green, quoted in Kyba, Alvin (note 1), 102. 3 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, C.O.P.
CA.R. 64, “Water ‐ The Ultimate Resource: An Address by the Honourable Arthur Laing, Minister of Northern A t Trade ociation, ffairs and National Resources, at a luncheon of the Pacific Northwes AssPortland, Oregon, April 12, 1965.” Ottawa, 1965, 12.
4 Thomas C. Douglas, “Canadian Water Resources.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. III (May 4, 1964). Canadian Government Publishing, 1964, 2905.
- 65 -
century debates in Canada over resource use and energy policy, none possessed
higher stakes than NAWAPA.
3 roblems with Unchecked Development, Growth, and Northern Lifestyles
Problematizing the idea that the desert must be made to bloom only became
fashionable in North America over the last quarter of the twentieth century. Until
then, it was assumed by many that unchecked development and growth in
sustaining Northern lifestyles was the proper, even divinely sanctioned task of
humanity. And when the landscape proved inhospitable to the greater ambitions of
society as it did in the American Southwest, there was a “greater willingness [on the
part of Americans] to shape the land to suit their enterprise than to adapt their
enterprise to the shape of the land.”
.1 – P
5 NAWAPA, in this sense, would have continued
the theme of unchecked growth prevalent in North American society that sought to
remake nature as needs arose.
David Harvey argued in 1996 that “from a green perspective, continuous
growth cannot be achieved by overcoming what appear to be temporary limits –
such as those imposed by a lack of technological sophistication,” adding that
“continuous and unlimited growth is prima facie impossible.”6 Yet it is not enough to
simply ask why Northern society has chosen to do this; rather, it will be useful to
examine the ways in which NAWAPA may be used as an illustration of the distance
that humanity is prepared to go in securing the ultimate necessity of organic life.7
The historical precedent of socio‐natural re‐engineering indicated a future in which
gains could be had through a manipulation of the surrounding landscape. Rorke
Bryan argues that “the development which has taken place [in the West] was made
possible by the creation of extensive water control and diversion measures,” a
process which would only improve with advancements in the technological means
to both control and divert water.8 Throughout the NAWAPA debate there was never
5 Raymond Dasmann, ‘Man in North America,’ quoted in The Conservation Foundation. Darling, F.
Frase ilton, eds. Future Environments of North Ameri1965
r and John P. M ca. The Natural History Press,
, Justice, Nature, and of Difference. Blackwell Publishing, 1996, 15. , 329.
6 the Geographyth America’ (note 5), 329.
David Harvey7 Dasmann, ‘Man in Nor8 Rorke Bryan, Much is Taken, Much Remains: Canadian Issues in Environmental Conservation.
Duxbury Press, 1973, 138.
- 66 -
significant consideration of the alternatives to unchecked growth: how balanced the
debate could have been without questioning the manner in which society was
progressing along the path of development, let alone whether growth at any cost
was the correct path, will be examined here.
Even Senator Frank Moss was quick to indicate that it was the twin demands
of population growth and expanding industrial development in the American
Southwest that were pressuring planners, engineers, and politicians to seek out
comfortable solutions to nagging modern problems like ecoscarcity.9 His focus was
“resolutely on the supply side of the equation, with demand presumed to be
inexorably rising” because of these twin burdens.10 Moss was never unaware that
the cruxes of the water scarcity debate were the demands placed upon water by
industry and the need to feed growing populations: he maintained, however, that
conservation or radical shifts in values and consumption patterns would never
equal in magnitude the scale of the problem – that conservation would pale in
comparison to the monumental task at hand.11 The perceived magnitude of the
water problem in the arid Southwest gave opportunity for those who chose to
accept the basic tenets of the crisis to plan for something both grandiose and
visionary, something that water conservation – for the planners, politicians, and
engineers who envisioned NAWAPA into existence – could never be. Tied to the
allure of grandiose and visionary planning was overcoming what Democratic
Congressman Jim Wright of Texas saw as the “disturbing indications” in the 1950s
and 1960s that America “may have lost some of our capacity for dreaming and
acting in those areas concerning our survival upon this Earth” with respect to the
“wanton wastefulness in the matter of water.”12 Wright was drawing upon the
American historical legacy of innovation and determinism in arguing for the Alliance
as a means to re‐imagine the nation on a grand scale while solving the problem of
9 Frank Moss, quoted in Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resources of
Canad ress, 1967, 4.
a. Symposia Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto P
10 s.’ Capitalism, Natu ember, 2002. Vo
Andrew Biro, ‘Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debate over Canadian Water Exportr ec l. 13, N
ss, The Water Crisis. Frede 78. e, Socialism; D o. 4, 33.
11 Frank E. Mo rick A. Praeger Publishers, 1967, 277‐212 Jim Wright, The Coming Water Famine. Coward‐McCann Inc., 1963, 221‐222.
- 67 -
America’s “wanton wastefulness of water” without suggesting that people consume
less water or change their lifestyles.
Moss, Wright, and others like them, such as Brigadier‐General James Kelly of
the Army Corps of Engineers, were responding to a calamity of America’s own
making without ever considering the ways in which American progress had crafted
a truly American crisis. What’s more, mega‐diversion boosters in the United States
responded with the same enthusiasm mustered only previously in times of war. The
analogies were not hard to make: for Congressman Wright, “the crisis of our
diminishing water resources is just as severe…as any wartime crisis we have ever
faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or
the Argonne, or Gettysburg.”13 Admonishing Americans who did not demonstrate
the requisite “fortitude,” “diligence,” and “bold and imaginative thinking” that had
seen previous generations of Americans through equally grave situations, Wright
and his contemporaries were not only drawing upon America’s history of fortitude
and frontier individualism to solve problems, but were actively campaigning for the
same largeness of vision which had built America to solve the environmental
problems that such visionary thinking had wrought.14
At the 1969 Arid Lands in Perspective conference, P.H. McGauhey claimed
that agricultural productivity and the “desire of people to enjoy the climate of the
Southwest” were the real justifications for water transfer proposals, yet these
sounded hollow in comparison to statements which played upon the romanticism of
the West, of the future, and of the unknown North.15 Newsweek reported in
February 1965 that “obviously the alternative [to water shortages] is to bring in new
water from somewhere else, and for years, planners have been looking longingly at
the rivers of the far north.” The story quoted the associate director of the Water
Resources Institute at the University of Nevada, who claimed that “something like
13 Wright, Coming Water Famine (note 12), 231. 14 Wright, Coming Water Famine (note 12), 231. 15 P.H. McGauhey, quoted in American Association for the Advancement of Science. McGinnies,
William G. and Bram J. Goldman, eds. Arid Lands in Perspective: Including AAS Papers on Water Importation Into Arid Lands. University of Arizona Press, 1969, 363.
- 68 -
[NAWAPA] will have to be the ultimate solution to our problems for the next couple
of hundred years.”16
Such was the stuff upon which national visions could be built, on which
nations could be mobilized as they had been in times of war – only now, the enemy
was an irrational nature whose dropping output could only be saved by technology.
Such musings lifted the spirit and reinforced the strength of human ingenuity and
agency, convincing a troubled nation that despite its problems, this was something
that technology could fix, if given the chance. But the real problem, according to
some, was that growth was occurring in inappropriate locations in the United States
and Canada, and that this demographic pattern must be shifted or survival would be
threatened. Statements such as that made by staff ecologist Raymond Dasmann of
the Conservation Foundation found little support within the halls of power. He
wrote in 1965 that
the search for water is endless, since people are encouraged to settle in greatest numbers in the more arid regions…we propose to dam and capture every river, move water any distance without much regard for cost in dollars or damage to the natural environment… We behave as though we were in a desperate war for survival… but our only enemy is our own unwillingness to adapt our pattern of living to the shape of our environment.17
One of the key challenges faced by those who opposed the unquestioned value of
development and unchecked economic growth was the need to transcend mere
moralizing. Any challenge upon the hegemonic status quo with subjective
arguments about the needs and values of nature – regardless of the subjectivity of
economic growth – would inevitably fall short of expectations. Without the backing
of scientific rationality, Dasmann’s argument would sound hollow because of the
stock placed in rational understandings of natural systems and the traditional
framework for conceiving of nature as “an inexhaustible cornucopia” or “an
16 Newsweek Continent. February 22, 19617 Dasmann, ‘Man in North America’ (note 5), 331. Italics added.
. NAWAPA: Watering a 5.
- 69 -
unlimited bounty awaiting…the ‘hand of man’ to turn it into a bundle of
resources.”18
It was only with the use of “scientific eco‐networks” that arguments against
the despoilation of nature could help relieve the “burden of moral justification” and
make the impalpable seem palpable, “the ambivalent unequivocal, [and] the
groundless susceptible of proof.”19 By employing science, so long a tool of the state
used to justify its interventions into first nature, as a means of quantifiably
measuring natural degradation resulting from such interventions, the debate was
turned on its head: no longer could boosters of economic growth argue against their
opponents armed solely with precedence and history. In the future, stronger
arguments would be needed to maintain an unsustainable status quo that
NAWAPA’s proponents were defending.
It is important to consider what the actual extent
of the water shortage was in the Southwest at the time,
and the accuracy of water needs projections. While it
gradually came to be accepted by most that the future
shortage was not of freshwater, but of historically cheap
freshwater, the crisis, however dubious in hindsight, was
very real to men of influence in the 1960s. In 1973 at the
Canadian Water Resources Association conference in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Brigadier‐General Kelly cited a
report issued by the National Water Commission
(NWC) on population growth and America’s future. In
its report, the NWC claimed that even with low population and low economic
growth levels the United States water requirements would double between 1960
and 2000, a claim that was partly substantiated by the new millennium. According
to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) water survey’s for 1960 and 2000, total U.S.
water withdrawals in 1960 for all purposes totaled 270 billion gallons per day
Figure 3.1 Breakdown of 1960 water withdrawal (Source: USGS Water Survey
1960)
18 E.F. Murphy, Governing Nature. Quadrangle Books, 1967, 20; also see Cindi Katz, ‘Whose
Natur ure? Private Productions of Space f Nature’ in Braun, Bruc tree, eds. Remaking Reality: Natur tledge, 1998, 46.
e, Whose Cult and the “Preservation” oe and Noel Cas e at the Millennium. Rou19 Ulrich Beck, Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk. Polity Press, 1995, 55.
- 70 -
(Bgal/d), a figure which increased to 408 Bgal/d in the USGS 2000 report, a growth
rate of 1.51, below the NWC projected rate of 2.20 During that same forty year
period, 1.55. the U.S. population grew by 100 million, a comparable growth rate of
Of particular interest from the data are the illustrations drawn which
highlight the remarkable difference between the Eastern United States and the
Western United States regarding water withdrawal. As shown in Figure 3.1,
irrigation comprised 40% of water withdrawal in the 1960 USGS Water Survey,
dropping to 34% of water withdrawal by the 2000 USGS Water Survey, though it
failed to lose its most telling
geographic feature. Figure
3.2 from the 2000 USGS
survey, illustrates a country
highly divided between East
and West with respect to
irrigation withdrawals: of the
20 states that withdraw
anywhere from 1,000 to
31,000 millions of gallons
per day (Mgal/d), 14 are western states, including the two leading culprits, Idaho
and California, who are the only states to withdraw between 15,000 to 31,000
Mgal/d. The only Eastern state that withdraws water at the higher end of the scale is
Arkansas, withdrawing between 5,000 and 15,000 Mgal/d.
21
Figure 3.2 Total U.S. Withdrawals by State Irrigation 2000 (Source: USGS Water Survey 2000)
22
20 Of this 408 Bgal/d, 85% (346.8 Bgal/d) was freshwater withdrawal, 15% (61.2 Bgal/d) saline
For data on water withdrawal patterns and figures, see United States Geological Survey. MacKichan, K.A. and J.C. Kammerer, eds. Circular 456. Estimated Use of Water in the United States, 1960. U.S. Department of the Interior, 1961; and United States Geological Survey. Hutson, Susan S., Nancy L. Barbe pin, eds. Circular 1268. Estim nterior, 2004.
.
r, Joan F. Kenny, Kristin S. Linsey, Deborah S. Lumia, and Molly A. Mauated Use of Water in the United States in 2000. U.S. Department of the I
21 For data on the April, 2000 census, see United States Census Bureau, Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008, http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST‐EST2008‐01.xls; for data on the July, 1960 census see United States Census Bureau. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States ns, States, and Puer ril 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008, , Regio to Rico: Ap
t/archives/http://www.census.gov/popes 1990s/popclockest.txt 22 USGS 2000 Water Survey (note 20).
- 71 -
Statistics on American irrigation withdrawals can be used to highlight the
ways in which the legacies of irrigation, growth, and development through water
diversion are still dominant features of the landscape of contemporary America.
Writing in 1963 for Resources for the Future Inc., Hans Landsberg argued that
“demands upon the nation’s resources of fresh water are expected to multiply
between 1960 and the year 2000.”23 He notes that “part of the increase will come
about simply from increases in population and in industrial activity,” in addition to
the continued urbanization occurring in the arid Southwest, adding a twist to what I
ca.have highlighted as the twin cruxes of the water scarcity debate in North Ameri
The success of NAWAPA in moving from the drafting table to the public
domain reflects the emphasis that those in power placed upon economic growth as
the primary ambition of society, an attitude that Richard Bocking was quick to
distance himself from at the 1973 CWRA conference. Attempting to answer whether
large‐scale water development was vital to the success of Northern civilization,
Bocking echoed Ted Newbury’s sentiment from earlier in the conference that its
vitality largely depends on the kind of society or nation that people desire, and the
values that become part of that society or nation.
24
25 We cannot ignore what Naess
referred to as the prestige of consumption and waste in North American societies, so
entrenched and married to the notion of scientific advancement that any effort to
curb this enthusiasm for progress and development would not only seem illogical,
but would contradict American progress and ideals.26 “Deep faith in economic
growth is a fundamental part of the American tradition,” argued David Anderson in
1970, noting that “to question it is to threaten the American dream itself.”27 Yet
then, as now, it rarely seems to have been considered that “it might have been more
logical, cheaper, and ultimately more beneficial to encourage population growth in
23 Hans Landsberg, Leonard L. Fischman, and Joseph L. Fisher, eds. Resources in America’s Future:
Patter ments and Availabilities 196 s for the Future Inc. Johns Hopkins Pres
ns of Require 02000. Resources, 1963, 275. 24 Landsberg, Resources in America’s Future (note 23), 276. 25 d in Canadian Water Resources Association. 2
1973, 113. Richard Bocking, quote 5th Anniversary
Conference. CWRA,26 Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of a idge University
Pres Arne Naess, Ecology, n Ecosophy. Cambrs, 1991, 31. 27 Wall Street Journal. Policy Riddle: Ecology vs. the Economy. February 2, 1970.
- 72 -
areas of abundant rather than deficient water” supply.28 The Alliance, therefore,
must be seen as an extension of the capitalist effort at modifying the landscape in
pursuit of preserving Northern lifestyles. It speaks to the entrenched value of waste
and consumption and stands today as a stark reminder of the lengths that many in
North America were willing to go to ensure the temporary continuation of an
unsustainable status quo.
3.2 – High Modernism and the Conservation Movement
As the Bureau of Reclamation was finding its efforts at water diversion
increasingly difficult to get started successfully at the turn of the century, the
conservation movement was gaining public support. Despite its name, the
conservation movement in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth
century embodied several key aspects of James Scott’s theory of high modernist
state planning. Specifically, it was a movement largely organized by scientists and
state planners to use nature efficiently for the benefit of government and business
on a grand scale. As a result, it sought to remake rather than conserve the natural
world, based on technological rather than ecological thinking.29 It is not surprising,
then, as Donald Worster argues, that the pursuit of technological dominance over
nature and the efficient rationalization of Western rivers and entire watersheds was
organized under the engineer’s conservationist rubric.30 Jamie Linton concurs,
noting that “determining which...uses water should be applied to…was what
‘conserving’ the resource was all about.”31 Conservation in the Western American
context would logically entail the efficient and rational utilization of all available
water resources, once water had been successfully conceptualized that way. Indeed,
Linton even goes so far as to argue that “the deliberate naming of water as a
resource…needs to be seen in the context of scientific, economic and political
28 Bryan, Much is Taken, Much R29 The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imag
1.
emains (note 8), 148. Donald Worster, ination.
Oxford University Press, 1993, 1330 rican West. Ox Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the Ame ford
University Press, 1985, 154‐155. 31 Jamie Linton, ‘The Social Nature of Natural Resources – the Case of Water.’ Reconstruction. Vol.
6, No. 3. Summer 2006. Online Journal. <http://reconstruction.eserver.org/063/linton.shtml>.
- 73 -
circumstances that comprise the conservation movement in the United States.”32
The similarities between the conservation movement and high modernism help
bridge the time gap between them: despite their seemingly different ambitions and
the eras in which they prospered, the two share much in common.
The conservation movement arrived in the wake of advancements in
scientific and technological capabilities. Nature came to be understood in the
context of scientific rationality, where obstacles, defects, and wastes were known
and accounted for. Following on the heels of the conservation era was a concept
Worster terms ‘new ecology,’ a refurbished conception of ecological thinking fully in
place by the 1950s. It built upon earlier conservationist thought by viewing nature
as best conceived in terms of “systems” that functioned by rational, economic logic.
This new notion of ecology fit well with the mid‐twentieth century conception of
nature’s economy as “one in which resources were the only limits on growth and
where growth that reached the limits of available resources was normal and
good.”33 Where the conservation movement of the early twentieth century had
stopped, this ‘new ecology’ of the 1950s ensured that all waste of natural attributes
would be minimized by rational ordering. It was a new name for an old idea.
In this sense, conservation must be seen as a scientific movement.34 It was
deduced in the late nineteenth century that resource development was, in essence, a
technical matter, and would best be handled by ‘impartial’ technicians, rather than
state legislators ruled by re‐election and pleasing constituents.35 The Ralph M.
Parsons Company, responsible for drafting the Alliance plan, was described in this
sterile light by Senator Moss. He argued that “its water resources‐planning
engineers have taken a technical and economic approach to continental planning,
leaving the problems of relationships, jurisdictions, and organization to the social
and political specialists.”36 The experience of managing Western water, in
32 Linton, So33 of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century. UBC Press,
2006
cial Nature of Natural Resources (note 31). Tina Loo, States , 144‐145.
34 l P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel o e Progressive Conservation Mov 8901920. Harva ess, 195
Samue f Efficiency: Them 9, 2.
onservation and ficiency (note 34), 3. ent, 1 rd University Pr
35 Hays, C the Gospel of Ef36 Moss, The Water Crisis (note 11), 243.
- 74 -
particular, was singled out as a prime example of the superiority of technical
expertise over Eastern legislators. The process of rendering water technical was an
easy leap from conceptualizing water as a resource to be secured. In fact, the
manipulation of water as a resource could not have happened to its fullest extent
without technical, rational, and efficient water management as its guiding principle.
Senator Frank Moss of Utah, writing in The Water Crisis (1967), argued that
“NAWAPA is not just a huge engineering job. It would require the greatest
continuous and most intensive conservation effort ever thought of.” It is clear that
Moss’s conception of ‘conservation’ stems from the Northern, ‘new ecology’ notion
of the term. 37 There is little evidence that one of NAWAPA’s greatest champions
valued ecological conservation over the preservation of continued American
progress.
The next step in rendering water technical was securing an adequate
institutional support structure. Samuel Hays argued in 1959 that precedence had
made it clear that the U.S. federal government must take the lead in large‐scale
water projects. Hays believed that only the federal government could overcome
jurisdictional squabbles between states, and only Congress could provide the
substantial funds necessary to ensure the completion of large‐scale river
development projects.38 The scale of planned diversion proposals at the time was
larger than anything previously considered by the American government, and the
infrastructure necessary to ensure their completion required an entirely new state
apparatus to plan and manage such projects. “Uncritical, unskeptical, and thus
unscientifically optimistic about the possibilities for the comprehensive planning of
human settlement and production,” the high modernist state was bred in the
crucible of scientific accomplishment, and its citizens were subsequently dizzy with
optimism for the future 39
Beyond any one government department was a broader effort to ensure that
the efforts at water development in the West were bound to succeed, in no small
r Crisis (note 11), 254. 37
el of Efficiency (note 34), 101. Moss, The Wate
38 Hays, Conservation and the Gosp39 James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed. Yale University Press, 1998, 4.
- 75 -
part, because of its history and the promises of human redemption, democratic
ideals, and manifest destiny. The state, in this case the agent for change, would have
to take an activist role in planning and implementing water development projects
through centralized planning, coordination, and control.40 This is where James
Scott’s evaluation of high modernism requires careful consideration. High modernist
ideology is best conceived, according to Scott, as a state possessing “a
strong…version of the self‐confidence about scientific and technical progress, the
expansion of production, the growing satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of
nature (including human nature), and, above all, the rational design of social order
commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws.”41 Despite Michel
Foucault’s relative lack of interest in the twentieth century, he would likely have
categorized these as “governmentality,” and the similarities are distinct. Measure
Scott’s understanding of high modernism against Foucault’s definition of
governmentality: “the ensemble formed by institutions, procedures, analyses and
reflections, calculations, and tactics that allow the exercise of the very specific, albeit
very complex, power that has the population as its target, political economy as its
major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security as its essential technical
instrument.”42 State proponents of the Alliance did just that, arguing for NAWAPA –
unknowingly – from within Foucault’s governmentality framework. In advocating
for NAWAPA, Moss, Wright, and others were targeting populations by playing upon
fears of famine and drought to secure the citizenry against the backlashes of their
own excesses.
Both high modernism and governmentality share a common preoccupation
with the routine tasks of managing populations, though they emphasize different
aspects of this management. For Scott, technical and scientific progress is key to his
high modernist conception, while Foucault seems to stress the institutional
framework in which the daily tasks of wielding power occur. Scott stresses the
importance of the activist state to such an extent that he posits his book as “a case
40 atural Resounote 39), 4.
Linton, Social Nat41 Scott, Seeing Like A State (42 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 19771978.
Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, 108.
ure of N rces (note 31).
- 76 -
against the imperialism of high modernist, planned social order…and the mentality
that excludes the necessary role of local knowledge.”43 Nonetheless, he stresses the
ideological component of high modernism and the requisite distance that must be
placed between it and the scientific practice upon which the legitimacy of high
modernism is based.44 I differ from Scott in my acceptance that the distance
between ideology and scientific practice is crucial, given the extent to which they
mutually constitute one another. How much distance can one place between them
when one reinforces the other, informing the specific ways in which they act upon
society? “Technology is chosen,” Arne Naess argues, “but not by consideration of
society as a whole,” driven as technology is by the needs and desires of the society
that con ic trols it.45 The ideology of high modernism determines what form scientif
practice will take.
Such was the high modernist mentality of the American state throughout
much of the early twentieth century before NAWAPA was proposed: in fact, this
mindset predated the Columbia River Treaty between Canada and the United States.
Richard Bocking draws a direct correlation between the ratification of the Columbia
River Treaty in 1964 and a subsequent increase in irrigation acreage constructed by
the Bureau of Reclamation. For Bocking, this acreage increase was a direct result of
the increased water made available through the storage of excess water in Canada,
but also through the increase in hydroelectric generating capacity which helped the
additional irrigation acreage pay for itself.46 By the time the Columbia River Treaty
was ratified and NAWAPA was actively considered, the American state had over half
a century of working experience with the scale of planning, coordination, and
control necessary to achieve the type of mega‐projects then in circulation, in
addition to decades of small‐scale water diversion projects which had captured the
imagination of Americans across the country. High modernism flourished in the
American state, and was utilized to implement the ideology’s basic tenets: the
administrative ordering of society must be present in addition to a state willingness
43 (note 39), 6. A State (note 39), 5.
Scott, S44
mmunity, and Lifestyle (n
eeing Like A State Scott, Seeing Like
45 Naess, Ecology, Co ote 26), 95. 46 Richard Bocking, Canada's Water: For Sale? James Lewis & Samuel Publishing, 1972, 97.
- 77 -
to implement the high modernist ideology using all forces necessary upon a
“prostrate civil society” unable to resist.47 To one degree or another, all tenets of
high modernism, as outlined by Scott, aligned between the coming to power of
Elwood Mead at the Bureau in 1924 and the proposal of the North American Water
and Power Alliance some forty years later.
3.3 – Canadian High Modernism – Diefenbaker’s Northern Vision
High modernist planning was already a strong feature of the Canadian state
before John Diefenbaker became Prime Minister of Canada in 1957, though no other
Canadian Prime Minister so personified its grandiose potential as Diefenbaker did.
Construction began on the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1954, linking the Atlantic Ocean
with the interior Great Lakes, and was completed in 1959. The TransCanada
Pipeline dispute in 1956, which saw the Liberal government of Louis St. Laurent
force debate through the House of Commons to guarantee its success, had lasting
ramifications for Canada and Diefenbaker. The pipeline, stretching in various forms
from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, arguably led to the downfall of St. Laurent’s
government by demonstrating Liberal arrogance in imposing legislation which had
two lasting impacts. Firstly, the spectre of continental resource management fed
fears of American incursions upon Canadian sovereignty as a result of large‐scale
infrastructure plans framed as nation‐building projects. Secondly, anger towards the
pipeline and dissatisfaction with the drift towards economic continentalism helped
foster a new sense of Canadian nationalism that Diefenbaker, more than any other,
was able to capitalize on.48 He redirected this pan‐Canadianism towards what
became the cornerstone of his 1958 majority victory: as Diefenbaker told a Toronto
crowd assembled in April, 1957 the Northern Vision would become, or so he hoped,
the new “national consciousness.”49
While derided later as a political gimmick, the Northern Vision was part of a
larger programme of national development backed by a political platform that
47 Scott, Seeing Like A State (note 39), 4‐5. 48 ience, Sovereignty and Nation: Canada and the legacy of the International
Journal of Historical Geography. Vol. 34, 2008, 625. Richard C. Powell, ‘Sc
Geophysical Year, 1957‐1958’ in49 John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker. Vol II.
Macmillan of Canada, 1976, 17.
- 78 -
intended to turn Canadian focus away from the United States and towards the
resource‐rich north. Inasmuch as John A. Macdonald had opened Canada on an east‐
west axis, so Diefenbaker hoped to build upon his legacy by extending Macdonald’s
nation‐building vision to the North within the confines of “modern requirements
and circumstances.”50 The Northern Vision eventually came to consist of a series of
policies within the broad framework of national development. Highlights included a
natural resource policy to focus on the processing of raw materials in Canada and
the direction of foreign investment to the maximum benefit of Canada; a National
Energy Board to ensure the most effective use of energy resources to the betterment
of human welfare; and the ‘Roads to Resources’ programme in which the federal
government would encourage and share the cost of building and maintaining
highways linking the resource‐rich northern regions of the country with the more
populous south.51 It was a programme with mutually reinforcing objectives:
exploitation of Canada’s vast supply of natural resources was inextricably linked to
unifying improvements in human welfare across the country. It was a notion shared
by B.C. MP Jack Davis, speaking to the Rotary Club of Vancouver in 1966 on the topic
of resource development. “We must learn how to manage our resources,” Davis
argued, “so that their development gives the greatest possible impetus to the nation
building process in this country.”52 If Canada, “a vast storehouse of natural
resources” were to be developed, Diefenbaker, Davis, and others like them felt that
Canadians must break the cycle of resource export and exploit the natural world
towards building a better Canada.53 According to Richard Powell, “Diefenbaker’s
‘One Canada’ mandate prompted a determination to reconfigure geopolitical
relations in the North American Arctic” to alleviate anxieties over contested
50 Diefenbaker, One Canada (note 49), 17. 51 Kyba, Alvin (note 1), 106. 52 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, ons Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Resource Development: TheDece
Communicati Key to Ca
966, 1. nada’s Future by Jack Davis, M.P.” Box 3, #71‐28.
mber 6, 153 Davis, Resource Development (note 52), 1.
- 79 -
sovereignty with the United States, while taking stock of a resource base that
represented the greatness of the country.54
This new focus on Canadian independence emerged through Diefenbaker’s
labelling of the North as both the “New Frontier” and North America’s last frontier.
He drew upon Americanized, romantic language in linking the North with the
American West, though the difference was that while “the West” had largely been an
American landscape, “the North” would offer Canadians a chance to be “uniquely
ourselves.”
tate in
the Ho
55 This shift also occurred, in part, because of the increasingly untenable
ignorance of the Canadian federal government towards the extent, location, and
value of northern resources. As U.S. pressure for detailed geomagnetic and geodetic
data of the Arctic from Canada increased, so too did fears that the integration of
scientific knowledge between the two nations would ultimately lead to unwanted
political and economic integration.56 In fact, fears of increased economic
continentalism occupied much of Diefenbaker’s time in office, and certainly
influenced how the Northern Vision came to be understood. Arguing that without a
nationa
indepe
l policy on resource development Canada would lose economic
ndence and sovereignty, Alvin Hamilton pressed upon Diefenbaker to s
use of Commons on February 11, 1957 that Canada in the days ahead will remain an independent Canada and will not inexorably drift into economic continentalism… Canada will maintain… a policy that will provide national development for a greater Canada in which growth and prosperity will not be purchased at the expense of our economic independence and our effective national sovereignty.57
Ironically, Diefenbaker’s anti‐Americanism failed to consider the volume and
importance of American investment in Canada. Deriding the drift towards economic
continentalism he perceived during the Liberal years, Diefenbaker called for private
enterprise to assist in developing the North, seemingly ignoring the fact that the vast
majority of firms interested in developing northern resources would be American.
54 Scienc nty and Nation
One Canada Powell, (note 48), 630; Diefe
55
e, Sovereign 8), 629‐630.
e, Sovereig nbaker, (note 49), 84. One Canada Diefenbaker, (note 49), 225.
56 Powell, Scienc ty and Nation (note 457 Diefenbaker, One Canada (note 49), 285‐286.
- 80 -
Coupled with the fear of economic subservience to the United States was the
clear conception of the North and its resources as an unexploited landscape that
contained riches simply waiting to be unearthed. To Hamilton, in a speech to the
Pacific Northwest Trade Association, the North “represents a new world to conqu
– but it is much more than that. It is like a great vault, holding in its recesses
treasures to maintain and increase the material living standards which our
countries take for granted.”
er
to
58 The first nature of the North would be made into a
second nature capable of maintaining the living standards of northern residents.
Traditional perceptions of the North in Canadian geographical imaginations began
changing at mid‐century. Farish and Lackenbauer argue that attempts to
“modernize the north through new techniques and technologies were driven by the
belief that the distinctiveness of the northern landscape could be subdued or even
overcome.” One result of this effort at modernization was that the northern
landscape – “removed from the ‘south’, but essential to national identity” – ceased
be thought of as separate from southern landscapes.59 By extending the terrain of
what was considered both physically and mentally possible to include northern
resourc
of
e exploitation, Diefenbaker and the group of politicians, planners, and
scientists he gathered around him to implement his vision extended the reach
capital into a region previously unaltered by massive human intervention, signalling
the potential for a radical shift in the evolution of North America’s “last frontier.”
As high modernist state planning, the Northern Vision failed at nation‐
building because of the lack of significant infrastructural achievements on the
ground. Implicit in the Northern Vision was an effort by the state to target a region
and its population for capitalist renovation. With state backing, the way would be
paved for private enterprise to utilize nature as it desired, a point which
Diefenbaker made clear in his memoirs: “our essential task was…to ensure the
general economic climate in which private enterprise could feel confident that its
efforts would be fairly rewarded if it put money and effort into northern
58 ote 1), 124‐
sh, and P. W auer, ‘High modernism in the Arctic: Planning Frob l Geography. Vol. 35, 2009, 520.
Kyba, Alvin (n 125. 59 Matthew Fari hitney Lackenbisher Bay and Inuvik’ in Journal of Historica
- 81 -
development.”60 Targeting the North as a region for expansion, Diefenbaker ma
possible for future state planners, politicians, and engineers – even those south of
the border – to consider the Arctic and its exploitation in new and exciting ways. B
encouraging northern development through foreign investment and increased
de it
y
r
that
s.
use
accessibility, Diefenbaker’s ‘opening’ of the Arctic for increased scientific
exploration helped lay the groundwork for future plans like the North American
Water and Power Alliance.
3.4 – NAWAPA and the Sociocultural Conceptualization of ‘nature’
Most descriptions of the Alliance feature nature as a passive agent in its own
transformation. In the first half of the twentieth century, re‐conquering the West
was positioned as a struggle for the engineer, responsible “in the broadest sense fo
the physical basis of [modern] life,” rather than the pioneer.61 The tools were
technological rather than agricultural, and the nature to be tamed would be the
rivers rather than the land.62 But the engineer’s struggle by the 1960s, much as it
was for them in the nineteenth century, had little to do with how nature would be
made increasingly lucrative, only that it should be made submissive to human
demands. Short term losses of biological diversity and capital were acceptable in
light of the long‐term benefits to be accrued by nature’s extensive manipulation.
And regardless of the manner in which nature is considered, Kate Soper argues
all eco‐political discourses are concerned with clarifying human conceptions of
second nature. They gesture at “how we ought to be more accurately
conceptualizing (and thus more properly relating to) nature,” whether seen as
possessing intrinsic value or as a mere cultural construction.63
Those who believed that NAWAPA was the best method for addressing water
scarcity in the Southwest had faith in scientific and technological domination of the
natural world so totalizing that nature would never react against such intervention
Proponents of the Alliance were reticent to discuss nature “striking back” beca
60 Diefenbaker, One Canada (note 49), 283. 61 orrow: The Engineer’s Stewa
Lect 953. University of Toronto, 1 Robert F. Legget, Resources for Tom rdship. The Sixth Wallberg
urHow to Make a Desert Bloom
e: Convocation Hall. February 10, 1 953, 10. 62 Pasadena Independent Star‐News. . September 13, 1964. 63 Kate Soper, ‘Representing Nature.’ Capitalism, Nature, Socialism; December, 1998. Vol. 9, No. 4,
62.
- 82 -
this would necessitate seeing nature as an active agent in its own manipulation: it
would have to assume that nature, without a human population to modify its
workings, possessed intrinsic value. Talking of “nature’s revenge” was left to
scientists and academics who questioned the impact of NAWAPA upon regional
climates as a result of shifting Arctic waters to arid regions, the opportunity for the
Rocky Mountain Trench to create destructive landslides, and the effect of river
displacement on local flora and fauna, such as muskeg in the North.64 Nature as a
mere collection of exploitable resources proved much more alluring and flexible for
those in power deciding the future of water management in North America. As
Harvey has indicated, “the science of nature as of society was meant to reveal not
just what existed but what stood to be created.”65 Those who conceived of nature in
this way held a particularly limited and narrow view of the natural world when they
considered nature, imagining what more they might create with it then already
existed. The short step from socially constructing this notion of nature to physically
reconstituting it in deliberate and violent ways was initiated with NAWAPA’s
drafting, though with the plan’s ultimate failure, the final step was never taken.
The Alliance depended upon a first nature external to a world of second
nature that humans had fabricated, a first nature that was “inherently nonsocial and
nonhuman,” and thus without emotional connotations for humanity.
66 It was within
the realm of second nature that humans wielded incredible power over the natural
world. To conceive of first nature in a manner beneficial to Parson’s engineering
firm required no such expansive thinking, encompassing as it did the world which
provided the “raw material from which society is built.”67 What was created was a
hierarchy of needs: it was a short step from conceptualizing first nature’s needs as
subservient to second nature to placing American developmental and financial
64 See McGauhey Arid Lands in Perspective (note 15), 360; Bryan, Much is Taken, Much Remains
(note 8), 156; and Norman Radforth, quoted in Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resou nada. Symposia Present Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto Pres
rces of Ca ed to the Royals, 1967, 27. 65 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 6), 130. 66 tree, 'Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Po Castree and Bruce
Brau ial Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. Blackwe 2001, 6. Noel Cas litics' in Noeln, eds. Soc ll Publishing,67 Castree, 'Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics' (note 66), 7.
- 83 -
needs ahead of similar Canadian growth. Parallels are not difficult to find. British
Columbia MP Jack Davis argued in 1966 that the United States was deliberately
keeping Canada in an inequitable, neo‐colonial relationship in order to maintain
more profitable resource‐refining jobs in America, leaving Canadians free to retain
their historic role as hewers of wood and drawers of water.68 Lest anyone suspect
Davis of skepticism toward American intentions or of unfettered growth, he added
that the
e
ave
,
throug ce in
1961
failure of Canada to export raw materials to the United States at competitiv
market prices is “to cheat Canadians out of their natural heritage.” Instead,
Canadians should encourage raw material export and charge “all that the market
will bear.”69 Davis explicitly included water in his discussion.
The Dam the Dams Campaign, a grassroots watchdog group started in 1965
to lobby against Canadian water export to the United States, also indicated the
benefits to be accrued by American financial institutions over the short‐ and long‐
term future. The $40 billion Canadian investment in the plan would undeniably h
to be borrowed from American banks, they argued, forcing Canada into “perpetual
debt” despite efforts to pay off American creditors.70 The $4 billion in annual
hydroelectric revenues would offset the $3.2 billion in 8% interest (as of 1964),
provided that the cost of NAWAPA would not fluctuate, which it did. Original
estimates of anywhere from $80 to $100 billion soon became $100 to $200 billion
increasing Canada’s initial cost and the interest to be paid on the loan. If Canada’s
share stood at $80 billion, interest at 8% would still total $6.4 billion, far
outstripping any annual revenues to be gained by hydroelectric output.71
Within the NAWAPA debate the notion of an autonomous external nature
emerged as a way in which nature could be utilized at arm’s length. Parallels
betwee ceived
Americ
n the prevailing North American attitude towards nature and the per
an treatment of Canadian needs as subservient to American desires ran
hout the discussions held during the Resources for Tomorrow Conferen
or example, Queen’s University president J.J. Deutsch argued that . F
68 (Development (
Davis, Resource note 52), 3. 69 n .
The Water Plot. ams Campaign, 1965.
Development Davis, Resource ote 52), 7
70 Dam the Dams. Dam the D71 Dam the Dams, The Water Plot (note 70).
- 84 -
the technological breakthroughs [in the United States] which have made…
in
development possible… have had to be accompanied by huge investments of capital and by the availability of large markets… In the future the tar sands… and the Arctic Islands will yield their riches only to new technology, to immense new investment and to new markets.72
The stress that Deutsch placed upon nature “yielding riches only to new technology”
highlights the continuation of the traditional notion of the land being regulated by
technological advancements. His emphasis on the need for large capital investments
and larger markets was an easy allusion to the dominance of American finance and
purchasing power to the Canadian economy. Deutsch’s comments at the conference
followed on the heels of W.T. Easterbrook’s reminder that Canada was “very much a
North American nation…and our national policies must be worked out very largely
in this context.”73 Each speaker suggested that if nature was external to human
society, than it must belong to whoever claims it for rational utilization.
External and universal natures offer two examples of competing discourses
on the meaning of ‘nature.’ Often the competition between discourses on nature
exists on an uneven plane. The NAWAPA debate emerged after centuries of
theorizing on nature with deep roots in Enlightenment thinking that delegitimized
the natural world, placing it at the mercy of Northern societies. As Aldo Leopold
argued in his groundbreaking work A Sand County Almanac, “an ethic to supplement
and guide the economic relation to land presupposed the existence of some mental
image of land as a biotic mechanism.” He added that “we can be ethical only in
relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith
in.”74 Put another way, an ecological ethic only became necessary once nature as a
‘biotic mechanism’ in its own right became nature as a ‘biotic mechanism’ in the
production of capital. Proponents of NAWAPA were fortunate to argue from with
the historically accepted framework of nature‐as‐resource, a perspective that
72 ces for Tomorrow Conference, Montreal, Quebec. Octob J.J. Deutsch, quoted in Resour er 23‐28, 1961. Vol. 3 – Proceedings of the Conference. Queen’s Printer, 1961, 21.
73 ok, quoted in Resources for Tomorrow Conference, Mo ‐e Conference. Queen’s Printer, 1961, 16
W.T. Easterbro ntreal, Quebec. October 2328, 1961. Vol. 3 – Proceedings of th .
74 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, 1969; also see Holmes Rolston III, Philosophy Gone Wild: Essays in Environmental Ethics. Prometheus Books, 1986, 18, where Rolston argues that Leopold is seeking “to advance the ethical frontier from the merely interpersonal to the region of humans in transaction with their environment.”
- 85 -
demanded nature be broken into constituent resources for human exploitation
because any who sought to problematize this often violent scenario had to do so
from outside the dominant discourse on nature.
Social conceptions of nature reflect the dominant ideologies and identities of
the time. Swyngedouw has argued that the water/money/power nexus has been
central to the process of urbanization, and that the boundary between urban and
rural, or between society and nature, has become so blurred that “there is no longer
an outside or a limit to the city.”75 The ideologies of society cannot help but infuse
differing conceptions of nature when the process of urbanization itself is “primarily
a particular socio‐spatial process of metabolizing nature, or urbanizing the
environment.”76 The idea of NAWAPA as one of the largest‐scale urbanization
projects in North American history is an interesting notion deserving of further
study, though it is beyond the scope of this work. Suffice it to say, the water/money/
power nexus highlights important linkages between the components as agents of
control: each could operate independently as a means of controlling some aspect of
the natural world, yet they function more effectively as a whole. The nexus could
easily be substituted with nature/capital/dominance and its implementation
achieve the same authoritarian purposes. It is thus unsurprising that a capitalist
society would project principles onto nature that reflect the dominant values of
accumulation, profit, production, and material consumption. The urbanization
process has been instrumental to “momentous environmental changes and alleged
problems” that have witnessed the “emergence of environmental issues on the
political agenda.” 77 Yet when considering NAWAPA as an effort at extending the
urban realm further afield, it seems natural that “momentous environmental
changes” would accompany the urbanization process.
Around the world, water mega‐projects have a “homogenizing effect” upon
the societies in which they are constructed, limiting not only the natural world but
uw, So . Oxford
Univ75
4, 10. Erik Swyngedo ater: Flows ofe s, 200
ouw, Social Power and the Urbanizatio 75), 8. 75), 9.
cial Power and the Urbanization of W Powerrsity Pres
76 Swynged n of Water (note77 Swyngedouw, Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (note
- 86 -
the built landscape.78 The state, successful in its endeavors to simplify and
rationalize nature, could as of the mid‐twentieth century apply these principles to
the design of society. “Industrial strength social engineering was born,” according to
Scott, on the ambition and ability of the nation‐state to control nature. 79 Yet Castree
problematizes this notion, arguing that nature remains capable of influencing
society. Since “there is…no objective, nondiscursive way of comprehending nature,”
he argues, “we have to live with the fact that different individuals and groups use
different discourses to make sense of the same nature/s.”80 In creating truths,
Castree argues that there is an inherent struggle within and between discourses that
society places upon nature, determining acceptance in the twin arenas of social
struggle and power politics.81
In response to a chicken/egg question regarding society and nature, Michel
Foucault maintained that “it is not the naturalness of processes of nature itself, as
the nature of the world, but processes of a naturalness specific to relations between
men, to what happens spontaneously when they cohabit, come together, exchange,
work, and produce.”82 He added that “it is a naturalness that basically did not exist
until [the Enlightenment] and which, if not named as such, at least begins to be
thought of and analyzed as the naturalness of society.”83 Remembering Harvey’s
message that “all critical examinations of the relation to nature are simultaneously
critical examinations of society,” perhaps Foucault was suggesting that a discussion
of society constituting or constructing nature may be backwards: that nature is
indeed responsible for the current notions we have of ‘society.’ 84 Despite advanced
technological achievements in the past half‐century, the ecological crisis may be
78 r Resources Ass Bocking, , 116. 79 Scott, Seeing Like A State (note 39), 91. 80 Castree, 'Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics' (note 66), 12; also see Noel Castree,
and Bruce Braun, ‘Construction of Nature and Nature of Construction: Analytical and Political Tools for Building Survivable Futures’ in Braun, Bruce and Noel Castree, eds. Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium. Routledge, 1998, 32, “where they argue that “recognizing the complex intertwinings of nature, culture, science and technology allows us to see the v impossible to chan l order without at the same ti e and vice versa.”
Canadian Wate ociation (note 25)
arious ways that it isg natural order,
ocializing Nature: Theory, Pra s' (note 66), 12. e the socia me modifying th
81
Security, Territory, Popula Castree, 'S ctice, and Politic
82 , 2), 349. , Security, Territory, Popula 2), 349.
Foucault tion (note 483 Foucault tion (note 484 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 6), 174.
- 87 -
seen to closely parallel the advent of the Industrial Revolutions: science has only
recently begun to grasp the vast implications of two centuries of unlimited
development. Arturo Escobar questions whether “the crisis of nature is also a crisis
of identity” because the basic constructs of modernity – including nature and cultur
but also society, politics, and economics – have “not equipped us for the task of
interro
e
n
gating ourselves and nature in ways which might yield novel answers.”85 I
other words, Escobar is asking if humanity can know itself without fully
comprehending nature through the social mechanisms societies have created.
Beyond the identity of the individual, but intricately bound together with
society, is the central role of the state in the drafting of the NAWAPA proposal. For
high modernist planning as grand as NAWAPA to be taken with “terrifying
seriousness,” according to James Laxer, an elaborate state structure was required
that took society and nature as subservient to its heroic ideals.86 State action was
central to the implementation of high modernist schemes because no other carrier
of such proposals, including capitalist entrepreneurs, possessed the requisite
influence and power to ensure their successful implementation. Within the state
apparatus, high modernist thinking found an audience among planners, engineers,
architects, and scientists, those people whose skill sets could be put to use as
“designers of the new order.”87 High modernism appealed greatly to the segments of
society who stood the most to gain – in status, power, and wealth – from its
worldview. As Scott argues, “the position accorded to [the bureaucratic
intelligentsia, and technicians, among others] is not just one of rule and privilege but
also one of responsibility for the great works of nation building and social
transformation.” 88 NAWAPA, in this sense, was a tragic example of the rule of
experts being taken to its extreme: state planners, scientists, and engineers acting as
the architects of a new state. Resource development had a tremendous role to play
in the rnist idea of nation‐building implicit in NAWAPA and other high mode 85 ar, ‘After Nature: Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’ in Cur
0, No. 1. February 1999, 1. Arturo Escob rent
Anthropology. Vol. 486 The Energy Politics of the Continental Resource Deal, New Press,
1970 James Laxer. Poker Game: The,
Seeing Like A State 15.
87 Scott, (note 39), 5. 88 Scott, Seeing Like A State (note 39), 96.
- 88 -
projects. MP Jack Davis tied resource development and nation‐building together. He
argued that Canada “must learn how to manage our resources so that their
development gives the greatest possible impetus to the nation building process in
this country.”
at
89 NAWAPA was no mere engineering project. As Scott has indicated,
this was a “great work of nation building and social transformation,” mirroring in
pomposity what it possessed in physical scale.90 It is no coincidence that in The
Water Crisis, Sen. Moss titled a chapter “Make No Little Plans,” and argued that the
solution to the water crisis must mirror the magnitude of the problem.91
After NAWAPA, the scale of water diversion proposals had to decrease if any
were to be accepted. Adherents and critics alike commented in its aftermath that
disdain for the NAWAPA proposal for any number of economic, ecological, or
political reasons should not entirely dismiss water diversions in North America. Bob
Newbury, a civil engineer from the University of Manitoba, argued to the Canadian
Water Resources Association conference in 1973 that society had to be careful to
differentiate between constructive projects such as in‐basin, small‐scale, domestic
withdrawals and those whose ultimate goal was less the improvement of the
environment than more short‐term, economically minded objectives, like the
Alliance.92 Soper echoes this sentiment in arguing that “it is one thing to question
the hegemony of Northern science and instrumental rationality, but it is another to
suggest that any and every attempt to bring a scientific and rational perspective to
bear on the management of human affairs (including our relationship to nature) is
inherently oppressive.”93 She provides an important balance to any discussion of
NAWAPA within the context of intervening in nature in order to rationalize it – th
there is nothing a priori oppressive in humanity’s interventions into nature on
account of humanity existing squarely within the natural world.
89 , Davis, pment (note 52)90
Resource Develo 1. Scott, Seeing Like A State (note 39), 96.
91 Moss, The Water Crisis (note 11), 248. 92 Robert Newbury, quoted in Canadian Water Resources Association. 25th Anniversary
Conference. CWRA, 1973, 117‐118. 93 Kate Soper, “Nature/‘nature’” in Robertson, George, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird,
Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. Routledge, 1996, 32.
- 89 -
The gravity of this task is made greater considering that the fundamental
principle of ecology is that when intervening in the natural world, humans can never
do merely “one thing.”
l
’
e
dy
ough the tragedy is
ssened by North American society’s rejection of the plan.
94 The interconnectivity of nature ensures that any ecologica
disruption can never focus exclusively on one element of the system, and must
consider the eventuality of such an approach failing to account for unknown
variables, impacts, and other externalities.95 Human interventions into the natural
world rarely avoid creating new and unforeseen problems that generate their own
set of e er of nvironmental costs, an idea that ties together Rachel Carson’s remind
the interconnectivity of nature with James Scott’s caution to favour reversibility in
any environmental intrusions.96
Yet the contempt and suspicion engendered by the Alliance in many
Canadians, following close on the heels of the Columbia River Treaty, ensured that
any plan of such magnitude would never be deemed valuable enough to necessitate
the requisite environmental assessments. Others unsupportive of the United States
continental water ambitions reminded critics that despite the actions of the Ralph
M. Parsons Company and the support from Sen. Frank Moss, Congressman Jim
Wright, and others in government, the plan received no official support from th
Johnson or Nixon administrations. They also indicated that the American
government only speculated about long‐distance water transfer from Canada
without ever giving it full support.97 The Alliance was drafted within a high
modernist social context with intentions of being implemented: it remains a trage
that something so violent and unnecessary was conceived, th
le
94 Garret Hardin, citing Rachel Carson in ‘To Trouble a Star: The Cost of Intervention in Nature,’ in Roelofs, Robert, Joseph Crow ardesty, eds. Environment and Society: A Book of Read . Prentice‐Hall Inc., 1974, 119.
ley and Donald Hings on Environmental Policy, Attitudes, and Values95 Hardin, To Trouble a Star (note 94), 119. 96 William Ophuls, and A. Stephen Boyan, Jr., Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited: The
Unravelling of the American Dream. W.H. Freeman and Company, 1992, 29. 97 Anthony Scott, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research
Paper #7. The Economics of Water Export Policy. Queen’s Printer, 1985, 34.
- 90 -
- 90 -
Chapter Four – NAWAPA: A Grandiose and Failed Proposal
“For the next generation of Americans, I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that water…may be ter Crisis the most critical national problem.” – U.S. Sen. Frank Moss, The Wa
From 1964 to 1973, freshwater resources were the primary focus for
Canadian government and academic commentators interested in the environment,
growth, energy, and trade. Water was singled out as key to the future development
of the Canadian economy, especially in the Canadian North, where water was at its
most abundant. In these discussions of Canada’s future water needs, NAWAPA was
the central point of reference; any proposed water transfer projects emanating from
both Canada and the United States in this time were either variations on NAWAPA’s
continental scale, or scaled down versions emphasizing possibilities for one region
such as James Bay or the Great Lakes.1 In a speech to the Pacific Northwest Trade
Association in 1965, Canadian Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources
Arthur Laing referenced NAWAPA as “the scheme you have all heard of” before
going on to situate his discussion of Canadian water export to the United States
solely within the framework of NAWAPA’s proposed transfers.2 After NAWAPA
found a sponsor in American Senator Frank Moss, it became notorious for the
manner in which it proposed to divert Canadian waters south, a grandiose and
American plan that was, for a time, the high water mark for large‐scale water
diversions and withdrawals globally. While NAWAPA would not be the largest water
re‐engineering scheme ever proposed for North America, its notoriety emerged
from its being the first of such massive proposals. Even towards the end of this era,
as it became clear that NAWAPA was fading in public acceptance, it remained in
vogue to speak of “NAWAPA‐like” water transfers.
Ultimately, NAWAPA was a failed proposal, yet one whose scope and scale
captured the imagination of North Americans. “Small boys,” argued B.C. MP Jack
Davis in 1966, “are intrigued by the prospect of [building dams] for controlling
1
Rorke Bryan, Much is Taken, Much Remains: Canadian Issues in Environmental Conservation. Duxbury Press, 1973, pp. 158‐167.
2 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, C.O.P. CA.R. 64, “Water ‐ The Ultimate Resource: An Address by the Honourable Arthur Laing, Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources, at a luncheon of the Pacific Northwest Trade Association, Portland, Oregon, April 12, 1965.” Ottawa, 1965, 8.
- 91 -
nature this way. And so are many adults. We also like to do things big. And we get a
sense of elation when we see gigantic projects under way.”3 Concurrently, other
equally impressive engineering feats were taking place around the world, creating
“senses of elation:” the link between France and England under the English Channel,
the construction of the Aswan Dam in Egypt, the diverting of the Siberian and Volga
Rivers in the Soviet Union, and the
St. Lawrence Seaway and
Columbia River projects closer to
home.4 The 1960s was a decade of
water‐related engineering
projects where minds were
opened to a “jet age type of
thinking” that increasingly m
plans like NAWAPA seem
possible.
ade
y
5 Addressing the
Canadian Water System
Manufacturers Association in
Toronto in 1966, Jack Davis,
Parliamentary Secretary to the
Minister of Mines and
Technical Surveys, argued
enthusiastically that the examples of the Columbia Treaty and the St. Lawrence
Seaway prove that “Canadians can move mountains,” and that “we can ultimatel
control all of the water resources of the nation.”6
Figure 4.1 North American Water and Power Alliance (Source: Roland Kelley, Dir. of Natural Resources, Ralph M. Parsons Co., January 1967)
3 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Water – Our Greatest Resource by Jack Davis, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys,” Box 3, #71‐28 – June 1, 1966, 1.
4
Pape ’s Printer, Anthony Scott, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research
e Economics of Water Export P 1985, 30. lmer, ‘The Problem: Transfer o clamation; (September) Vol. VI, No. 2, 1966, 2.
r #7. Th olicy. Queen5 A.E. Pa f Water?’ Re6 Davis, Water – Our Greatest Resource (note 3), 2.
- 92 -
The idea that it was both technologically possible and economically feasible
to re‐engineer the water systems of North America was previously unimaginable. To
some, it was extraordinarily fulfilling to know that humanity possessed the ability to
ensure that an irrational nature could be made operational in an efficient manner.
The Alliance became ingrained in thinking about water transfer in North America
and so acrimonious an issue by the OPEC oil crisis of 1973 that after NAWAPA, while
other proposals would be optioned, no large‐scale water projects could be made
publically acceptable. After NAWAPA shifted the scale of acceptable water transfer
proposals, one commentator concluded that “we shall never be the same again.”7
This chapter will focus on NAWAPA as both a grandiose and failed proposal. I
will discuss the implications of NAWAPA for Canadian sovereignty and territory as it
pertains to the proposal’s continental scale. I will also question the assumption that
scientific and technological domination over nature will inevitably lead to both the
satisfaction of human needs and the domination of human beings. Leiss reminds us
that “the mastery of nature is not a project of science per se, but rather a broader
social task.”8 Key issues highlighted in this chapter include the implications of
NAWAPA and other water transfer projects for the future of Canada as an
independent nation in North America, water within the context of other Canadian
exports in the 1960s such as oil and natural gas, and the early successes and
ultimate failure of the Alliance. This chapter will examine nature as the unknown
variable throughout the NAWAPA debate and the extent to which water was only
nominally centred in that debate. In considering the larger issues of sovereignty,
territoriality, economic security, ecological scarcity, foreign ownership and
dependence, and social issues of heritage and nationalism that underline the entire
discussion, merely focusing on concern for freshwater in NAWAPA barely scratches
the surface of what the Alliance encompassed.
4.1 – Parsons’ NAWAPA Plan
The minutiae of the NAWAPA proposal have been detailed in a number of
governmental and scholarly sources, and were sketched previously in the
er of Water (note 5), 2.
7 Palmer, Transf8 William Leiss, The Domination of Nature. George Braziller, 1972, 146.
- 93 -
introduction.9 I will not dwell here on the technical specifics of the plan; issues of
acre‐feet, hydro‐electrical production in kilowatt hours, and cubic‐kilometre runoff
are valuable when attempting to comprehend the proposal’s magnitude, yet are
ultimately unnecessary details relative to my objectives. NAWAPA was always more
than the sum of its parts, though the technical specifics of how Parsons engineering
firm intended to use 240 reservoirs, 112 irrigation systems, and 17 navigation
channels to transfer over 18 cubic kilometres worth of freshwater annually from
Alaska, the Yukon, and British Columbia remain remarkable.10 To this end, the U.S.
Special Subcommittee on Western Water Development (WWD) in 1966 offered a
succinct description: NAWAPA provides for the collection of surplus waters from the Fraser, Yukon, Peace, Athabasca, and other rivers of Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and through a system of canals, tunnels, and rivers to generate industrial and municipal power as portions of it descend to the sea coast and to redistribute the remainder of it to water‐scarce areas of Canada, the Western and Midwestern United States, and northern Mexico. 11
The notion that NAWAPA would only be capturing “surplus” water is a point worth
emphasizing. Democratic Senator Frank Moss of Utah was quick to inform the
gathering at the Royal Society of Canada that “it is important to keep in mind that
the concept deals with surplus water,” a point he reiterates later in the debate in
9 For alternative perspectives or a more extensive breakdown of the NAWAPA plan and its
impact upon the North American landscape, see Bryan, Much is Taken (note 1), pp. 152‐158; Harold D. Foster, and W.R.D. Sewell. Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada. James Lorimer & Company, 1981, pp. 30‐34; Frank E. Moss, The Water Crisis. Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1967, pp. 243‐254; Ralph M. Parsons Co. NAWAPA: North American Water and Power Alliance. Brochure No. 606‐2934‐19. Los Angeles, 1964; W.R.D. Sewell, ‘Pipedream or Practical Possibility?’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 1967. Vol. 23, 11; W.R.D. Sewell, ‘Inter‐basin Water Diversions: Canadian Experiences and Perspectives’ in Golubev, Genady N. and Asit K. Biswas, eds. Large Scale Water Transfers: Emerging Environmental and Social Experiences. United Nations Environmental Programme. Tycolly Publishing, 1985, pp. 18‐23; Jim Wright. The Coming Water Famine, Coward‐McCann Inc., 1963, pp. 218‐231; Sewell, W.R.D. ‘Water Across the American Continent.’ The Geographical Magazine; (June), Vol. XLVI, No. 9, 1974, pp. 472‐480; University of British Columbia. Community and Regional Planning Studies. Student Project 6. NAWAPA: An Impetus to Regional Development in British Columbia. April, 1966; Scott, Export Policy (note 4), 29‐30; Richar nada's Water: For Sale? Jame
Economics of Water d Bocking, Cas
Lewis & Samuel Publishing, 1972, pp. 71‐88. 10 Foster and Sewell, Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada (note 9), 31. 11 United States Senate. Committee on Public Works. Special Subcommittee on Western Water
Development. A Summary of Water Resource Projects, Plans, and Studies Relating to the Western and Midwestern United States. Government Printing Office, 1966, 2.
- 94 -
targeting “unused water runoff” for the Alliance.12 “The U.S. provides our best and
virtually our only export market for surplus energy products,” argued Energy,
Mines, and Resources Minister J.J. Greene in 1969, stressing that “the key word here
is surplus.” Greene was discussing the feasibility of a “total approach” to continental
energy resources with the Nixon administration.13 He later promised a “Canada‐
comes‐first” framework within which to consider the continental energy package,
specifying that surplus or not, any potential energy deal would not include export of
Canadian water, but would include hydro‐electric power generation.14
Senator Moss, NAWAPA’s most ardent supporter, was chair of the U.S. Special
Subcommittee on Western Water Development and was instrumental in the drafting
of its final report on the feasibility of NAWAPA: this is worth considering in relation
to the report’s description of “surplus” waters. Figure 4.1 provides a visual depiction
of the continental scale of the plan, stretching from Alaska in the north to the
Mexican province of Chihuahua in the south. Yet the WWD Report was not overly
optimistic about the Alliance’s ability to meet long‐term American water needs. The
Report noted that “water made available by the NAWAPA concept would double
present supplies yet if completed by the year 2000 would still fall short of supplying
total need.”15 However, it does go on to indicate that without implementing the
NAWAPA concept the “supply of water in [the] Western United States will be
substantially below the need.” While far from perfect, the 369 individual projects
supplying 4.3 million acre‐feet of “surplus” stored water that encompass the
proposal would have provided the United States with the largest volume of water
for only marginally more money than was already allotted for small‐scale water
12 Frank Moss, quoted in Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resources of
Canad , 5, 7;
a. Symposia Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto Press, 1967 italics original. 13 Toronto Daily Star. A Resource Pool with the U.S. Wouldn’t be a Sell‐out. December 11, 1969. 14 Ottawa Citizen. ‘Canada Comes First – Greene.’ January 16, 1970; Barry Commoner is also quick
to highlight the similarities between thinking on freshwater resources and the discourse on energy resources more broadly. He argues that “the energy problem will not be solved by technological sleight‐of‐hand, clever tax schemes, or patchwork legislation,” an idea easily applicable to other resou d. Quoted in Barry Commoner, The er: Energy and Econ opf, 1976, 4.
res, freshwater include Poverty of Powomic Crisis. Alfred A. Kn15 United States Senate, Summary of Water Resource Projects (note 11), 5.
- 95 -
diversion projects before 1964.16 By streamlining a multitude of smaller‐scale
projects already proposed into one massive plan, the WWD Report argued that
NAWAPA was a fiscally responsible alternative to fragmented diversion efforts.
Depictions of NAWAPA, however detailed, often speak of the natural world
they are depicting in the vaguest of terms, if at all. Technical explanations of the
plan talk plainly of reversing the flow of rivers, creating a reservoir‐canal‐river
system to redistribute northern waters across the continent, generating hydro
power as water flows usefully to the seas, and creating a 500 mile long storage
facility between mountain ranges, effectively severing east‐west overland
transportation routes. These are monumental undertakings when taken
individually, and collectively the scope is enormous. Yet Ralph M. Parsons’ brochure
on the plan calmly states that “NAWAPA is a concept…for collecting excess water of
the Northwestern part of the North American continent and distributing it to the
water deficient areas of Canada, the United States, and Mexico.”17 This unadorned
description reveals nothing of the magnitude and violence of the proposal, calmly
reiterating the plan’s purpose – to transfer unused water to locations where it can
be more efficiently utilized. NAWAPA could be made to sound profoundly simple.
4 ience and Technology in the Rise and Fall of NAWAPA
Those who believed that NAWAPA was the only viable method with which
the critical scarcity of water in the American Southwest could be overcome
possessed an overriding belief in the transformative power of science and
technology to rescue society from the perceived problems of scarcity and want. Yet
a belief in the transformative power of science was in itself nothing new: what was
remarkable about NAWAPA, aside from the scale in which it operated, was the
finality of science’s domination over nature. So blatantly did NAWAPA’s drafters fail
to adhere to James Scott’s second precaution in state planning – to favour
reversibility in any ecological intervention “given our great ignorance about how
they interact” – that the scientific, rational ordering of nature became too
.2 – Sc
16 United States Senate, Summary Resource P17 Ralph M. Parsons Co., NAWAPA Brochure (note 9).
of Water rojects (note 11), 5.
- 96 -
overwhelming.18 In a strange catch‐22, NAWAPA’s success as much as its failure
rested upon the strength and infallibility of science and technology to save the
American Southwest. The plan laid bare the consequences of the unchecked
influence of scientific ordering of nature, a bleak and unimaginative future of
con rec te rivers, pipelines, and canals flowing to the beat of an American drum.
Yet the domination of nature is only part of the story. While controlling
nature by means of “large‐scale, hierarchically organized and controlled, and
technologically intensive infrastructures” did imply a set of “power mechanisms…
predicated on forms of engineering nature,” efforts at controlling nature are
frequently designed as efforts to regulate and dominate human beings.19 As Leiss
argued, “the real object of the domination of nature is not nature, but men.”20
Understanding these twin pillars of the domination of nature inherent in NAWAPA
is necessary to appreciate the extent to which NAWAPA and its proponents were
dependent upon scientific advancement to avert the perceived crisis of ecological
scarcity in the Southwest. “Our needs are mounting year by year,” argued EMR’s
Deputy Minster Jack Davis in 1966, “but technology is on our side.”21
What David Harvey calls the “grumbling persistency of the problem of
ecoscarcity” in the modern world is testimony to the relative failure of society to
utilize science and technology in the name of the Enlightenment ideals of
emancipation and self‐realization.22 Democratic Congressman Jim Wright of Texas
argued in 1966 that sections of the Southwest were experiencing “critical scarcity,”
and that the problem of water shortages in the arid regions of the country could
only be solved by transporting large volumes from areas of abundance to where
water was in shorter supply.23 What makes statements about ecoscarcity so ironic
18 g Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human n Have
1998, 345. James C. Scott, Seein Conditio
Failed. Yale University Press,19 uw, Social Power and the ower. Oxford
Univ 4, 133. Erik Swyngedo Urbanization of Water: Flows of Pe ess, 200
Domination of Nat Braziller, 197rsity Pr
20 ure. George William Leiss, The 2, pg. 122. 21 Davis, Water – Our Greatest Resource (note 3), 2. 22 David Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell Publishing, 1996, 139;
for Wi ss, “the need for security, afresh out of the irrational structure of social relat ver appeased.” See Leiss, (note 20), 162.
lliam Lei arising alwaysions, is ne Domination of Nature23 Wright, The ComingWater Famine (note 9), 230.
- 97 -
in this sense are that they emanate from a society of affluence which has generated
its own ecological scarcity, rather than it being an accident of geography.
Harvey is quick to indicate that a conception of nature as static within the
discourse on ecoscarcity ignores the transformative substance of nature. “To declare
a state of ecoscarcity,” according to Harvey, “is in effect to say that we have not the
will, wit, or capacity to change our state of knowledge, our social goals, cultural
modes, and technological mixes, or our form of economy, and that we are powerless
to modify either our material practices or ‘nature’ according to human
requirements.”24 For Harvey, it is the dismissal of human ability to alter the
environment through constructive rather than destructive means that irks him: it
presupposes not only the relative weakness of humanity to change our condition,
but the ultimate supremacy of technological solutions to manage current ecological
problems. Harvey also points to the important ways in which ecoscarcity is socially
constructed to support classes and lifestyles that benefit from keeping other social
groups in poverty, rather than a debate about nature’s preservation.25 This
sentiment was also expressed by Brigadier‐General Kelly of the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers at the 1973 Canadian Water Resources Association conference on
Canadian water issues. He claimed that “demand for [development] projects could
be greatly reduced if we were prepared to change our lifestyles, [but] I don’t see that
attitude in the United States.”26 Harvey again argues that the declaration of an
ecological scarcity crisis is as fabricated as the scarcity itself. In the case of
NAWAPA, it was formulated by a society in the American Southwest that cited the
crisis even as they deflected attention away from their central role in its making,
while concurrently advocating for technology‐as‐saviour.27
The belief that drastic change was necessitated by the scope of the water
scarcity “crisis” in the American Southwest led to the idea that solutions such as
mega‐diversions, weather modification, or desalinization will effectively manage or
24 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 22), 147. 25 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 22), 148. 26 r General Kelly, quoted ter Resources Association. 25th Anniversary
Conf RA, 108.
Brigadie in Canadian Waerence. CW27 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 22), 147.
- 98 -
solve the scarcity issue. While this idea is tied to an overriding faith in technology to
overcome natural limitations to human growth, it also strikes at the deeper belief
that temporary solutions to systemic problems of resource overuse will be effective
harbingers of salvation. “Man may soon find the economic means for exploiting the
weather, saline waters, and algae for resource preservation,” argued E.F. Murphy in
1967, “but, even when he does, there will still be scarcity. Man himself has seemed
to be the one unlimited factor.”28 Given that NAWAPA was drafted in the 1960s, the
millennium was taken as the standard yardstick against which future water needs,
population, and economic growth were measured. Never was making the American
Southwest more habitable for ever‐increasing numbers of people seen as
problematic, as if realizing NAWAPA in 1964 (in addition to years needed for
environmental and economic feasibility studies and a 30‐year construction
timelin time. e) would ensure that water needs of the Southwest would be met for all
Somehow, the realization that making more water available for greater
numbers of people would inevitably generate exponentially greater need was not
adequately considered or provided for in the initial NAWAPA plan. California
Tomorrow, a conservation group based in Los Angeles, proved exceptional in their
early recognition of ecological factors as a significant deterrent to large‐scale water
projects. “In light of the merging land‐use ethic, which recognizes that man
must…place himself in better balance with his total environment,” in 1963 California
Tomorrow released an alternative plan for meeting Southern California’s water
needs.29 While stopping short of calling for a halt to expanding development, they
pressed for smart growth to occur in areas with sufficient water availability to
remove the need for its import. In an article on California Tomorrow, Kimmis
Hendrick noted that “the concept of ecology [was] unheard of ten years ago,” yet
28
E.F. Murphy, Water Purity: A Study in Legal Control of Natural Resources. University of Wisconsin Press, 1961, 16.
29 Christian Science Monitor. Conservationists Look Again at California’s Big water Project. March 8, 1963, 13.
- 99 -
was gaining increasing influence as a means by which residents of Los Angeles could
oppose large‐scale water diversion projects.30
The fundamental mistake in the conception that technological progress and
mastery over nature is tantamount to satisfying human needs “is the expectation
that the rationality of the scientific methodology itself is transferred intact, as it
were, to the social process and mitigates social conflict by satisfying human wants
through the intensified exploitation of nature’s resources.”31 And as Leiss goes on to
claim, these increasingly dramatic socio‐technical incursions into nature do not go
unresisted. The “revolt of nature,” as Max Scheler called it, is evident in both
universal and external nature. Since there is inevitably “an inherent limit in the
irrational exploitation of external nature…by irrational technological applications,”
we are justified in speaking of “a revolt of external nature which accompanies the
rebellion of human nature.”32 While it is questionable whether the resistance that
NAWAPA faced can be described as human rebellion, it is worth considering that in
the years since Leiss’s The Domination of Nature was first published, the breakdown
of external nature appears to have taken a more dramatic and obvious turn in the
forms of acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, freshwater pollution, declining water
levels, and climate change, among other ecological problems.
Domination over nature, however, has always maintained a broader social
task. Domination of nature as a conduit to domination over human beings is the
“hidden dimension” to controlling the natural world which has sought mastery over
society through scientific means, responding to “aspects in the social dynamic.”33
Yet the irony of those who sought to use NAWAPA to further regulate society is that
the unstated goal of this domination was to keep people consuming in the same
ways they had always consumed: recklessly, above their means, and with little
regard to the impact this consumption had upon the environment, let alone whether
the environment could sustain their consumptive practices. NAWAPA may be seen
30 an Science Monitor. C Again at California’s Big Water Project (note
29), Christi onservationists Look1
Domination of Nature 19. 3.
31 ‐1Domination of Nature .
Leiss, (note 20), 11832 Leiss, (note 20), 16433 Leiss, Domination of Nature (note 20), 96.
- 100 -
as an effort by the state to control an irrational nature and a docile society in one
blow by o keep g ing. regulating the resources necessary t rowth and consumption ris
Yet technological advancement is not a priori logical. As Naess indicates,
“technology is chosen, but not by consideration of society as a whole,” hinting at the
use of technological selection as a social weapon.34 Leiss argues that “advances in
technology clearly enhance the power of the ruling groups within societies and in
the relations among nations: and as long as there are wide disparities in the
distribution of power among individuals, social groups, and states, technology will
function as an instrument of domination.”35 This can be seen in the proposal calling
for the flooding of thousands of square miles of territory in British Columbia and the
Yukon, including the partial or complete destruction of Whitehorse, Yukon, and
Prince George, B.C. The devastating impact this would have had upon the estimated
60,000 residents living in the way of NAWAPA’s realization was described by
Richard Bocking as “genocidal.”36 And according to Rorke Bryan, a geographer at
the University of Alberta, the $16.6 billion set aside in the NAWAPA proposal for
land acquisition would hardly begin to address the relocation of the Trans Canada
Highway, the trans‐Canadian rail systems, and the creation of 60,000 “discontented
squatters in western Canada” that could easily assume “social significance of major
proportions.”37 While never stated explicitly in the proposal, subsequent analysis of
the plan suggests that there was no alternative to these events occurring if NAWAPA
was to move forward. However, the inclination to halt the expanding search for
technological advancement is “unnatural,” according to Naess: it is “against our
active nature, our personal and cultural unfolding” to willingly lessen the drive
towards ever greater technological marvels.38 Another factor making NAWAPA
distinctive is that it stands as an example of Western society deciding upon an
34 aess, Ecology, Comm le: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge University
Pres Arne N unity, and Lifestys, 1991, 94. 35 Leiss, Domination of Nature (note 20), 121. 36 Bocking, quoted in Canadian ces Association. 25th Anniversary
Conf RA, 1973, 115‐116. Richard Water Resourer W
Much is Taken, Much Remains (no
ence. C37 Bryan, te 1), 155. 38 Naess, Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle (note 34), 94.
- 101 -
“unnatural” course of action, willingly stepping back from growth. It suggests that
after NAWAPA, the ends would have to justify the means in new ways.
NAWAPA was the culmination of larger and larger efforts at technological
advancement in the Southwest. But had it actually been approved, it is plausible to
assume that the drive to improve upon the Alliance could not have lagged far
behind. Indeed, this is James Scott’s fourth precaution for state planners: plan on
human inventiveness.39 And in NAWAPA’s wake, there came a mass of alternative
plans, each one attempting to address a particular failure in the NAWAPA scheme.
There appears to have been little consideration as to whether such plans could be
implemented, and whether they should be. To the state’s advantage, “when a so‐
called purely technical improvement is discovered,” according to Naess, it is “falsely
assumed that the individual and society must regulate themselves accordingly.”40
Ultimately, for Sen. Frank Moss, the NAWAPA proposal was encouraging for its
support of the idea that common sense and technical knowledge, if applied wisely,
could assure a continuous and indefinite supply of water.41 For Moss, this meant
that water diversion projects such as NAWAPA should progress at the expense of its
ecological or conservation alternatives – and, tellingly, at the expense of Canada’s
sovereign and territorial rights.
4.3 – Implications of NAWAPA for the Canadian nationstate
If the timing was premature for NAWAPA, coming as it did on the heels of the
contentious Columbia River Treaty, then the 1960s might as likely have been
NAWAPA’s saving grace as it was the key to its rejection. In a decade of grandiose
and visionary mega‐engineering projects, the stage was set for thinking to equal the
magnitude of the problem being confronted, and NAWAPA fit perfectly into the high
modernist American state’s planning for the future. Yet the rise of public
participation as the “new religion” in Canada concurrent with the rise of the
environmental movement indicates a Canadian society ready to confront anything
that challenged the integrity of the landscape and the structure of the nation.
Like A Sta 5.39 Seeing
Ecology, Commu yle (note 34), 93. Scott, te (note 18), 34
40 Naess, nity, and Lifest41 Moss, The Water Crisis (note 9), 254.
- 102 -
NAWAPA, many argued, threatened the territorial and sovereign integrity of the
Canadian state, an accusation roundly denied by proponents such as Frank Moss,
and insisted upon by opponents such as Gen. Andrew McNaughton. The Alliance
struck many as yet another example of American continental imperialism, designed
as it was to place Canadian resources and territory under control of an international
body headquartered in America.42 Looking back, it is easy to comprehend why
Canadians felt that the intensity of U.S. pressure demonstrated the extent of the
American desire to secure a stable resource base. A few examples will suffice:
Congressman Jim Wright: “there is to the north of us a stupendous supply of ater…which is simply going to waste. We need the water. We need to develop the eans of getting that water.”
wm .S. Special Subcommittee on Western Water Development: “without NAWAPA he supply of watUt er in Western United States will be substantially below the need.” Sen. Frank Moss: “the countries of North America can hardly be any more separate n their utilization of the continent’s water resources than they are in the defense of he continent. There is complete military cooperation.” it Joseph Fisher (speaking at the Future Environments of North America conference on the topic of natural resources and economic development): there is a “need for recasting resource policies in a new mould of greater internal consistency and of greater harmony with the broader policies of foreign relations and defense.”43
These examples from American politicians and academics exemplify three broad
categories of response to NAWAPA that many Canadians adopted to help oppose the
plan within the context of Canada’s sovereign and territorial integrity. Firstly,
arguments were made against the threat that NAWAPA posed to the sovereignty of
the Canadian state. Second, many felt that NAWAPA would inevitably lead to
increased political, economic, and scientific links between Canada and the United
State nderstanding s. Lastly, those in opposition demonstrated the importance of u 42 Gen. A.G.L. McNaughton in Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resources of
Canad to the Royal Soci 1967,
a. Symposia Presented ety of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto Press, 22‐23.
43 See Wright, The Coming Water Famine (note 9), 224; United States Senate. Committee on Public Works. Special Subcommittee on Western Water Development. A Summary of Water Resource Projects, Plans, and Studies Relating to the Western and Midwestern United States. Government Printing Office, 1966, 5; Moss, The Water Crisis (note 9), 252; and J. Fisher, quoted in The Conservation Foundation. Darling, F. Fraser and John P. Milton, eds. Future Environments of North America. The Natural History Press, 1965, 266.
- 103 -
current and future water needs for the purposes of Canadian economic
development: this was argued to be of critical value before agreeing to water
diversion on the scale proposed by NAWAPA.
For many concerned with the hidden implications of the Parsons plan, the
displacement of Canadian sovereignty over both Canadian territory and resources
was a tremendous blow to a nation already weakened as a result of the botched
Columbia River Treaty. First amongst their concerns was the relabelling of
territorial waters as “continental water,” thereby attaching a moniker that directly
implied not only the right of American access, but the implicit requirement of
Canadians to share what may have originated in their territory. In the addendum to
the 1973 CWRA conference, Harold Pope found an often elusive middle ground in
claiming that “although it is continental water, it is owned, not by everyone on the
continent, but by the nation that is fortunate enough to possess that water.” 44 In
Canada’s case, this right is divided between the federal and provincial governments.
While “common law principles grant the provinces primary exploitative rights to
[water] based on their ownership of the land underlying and adjacent to most of the
freshwater resources within their borders,” Timothy Heinmiller notes that “the
federal government has some proprietary rights over water resources in Canada,
but these are limited to waters that are adjacent to and overlying federal lands such
as national parks, military bases, and the northern territories.”45 The federal
government has a stake in water export only inasmuch as it retains control over
navigation and shipping (s.91 of the constitution), and authority over international
treaties (s.132).46 Yet by engaging Americans in the field of property rights and
ownership, Pope was insisting upon the sovereign right of Canadian provinces and
the federal government to control the waters originating within Canada, adding that
“no one has any legal right to any water that is entirely Canadian and that it must be
44 n. Harold Pope, quoted in quoted in the Addendum to the Canadian Water Resources Associatio
25th Anniversary Conference. CWRA, 1973, 135. 45 einmiller, ‘Harmonization throug nadian Federalism and Water
Expo adian Public Administration; (Win . 4, 2003, 498.
Timothy B. H h Emulation: Cart Policy.’ Can ter). Vol. 46, No46 Heinmiller, Harmonization through Emulation (note 45), 498.
- 104 -
the decision of our country as to whether we should or should not dispose of it.”47
Gen. Andrew McNaughton, far more vitriolic than Pope when addressing Senator
Moss in 1967, put the issue this way: the promoters [of NAWAPA] would displace Canadian sovereignty over the national waters of Canada, and substitute therefore a diabolic thesis that all waters of North America became a shared resource, of which most will be drawn off for the benefit of the midwest and southwest regions of e United States, where existing desert areas will be made to bloom at the th
expense of development in Canada.48
McNaughton synthesized the threat to Canadian sovereignty, its origins, and those
who he believed would benefit from plans like NAWAPA. He, and others like him,
looked to the Columbia Treaty as an example of American capabilities in water
governance, and the power over Canadian land and resources this would place in a
nominally international board, controlled by Americans in America for American
interests.
In his 1973 report entitled AreaofOrigin Protectionism in Western Waters,
Frank Quinn mused that it was possible to consider Canada in its entirety as an area
of origin “vis‐à‐vis American diversion interests.”49 Quinn indicates that a by‐
product of the escalation of water diversion proposals to a continental dimension is
“a change in political context as well as in scale.”50 The severity and tenacity with
which some Canadians took up the defence of Canadian water against American
intrusion may have had deeper roots in the insecurities of the time, such as the
impact of foreign investment, environmental damage, and military alliances.51
Indeed, the political context was changing, and the second manner in which
Canadians criticized NAWAPA reflected this growing sensitivity. Fears over the
47 Pope, CWRA Addendum (note 44), 135; Frank Quinn also echoed these sentiments in Frank J.
Quinn ent. Inland Waters Directorate ng and Management Bran stern Waters. Queen , 61.
. Ministry of the Environm . Water Plannic ofOrigin Prote ’s Printer, 1973
.L. McNaughto y of Canada Address (note 42), 22. h. Area ctionism in We
48 Gen A.G n, Royal Societ49
Quinn, AreaofOrigin (note 47), 70. 50 Quinn, AreaofOrigin (note 47), 70. 51 Senator Frank Moss must have been sensitive to claims against the Alliance (or at least aware
of the sensitivities of his audience) in speaking to the Royal Society of Canada where he specified that “the engineers, administrators, and parliamentarians who are scrutinizing the NAWAPA concept…are not conspiring to steal Canada’s water. Quoted in Frank Moss, Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. Water Resources of Canada. Symposia Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto Press, 1967, 10. Italics added.
- 105 -
growing interconnectedness between Canada and the United States, especially the
sense of inequality permeating the relationship, ensured that any situation whereby
Canada would increase its dependence on the United States would be highly
scrutinized. NANR Minister Arthur Laing felt this to be the case even with regard to
Canada simply acting as a land link between Alaska and the continental United
States.52 Even without the supranational authority necessary to manage something
as grand as NAWAPA, Rorke Bryan feared that the “extensive continental
development of water resources would tie the United States and Canada more
closely together than at present,” a situation that would “probably not be regarded
as a desirable side effect by most Canadians.”53 Within Canada, the jurisdictional
precariousness of water between federal and provincial responsibility suggested to
flood‐control engineer Carson Templeton that any effort by the federal government
to tax or otherwise regulate water use or export by the provinces could ultimately
make the country unstable, a thought increasingly plausible given the unrest in
Canada’s francophone province in the 1960s.54 Yet it is critical (if not obvious) to
remember that before NAWAPA there existed an extensive series of economic,
political, cultural, social, and environmental connections between the two nations, a
situation that made requests for water hard to deny, yet difficult to accept.
The atmosphere of distrust and uncertainty of American intentions was
nowhere more clear than during question period in the Canadian House of
Commons on September 5, 1966: Mr. Fulton (PC):…will the government make it clear that it will not enter nto a discussion on the sharing of water on a continental basis until a ational policy hin as been stated, detailed, and settled? Mr. Pépin (LIB): That is the general position I took in Winnipeg [at a town all meeting on the Nelson River water project], at which time the hon. ember seemed to agree with it.
hm
52
Laing, Water – The Ultimate Resource (note 2), 9. 53 Bryan, Much is Taken, Much Remains (note 1), 171. 54 Carson Templeton, ‘The Practical Constraints on Water Management,’ quoted in National
Resource Conference. Sadler, Barry, ed. Water Policy for Western Canada: The Issue of the Eighties. University of Calgary Press, 1982, 130.
- 106 -
Mr. Herridge (NDP):…Will the minister assure this house in a few brief ords that the government of Canada will not undermine the desire of the anadian p ect their water resources? wC eople to prot
r. Pépin: Quit M e right. Mr. Aiken (PC):…In view of [U.S.] President Johnson’s recent statement that ar or pure water appeared to be the world’s choice, does this government onsider thiswc philosophy of water or war has any application to Canada? Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I do not believe this is a question that can be asked at this time.55
As unlikely as it seems in retrospect, there existed a real fear amongst some
Canadian politicians to consider the threat of American force in acquiring water and
the concurrent benefits water diversion represented to growth and life itself.
Canada’s failure to consider this possibility, according to Progressive Conservative
MP and future IJC commissioner E. Davie Fulton, “answers…the question of whether
or not we [Canadians] slide down the slope called continentalism into the extinction
of anything which might be called nationhood.”56 All hyperbole aside, Fulton and
others were successful in framing the water export debate as central not merely to
Canada’s future prosperity, but to the very future of the country.
While Senator Moss attempted to demonstrate the economic and
developmental benefits to be accrued by Canada as a source of water for American
markets, he failed to account for the significant psychological role that water plays
in the Canadian imagination. 57 Given B.C. Premier W.A.C. Bennett’s adage that
“water is your heritage and you don’t sell your heritage,” it should be unsurprising
that the Canadian criticisms of NAWAPA left the economic and legal realms of
sovereignty to advocate for NAWAPA’s dismissal on purely emotional and
nationalistic grounds.58
55 ebates. Canada. “United States Conference on Water for Peace.” In Canada. Parliament. D 27th
Parliament., 1st Session. Vol. VIII (September 6, 1966). Queen’s Printer, 1966, 8057. 56 ie Fulton, “Supp Technical Surveys.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 27th
Parl 6).Queen’s Printer, 1966, 2109. E. Dav ly – Mines and
ia March 3, 196 9), 252.
ment., 1st Session. Vol. II (57 Moss, The Water Crisis (note58 Toronto Globe and Mail. U.S. Proposal to Share Canada’s Water Evokes Anger, but Need May
Bring it About. July 23, 1965, B3.
- 107 -
For Anthony Scott, the importance of the “emotional dimension” in opposing
water export in Canada cannot be overestimated, and may in fact be the most
critical factor.59 For Canadian nationalists, themselves working within a socially
constructed framework of what Canada is, what it should be, and who it should be
for, there is a problem Andrew Biro identifies as the “double bind.” While the
traditional strength of nationalism has been “the extent to which the national
territory is effectively brought under the control of the people and/or the state,”
Biro argues that in Canada, this is not the case.60 He writes that “because of Canada’s
particularly close relationship with – and its role as raw material exporter to – the
world’s sole superpower, the taming of Canadian nature is often understood to be
an American project.” Biro judges that “the index of Canadian national strength in
this context becomes the extent to which American power is resisted or, in other
words, the extent to which nature within Canada’s boundaries remains untamed.”61
It was with one eye to the past and one eye to the future that Canadians in the 1960s
attempted to understand the vast potential they possessed for keeping Canadian
resources under Canadian jurisdiction as a show of national strength.
The third common form that nationalist criticisms of NAWAPA took was the
importance of understanding current and future Canadian water needs. Negotiating
away access to water was seen as tantamount to abandoning future development
and growth in Canada. This was especially true of the Prairie region and the
Canadian North that depended upon water for municipal, industrial, and
agricultural growth. There has always existed a fine balance in Canada between
what Justice Thomas Berger called in his inquiry into a northern gas pipeline “a
particular idea of progress firmly embedded in our economic system and in our
national consciousness” and a “strong identification with the values of the
59 Anthony Scott, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research
Paper #7. The Economics of Water Export Policy. Queen’s Printer, 1985, 40; also see Foster and Sewell, Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada (note 9), 35.
60 w Biro, ‘Half‐Empty of Politics and the Canadian National Imaginary’ in Bakk en, ed. Eau Canada: The a’s Water. UBC Press, 2007, 327.
Andre Half‐Full? Waterer, Kar Future of Canad61 Biro, HalfEmpty of HalfFull? (note 60), 328.
- 108 -
wilderness and of the land itself.”62 Deeply engrained in the resource export debate
is the question of future development, and where that development will take place.
The disparities of NAWAPA’s benefits were laid out in the initial report produced by
Parsons’ engineering firm, and are presented in Table 4.1. They lay bare what many
Canadians could only assume – namely, that the vast majority of benefits in terms of
acre‐feet made available annually, kilowatt energy produced per year, and increases
in irrigable land were the primary possessions of the United States. Frank Moss
claimed to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966 that NAWAPA may never need to
come to fruition if pollution clean‐up and abatement should help reduce their
dependence on foreign water sources, though he remained sceptical that pollution
clean‐up and conservation efforts should have a great effect on water availability.63
On a visit to Canada in the same year, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall
argued that the clean‐up of pollution in American water systems would provide
additional water in the Southwest, though he indicated that it was only a matter of
time before Canada and the United States would have to seriously discuss the
sharing of continental water resources. “This type of effort,” Udall claimed, “will
defer the day before we will have to ask the big questions nation to nation.”64
However, with NAWAPA merely under consideration, the American commitment to
conservation and pollution abatement seemed disingenuous to many Canadians.
Table 4.1. NAWA its by Cou . (Source: . Parsons pany, NAAmerican Water and Power Alliance, Brochure 606293419, 1964)
PA benef ntry Ralph M Com WAPA orth : N
Frank Quinn and Roy Tinney from EMR’s Policy and Planning Branch pointed
out the hollowness of American claims to Canadian water at the 1969 Arid Lands in
Wate lable (acr lly)
r made Avaie‐feet annua
% l (per country)
of Tota Power Produced (KW annually)
% l (per country)
of Tota Increase in ir able land rig(acres)
Canada 22,000,000 1 7.6% 30,000,000 42.8% N/A United States 78,000,000 6 2.4% 38,000,000 54.2% 40,000,000 Mexico 25,000,000 20% 2,000,000 0.03% X 3 1964 total acres Total 125,000,000 ‐ ‐ ‐ 70,000,000 ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐ ‐
62 nada. Northern Frontier, Northern
Hom Justice Thomas R. Berger, Ministry of Supply and Services Caeland. Queen’s Printer, 1976, 29. 63 aude E., ed. Water Resources of Ca
66. University of Toronto Press, 1
Frank Moss, Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Cl nada. Symposia Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 19 967, 10.
64 Stuart Udall, quoted in Toronto Globe and Mail. Clean U.S. Water First Step – Udall. June 24, 1966.
- 109 -
Perspective conference in Arizona. They wryly asked their American counterparts
why “better‐watered regions within the United States are not more eager to share
their supplies…if water importation into arid lands is as obviously beneficial as
many promoters would have us believe.”65 In addition to American hesitation to
divert water within the United States to support the arid Southwest (including
opposition from the Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon to supply
water from the Columbia River), there was also pressure on Canadians to view
providing water to America as a moral obligation, something good neighbours
should feel compelled to do. Despite members of the Canadian press arguing that
“there is no need to inject neighbourly sentiment into the formulation of our [water]
policy,” prominent Americans thought otherwise.66 At a speech in Billings, Montana
in 1965, Frank Moss angered many Canadians by questioning “the right of one
section of a country – or one section of a continent – to waste water – to allow vast
quantities of it to run away to the sea unused while other sections do not have
enough to meet the requirements of their growing populations.”67 Stewart Udall
also hinted at this moral obligation by suggesting that “it would be unfortunate if
any region took the attitude [that] it would rather let its water resources flow
unused into the sea rather than make them available to others,” a subtle jab at the
Canadian reluctance to negotiate the export of “wasted” water.68
This idea of moral obligation, Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys Jean‐
Luc Pépin claimed, was ridiculous. Several years before Quinn and Tinney spoke in
Arizona, Pépin confirmed the feelings of many north of the border, claiming that
“Canadians can hardly be expected to feel morally bound to provide water for the
opening of arid areas in the United States” without demonstrated humanitarian
need. In a similar vein, Pépin argued, “Americans cannot be expected to feel morally
65 Roy Tinney and Frank Quinn, quoted in American Association for the Advancement of Science.
McGinnies, William G. and Bram J. Goldman, eds. Arid Lands in Perspective: Including AAS Papers on Water Importation Into Arid Lands. University of Arizona Press, 1969, 412.
66 Calgary Albertan. October 7, 1965; also see Herbert W. Herridge, “The Address ‐ Mr. Herridge.” In Can tes. 27th Parliament., 1st Ses y 31, 1966). Queen’s Prin
ada. Parliament. Deba sion. Vol. I (Januarte
ts Eye Water in North. October 3, 1966.
r, 1966, 460. 67 American Statesman. Exper68 Toronto Globe and Mail. U.S. Proposal to Share Canada’s Water Evokes Anger, but Need May
Bring it About. July 23, 1965, B3.
- 110 -
bound to supply capital for the development of the Canadian north.”69 Yet in the
1960s there was real concern in some Canadian circles that the continued sell‐out of
Canadian resources, especially freshwater resources so high in demand, would
seriously hinder any future development ambitions in Canada. The opinions of John
Diefenbaker seem contradictory in retrospect in speaking of his grand “Northern
Vision” for developing the Canadian north while signing the Columbia River Treaty
in January 1961. In fact, eight years after Diefenbaker signed the treaty, the Canada
Water Act (1969) of Pierre Trudeau’s government still reflected an interest in
pollution clean‐up and abatement without a single reference to the issue of water
export. This omission, according to Quinn, was “probably as good an indication as
exists of how unprepared and indisposed the Canadian people and their
government are to make any decision on this…subject.”70 And despite federal
inquiries and increased populations and pollution, Canada remains no closer to
achieving a coherent federal water policy today than the country was in 1969.
The growing fear that Canada might concede its water resources wholesale
to the United States, rather than the piecemeal approach taken with the Columbia
River Treaty, prompted many to stress the unknowns of the NAWAPA plan – not
only the minutiae of the plan itself, but the unforeseen environmental, political, and
economic impacts that may accompany it. Tinney and Quinn argued in 1969 that
none of the proposals for large‐scale water diversion from Canada to the United
States provided all the information necessary for the Canadian public to make an
informed decision. “These engineering schemes,” they argued, “are privately
sponsored; whether they provide the most efficient system for economic growth,
allow for its equitable distribution inter‐regionally and internationally, and protect
environmental qualities for other kinds of human fulfillment, remains unknown.”71
69 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Statement by the Honourable Jean‐Luc Pépin, Minister of Mines and technical Surveys, Prepared for a panel discussion on ‘WATER RESOURCES – A COVETED ASSET, NATIONAL OR INTER at the Canadian ociation Convention, Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Box 3, #71‐28. Otta
NATIONAL’ Bar Assw
in (note 47), 68.
a, 1966, 3. 70 Quinn, AreaofOrig71 Tinney and Quinn, Arid Lands in Perspective (note 65), 412.
- 111 -
Further study, they claimed, was needed before any future plan for water diversion
would be palatable to the Canadian public. Yet as Philip Sykes indicates, while the
need for an inventory of Canadian water resources was necessary, the studies
launched in the 1960s reflected the relative ignorance of the Canadian people and
their governments in the aftermath of the Columbia Treaty.72 After Columbia, as it
was after NAWAPA, there appeared to be a genuine desire to learn more about
Canadian water resources, how they fit into the larger picture of Canadian resource
export, and how NAWAPA had shifted the scale of water diversion away from mega‐
projects for the foreseeable future.
But for Dr. Robert Newbury, a civil engineer at the University of Manitoba,
the question he attempted to answer at the Canadian Water Resources Association
conference in 1973 was not solely about water export or diversion – just as for
Justice Berger, the issue was not simply a matter of the feasibility of a natural gas
energy corridor through the Mackenzie Valley. Both men saw that the more
fundamental questions behind these proposals hinted at what kind of nation
Canadians wanted by the millennium, and what the future of the North and its
people would be.73 “Once Canada has lost the ability to develop along its water
courses,” Sykes argued, “it will be, in an irreversible sense, a colony rather than a
nation.”74 And for Sykes, there could be no question that NAWAPA would severely
limit the range of future development possible within Canada after control of so
vital a resource was effectively given to America.
4 ater as Resource II: The Context of Canadian Export
On the issue of American ownership of Canadian resources, Philip Sykes and
James Laxer were peas in a pod. Resource extraction and export has typically been
for the benefit of a colonial power in Canada’s history, an idea that in itself is
nothing new.
.4 – W
75 What changed in the 1960s for Canada was that, having achieved
indep ng before the centennial year of 1967, the cendence lo ountry was prepared
72 rtig Publishers, 1973, 71; Philip Sykes, Sellout: The Giveaway of Canada’s Energy Resources. HuPope, CWRA Addendum (note 44), 136.
73 Newb anadian Water Resources Association. 25th Anniversary Conference. CWR 109; B n omeland (note 62), 1.
Robert ury, quoted in CA , erger, Norther
, Sellout (note 72), 78.
, 1973 Frontier, Northern H74 Sykes75 Biro, HalfEmpty of HalfFull? (note 60), 321‐334.
- 112 -
through its role as resource hinterland to the United States to transition towards
political and social disintegration.76 NAWAPA and other continental projects such as
the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline and the proposed continental energy deal
between Canada and the United States helped solidify a form of leftist nationalism in
Canada that found its voice in the 1960s, largely in opposition to increased linkages
with the United States. Left‐leaning opponents of the Alliance such as Laxer, Sykes,
and Abraham Rotstein sought to protect Canada from overt American intervention,
expansion, or unnecessary foreign control over Canadian businesses and resources.
In this limited sense, they shared something in common with conservative Canadian
philosopher George Grant.
Many of the arguments that Laxer made in the early 1970s against a
continental energy deal with the United States are applicable to what a similar
continental water proposal such as NAWAPA would have entailed: short‐term
benefits and long‐term damage; promoting the idea of Canada as a resource
hinterland to the United States; an increased commitment to dependency on
American capital; and a severely degraded natural environment.77 While this may
be seen as an example of one Canadian internalizing George Grant’s Lament for a
Nation thesis that prophesized the end of Canada as a nation unless the boundaries
between Canada and the United States were maintained, not all Canadians saw the
evolving resource relationship with the United States in such stark terms. Indeed,
the “depletion of a resource was rational so long as the resource remained
abundant,” and to many observers, water was more abundant in Canada than in any
other nation in the world.78
There were those in Canada who shared with Senator Moss a similar faith in
the transformative power of NAWAPA to bring wealth and development to sparsely
populated and industrialized regions of the country. There were those who also saw
investment opportunities and wealth being wasted as water flowed uselessly to the
sea, and felt that Canada was foolish to under‐utilize so valuable a commodity when
76 Laxer. The Energy Poker s of the Continental Resource Deal, New Press, 1970
James Game: The Politic,
e Energy Poker Game (
15. 77 Laxer, Th note 76), 22‐23. 78 Harvey, Geography of Difference (note 22), 124‐125.
- 113 -
a massive market for it existed with Canada’s largest trading partner. In the years
after the Alliance was first proposed, a plethora of alternative plans emerged, almost
all of them attempting to mimic NAWAPA’s scope while fixing upon a specific design
flaw in the Parsons’ plan. Interestingly, many of these plans originated in Canada. E.
Kuiper of the University of Manitoba developed a plan that depended in large
measure on pre‐existing natural waterways to reduce the cost of engineering
concrete pathways. CeNAWP was a plan by E. Roy Tinney, one‐time employee of the
Ministry of the Environment, to address what he felt were the often unnecessary
environmental disruptions inherent in the NAWAPA proposal. Thomas Kierans, an
engineer at the University of Sudbury, made his mark on large‐scale water diversion
with his Great Replenishment and Northern Lakes Development Canal (GRAND).
The GRAND Canal was developed to deal with fluctuating water levels in the Great
Lakes and was closely linked to hydro‐electric power projects around James Bay.
Large‐scale engineering proposals were not confined to academia. Quinn
indicates that “in 1965, the annual report of the Alberta Water Resources Branch
ridiculed the private sector NAWAPA scheme and announced PRIME, the Branch’s
own elaborate plan for diverting northern rivers into the southern part of the
province.”
79
80 Manitoba’s Minister of Agriculture, Harry Enns, enthusiastically
endorsed Tinney’s CeNAWP plan in 1968 while questioning water’s special status.
“For some reason or another, people get emotional about water,” Enns argued, “yet
it’s a renewable resource! Oil isn’t, yet nobody gets excited about exporting oil!”81
Enns added that “we could be North America’s water tap,” as if sustaining Canada’s
tradition of drawing water was somehow noble.82
Jack Davis was an ardent supporter of large‐scale water schemes, though his
understanding of the political sensitivity of water in Canada led him to praise these
projects in less than direct terms. Yet Davis spoke of large‐scale water projects
79 e breakdown of alternative plans to the Alliance, see Bryan, Much n, For an extensiv is Take
Much Remains (note 1), 158‐167. 80 Frank J. Quinn, Water Diversion, Export and CanadaUS Relations: A Brief History. Paper
presen on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for In ions. University of To
ted to the Program ternational Relatr
Manitoba Has Hopes for its Cool, Clear Gold 968.
onto, 2007, 7. 81 Edmonton Journal. . April 23, 182 Edmonton Journal. Manitoba Has Hopes for its Cool, Clear Gold (note 81).
- 114 -
above and beyond capital gains: if his myriad of speeches and statements in the
House of Commons are to be taken as any indication of how he truly felt, then
Davis’s opinions can be said to have embodied all of the grandeur of high modernist
water projects, equal to Senator Moss or Congressman Wright in this limited sense.
One example lies in a speech Davis delivered to the Canadian Construction
Assoc h: iation in New Brunswick in June 1966, and it is worth quoting at lengtI hope to test your imagination. I want you to look beyond this power site or that. I want you to think in terms of entire river basins. Indeed, I want you to look beyond the mountains and to envisage schemes for diversion of water and the long distance transmission of hydro electric power which are not only regional but national in scope. Our mountains and our valleys, in other words, no longer restrict our minds. We will vault over them or tunnel through them. Man‐made boundaries will, meanwhile, fade into the background. This massive task of bending nature to our will should not be too difficult. Your industry has been doing this for years. And I know it will continue to keep Canada in the vanguard of project pioneers the world over.83
Davis’s high modernist, almost romantic musings on water diversion, the easy
bending of nature to meet human needs, the fading of “man‐made boundaries,” and
the national scope of such projects might have frightened many Canadians had they
known such politicians had power in Ottawa. Davis, “an informed Canadian”
according to Senator Moss, represents a small but powerful group of advocates in
Canada who shared with Moss and others an ardent desire to see Canada export
water to the United States by bending nature to human will.84 In the process, the
slow erasure of the political boundaries of the continent would send Canada further
into the arms of the United States.
Thus there were many Canadians in academia and government who
supported the NAWAPA proposal in theory, if not specifically. Many found fault with
various aspects of the plan and proposed alternatives of their own, though all
accepted the basic tenets of the Alliance: that large‐scale water diversion from
83 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Hydro Power and the Future by Jack Davis, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, delive nnual Summer Meeting of the Canadian Construction Asso e 27, 1966, 1.
red at the Aciation.” Box 3, #71‐28. Ottawa – Jun84 Moss, The Water Crisis (note 9), 6.
- 115 -
Canada to the United States in some form was a feasible, logical, and lucrative
enture for v the people of Canada to undertake.
Lost on many Canadians in the NAWAPA debate was the simple fact that
water diversions from Canada to the United States were already occurring, and
therefore that the principle of water export to America had already been accepted.
Small‐scale diversions from Coutts, Alberta to Sweetgrass, Montana, and the
Canadian acquiescence of 90 cubic metres per second withdrawal from Lake
Michigan to assist in Chicago’s sewage treatment are only two examples of water
withdrawals between Canada and the United States that had been in place for
decades. What had changed in the 1960s was the scale of such proposals.85 As
Anthony Scott indicates, “Canada has not failed to export its natural resource
commodities – ranging from renewable resources such as grain and lumber to non‐
renewable, strategically important resources such as oil and natural gas – when the
opportunity presented itself.”86 In fact, Sen. Moss argued at his Royal Society of
Canada debate with Gen. McNaughton that Americans had heard Canadian posturing
against resource export in the past regarding natural gas – which now formed a
substantial revenue base for Canada.87 Why, Moss wondered, should water export
by classified differently than natural gas?
So why was water export different? If “resources can be defined only in
relationship to the mode of production which seeks to make use of them and which
simultaneously ‘produces’ them through both the physical and mental activity of the
users,” as Harvey claimed, and if water is “produced” through the same process that
other resources are, why the hesitation to export water? 88 Before we can
adequately address this question, it may well be worth asking if water actually has
been considered or treated differently than other resources by the Canadian public.
Successive Prime Ministers in Canada from John Diefenbaker to Pierre Trudeau had
shown a willingness to consider large‐scale water export should the circumstances
85 da (n
39. Foster and Sewell, Water: The Emerging Crisis in Cana 30.
86 Scott, The Economics of Water Export Policy (note 59),87 APA Study.’ Reclamation; September. Vol
1966
ote 9),
A.E. Palmer, ‘U.S. Senator Pleads for NAW . VI, No. 2, , 3.
88 David Harvey, quoted in Swyngedouw, Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (note 19), 7.
- 116 -
prove lucrative enough, a tradition carried into the 1990s by Brian Mulroney.
Despite this, and despite the hazards of drawing conclusions across the provinces
with competing regional attitudes and interests, Canadians in the 1960s were not
convinced that something like NAWAPA was necessary. This is not to suggest that
opposition to water export automatically denotes a personal or deeper meaning for
water in the hearts and minds of a majority of Canadians, yet the fact that oil and gas
export continued throughout this era, and still does while large‐scale water
diversion was effectively halted after the Alliance passed out of fashion, suggests
that the latter has a greater resonance in the national imagination.
Ideas such as NAWAPA, when they emerge and threaten the often taken‐for‐
granted perception of freshwater’s availability, possess the scale and power to help
influence and inform Canadians sense of water’s centrality to their collective
heritage. While the importance of U.S. expansionism in turning to Canada as a
subsequent source of natural resources cannot be underestimated, the important
place of water in the Canadian psyche should not be downplayed as a factor in
NAWAPA’s defeat.
There have been three key factors in Canadian hesitation towards large‐scale
water export. Firstly, scale has been a major contributing aspect. Since the principle
of water export to the United States had already been accepted by 1964 when
NAWAPA was first proposed, clearly Canadians were not taking umbrage with the
principle of water export so much as the gargantuan size of the proposal. As Sykes
claims, “it was too monstrous to be palatable in Canada,” a statement further proven
by the number of unknowns that accompanied the plan. 89 Without recourse to
reversibility, for Canadians to have embraced NAWAPA would have required a
massive leap of faith. Interestingly, the scale of the NAWAPA transfer was matched
later only by the proposal to create an energy corridor for the transport of natural
gas through the Mackenzie Valley to the United States. Like NAWAPA, the plan was
scuttled in 1976 as a result of the best‐selling Berger Inquiry that outlined the
89 Sykes, Sellout (note 72), 70.
- 117 -
devastating impacts it would have on the Native populations and natural
environment of the north.
Secondly, as Biro argues, “resistance [to water export] may in fact be
impelled as much by an anxiety about the future as by the historical legacy of
national identity.”90 The number of unknowns facing the Canadian government
regarding water resources in 1964 was vast, such that to contemplate negotiating
away resources whose extent was largely unidentified made little sense from a
political, ecological, or economic perspective. NANR Minister Arthur Laing was
adamant that Canada’s water resources would never become a “badge of bondage”
with the United States, yet in 1964 he remained “quite certain that in the years
ahead…we will look upon our water resources as a prime element in negotiation
with our United States friends.”91 Laing was unclear as to what water may figure
prominently in the negotiation of, though there are many who argue that decades
later, water figured significantly as a negotiating tool in the NAFTA trade
agreement.92 With water so closely tied to future development and economic
prosperity through the energy, industrial, and agricultural sectors, any loss of
control over Canadian water resources was tantamount to losing control over
Canada’s future. Speaking of Canada’s burgeoning resource industry, Gen.
McNaughton argued that “the NAWAPA promoters would move all of this out of
Canada – the people, the industry, the water. It can only be described as madness to
believe that Canada has surplus water in an area [the North] that is so obviously
earmarked for major resource development.”93 Development, McNaughton
maintained, must be regulated with the interests of Canadians first, and to their
maximum benefit.
90 , Andrew Biro, ‘Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debate over Canadian Water Exports.’ Capitalism
Nature, Socialism; December, 2002. Vol. 13, No. 4, 41. 91 Arthur Laing, “Water Resources. Consideration of Canadian Requirements in Sales to U.S.” In
Canad . 26th Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. VII (September 2, 1964). Queen’s Prin
a. Parliament. Debatester, 1964, 7575‐7576. 92 ter and Free Trade: The Mulron 's Agenda for Canada's
Most er, 1988.
See Wendy Holm, ed., Wa ey Government Precious Resource. J. Lorim93 Gen A.G.L. McNaughton, Royal Society of Canada Address (note 43), 19.
- 118 -
Lastly, and most importantly, water may not have been produced through
the same “physical and mental activity of the users” as oil, timber, grain, or natural
gas. But its place within the national consciousness as part of Canada’s heritage has
granted water a special status that Anthony Scott argues “had an important impact
on government water export policies.”94 While not everyone agrees that this special
relationship is sensible, let alone valuable to Canadians, defence of Canadian water
has become tantamount to a defence of Canada in ways that the exploitation and
export of other resources in the 1960s and 1970s could not match, though oil in the
1970s as much as in contemporary Alberta is the exception to the rule. This view –
that water’s importance in Canada has spawned a culture “rich in water imagery” –
fits conveniently, according to Biro, with “a Canadian nationalism defined against
the modern, hydrologically engineered (nature‐dominating, imperialist) society to
the south.”95 Water, in this sense, has become a combatant in the effort to keep
American manifest destiny in check by fighting against the grain of “continentally
unifying natural features.”96 It was coupled with sovereignty to more effectively
resist American expansionism. Canadians were not completely opposed to water
diversion to the United States. But as the scale of both water diversion and the
threat it posed to Canadian territorial and political sovereignty increased in the
1960s, many nationalists on the political left (and some on the political right) in
Canada found in water specifically and energy resources more broadly an effective
conduit to express their concern over an expanding American influence in North
America. Not only was this defence of water a defence of Canada, but it was put to
work in reinforcing important distinctions between Canada and the United States as
separate and distinct nation‐states.
94 Scott, r Export Policy (note 59), 39. 95 Biro, HalfEmpty of HalfFull? (note 60), 323. 96 Biro, HalfEmpty of HalfFull? (note 60), 322; Vincent Massey provides an interesting ‐ though
dated ‐ check to this. Arguing in 1948, Massey maintained that “we know our sovereign independence in real, final and complete.” For Massey, if there be any lingering feelings of colonial subordination towards Great Britain, or, increasingly, the United States, “we ourselves are responsible and no one else.” Despite the simplicity of his ‘tough‐love’ approach, Massey’s statement remains quite accurate. Slightly over a decade later it would be Canadian uncertainly about water resources and an inability to formulate a national water policy that would lead to a debate over NAWAPA. See Vincent Massey, On Being Canadian. J.M. Dent and Sons (Canada) Limited, 1948, 9.
The Economics of Wate
- 119 -
Conclusion “Canada seems to be no more organized today than it was 20 years ago when massive diversion
scheme ment s (on paper) created a ‘crisis’ atmosphere.” – Ontario Society for Environmental Manage No single factor was responsible for NAWAPA’s failure. The Alliance still
presently draws support from various online interest groups who theorize about
what contemporary form the plan could take.1 The appeal of a “jet‐age” type of
thinking still resonates strongly today, and the allure of a fix‐all plan such as
NAWAPA remains an enticing option for those concerned more with meeting
Southwestern water needs than the preservation of the North American
environment. Today, however, the discussion is tempered with a stronger
environmentalist element. Yet at its core, the debate over water withdrawals
specifically and resource extraction and use more broadly remains one caught in the
binary between conservation and preservation. Interestingly, the benefits of large‐
scale water diversion from Canada to the United States – specifically NAWAPA and
the GRAND Canal plan – were still being seriously discussed as recently as 1985 by
Robert Bourassa, Premier of Quebec from 1970 to 1976 and 1985 to 1994. He
argued in his 1985 book Power from the North that “it would be essential that any
serious proposal satisfy strict environmental standards,” thereby dismissing
NAWAPA in favour of Thomas Kierans’ GRAND Canal scheme and its increased
awareness of environmental disruptions.2 Bourassa went on to outline the
economic benefits to be accrued by Quebec and Canada, so much so that for a time
in the 1980s, he had the support of Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for
examining the environmental feasibility of dyking James Bay to create a freshwater
lake at the southern tip of Hudson Bay.3
1 For examples of those who continue to advocate for NAWAPA, see the San Jose State University
Department of Economics at San Jose State University Department of Economics. Thayer Watkins, The North American Water and Power Alliance. Accessed August 5, 2009, http://www.applet‐magic.com/NAWAPA.htm; the opinions of Michael E. Campana at Oregon State University at Oregon State University. Canadian Water Exports: Will NAWAPA Return? January 25, 2008. Accessed August 5, 2009, http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/2008/01/kennedy‐to‐cana.html; and Sun Belt Wat World Looks to Canaer Inc. Water – The da. Accessed August 5, 2009, http://www.sunbeltwater.com/.
2 Robert Bo e North. Prentice‐H3 Bourassa, Power from the North (note 2), 148‐149.
urassa, Power from th all Canada Inc., 1985, 146.
- 119 -
- 120 -
The scale of NAWAPA and other plans like it has ensured that when water
diversion between Canada and the United States is discussed, the Alliance is
inevitably referenced, even if only as an example of the detachment between
drafting and reality. In a 2007 report on water diversion and export between
Canada and the United States presented to the Program on Water Issues (POWI) at
the University of Toronto, Frank Quinn still acknowledged the role of NAWAPA and
other mega‐projects in water’s North American history, though he suggested that
their lack of government support reduced them to “basically nothing more than
lines on a map.”4
Yet perhaps Quinn goes too far in dismissing NAWAPA and other massive
North American water diversion projects that originated in the mid‐1960s. The
unique ways in which we study failures should not be dismissed so flippantly.
Rather, the very fact that NAWAPA did not materialize yet played such an important
role in shifting the scope and scale of water diversion and export projects in North
America makes it something deserving of further study. Failed projects often fail for
important reasons, and we dismiss those reasons – and what they can teach society
about how best to exist in the world – at our peril.
While MTS Minister Jean‐Luc Pépin felt the issue of water export to be “a
very hypothetical question,” studying NAWAPA has value beyond what it and other
similar plans reflect of attitudes towards water and nature in the 1960s.5 As
examples of what large‐scale water engineering would encompass, they highlighted
– in most cases quite accidentally – the violence and danger that such human
interventions could have upon the natural world. They demonstrated the extent to
which North Americans would have to accept the re‐engineering of their physical
environments in order to maintain rather unsustainable lifestyles. These high
modernist plans presented a future for North America that was overwhelmingly
4 Frank J. Quinn, Water Diversion, Export and CanadaUS Relations: A Brief History. Paper
pres versity
- 120 -
ented to the Program on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Relations. Uniof Toronto, August 2007, 2.
5 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21, Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Water Management and Pollution by Hon. Jean‐Luc Pépin, Statement to the Conservation Council of Ontario,” Box 3, #71‐28 – Ottawa, May 26, 1966, 2.
- 121 -
rejected, a remarkable feat considering the massive scale of concurrent projects
such as the England‐France Chunnel, the damming of the Volga River, the Columbia
River system and St. Lawrence Seaway, and the construction of the Aswan High
Dam. Additionally, in exposing the excesses of high modernist state planning with
regard to water projects, NAWAPA proved to be a turning point in the acceptance of
great projects of nation‐building that required massive intervention into the natural
world. The scale of water diversion so shifted from large‐scale to small‐scale in the
wake of the Alliance that neither NAWAPA nor any of its subsequent variations
could gain public acceptance or government support.
One of the principle reasons for NAWAPA’s failure was its astronomical
expense. At $100 billion dollars (U.S.) in 1964 dollars, it was seen as simply too
costly for something so risky. And as Senator Moss attempted to drum up support
for the plan in speaking tours across Canada and the American Southwest after
1964, the price of the proposal continued to increase. A decade later, the new price‐
tag was well over $200 billion and climbing increasingly beyond the means of those
who would finance it. Another critical factor was the lack of government support.
Senator Moss was not entirely alone in his desire to see the Alliance materialize, but
without official support from Washington to pressure the Canadian federal
government to consider the plan or provide money to finance the feasibility studies,
NAWAPA could not move forward. Additionally, the sheer scale of the Alliance
cannot be overestimated as a factor in its failure. While “jet‐age” type of thinking
may have been popular in the 1960s in North America, NAWAPA seems to have
crossed a line of acceptability, becoming a bridge too far in the socio‐engineering of
the natural world. After having extensively studied NAWAPA and the varied
responses to the proposal, it has become clear to me that an apparent distinction
was missing between what could be accomplished by humans in the natural world
and what should be created. Those who adopted the attitude that any possible
interventions into the natural world must instinctively be implemented would have
done well to recall Kate Soper’s notion of “nature in the realist sense”: that
- 121 -
- 122 -
regardless of what could be created, “however Promethean in ambition,” nature will
always be stronger than anything humanity mobilizes to transform it.6
We must also consider what Anthony Scott termed the “emotional
dimension” to debates over water in Canada.7 It is vital to include national
resentment towards the proposal – in the context of American ownership of
Canadian resources – for understanding the unique position that water enjoys in the
Canadian psyche, and the role this played in rejecting the Alliance. There was only a
small window of opportunity in the late 1950s and early 1960s in North America
whereby something as grandiose as NAWAPA could have been proposed without
immediate dismissal. From the advent of the high modernist state to the increasing
awareness of ecological and environmental destruction, this moment in time also
coincided with a decade of – typically leftist – nationalist fervour and growing
resentment in Canada of linkages with the United States. NAWAPA would have
proved the most physical linkage of all.
Tied to this is the environmental destruction the Alliance would have caused,
a topic that received scant attention from media and academic sources. The
magnitude of ecological damage can only be estimated, while the radical alteration
of the landscape on such a scale would have had massive impacts upon the climate
and physical foundation of the continent through the accumulated weight of water
stored in the 500‐mile long Rocky Mountain Trench. I have argued that NAWAPA
provided an excellent opportunity for those in the burgeoning environmental
movement and a growing cohort of leftist nationalists to cut their teeth on the
issues of violent human intervention into the natural world and the continued
influence of foreign capital on Canadian resources, respectively. While neither
concern was entirely new, the sheer scale of the Alliance escalated the palpable
anxiety many in Canada felt.
Without knowing it, many Canadians (and Americans opposed to the
Alliance) had argued against NAWAPA within the framework of Robert Goodin’s
6
- 122 -
Kate Soper, “Nature/‘nature’” in Robertson, George, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. Routledge, 1996, 31.
7 Anthony Scott, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research Paper #7. The Economics of Water Export Policy. Queen’s Printer, 1985, 39.
- 123 -
green theory of value. Realizing that the natural world had value above and beyond
how humans were willing to price it, the pressure to prove the commercial value of
nature was turned on its head. Instead, the expectation was placed on those in
power who sought to divert Canadian waters south to demonstrate why natural
worth was valued less than capitalist gain.
Finally, we must consider that the extent of the water “crisis” in the American
Southwest was grossly exaggerated. This embellishment helped ensure that while
Senator Moss and Congressman Wright felt an immediacy to the water crisis in the
American Southwest, the dire world of drought and stunted regional development
they touted as the alternative to NAWAPA was never the case. Alternatives to the
large‐scale diversion of water from Alaska and the Yukon thousands of miles south
to northern Mexico were never sufficiently examined by the drafters of the plan, and
in the limited discussion of alternatives, most were either deemed too expensive
(such as desalinization), or insufficient to meet the demands of the arid Southwest
(such as conservation). The Alliance also emphasized the arguable hollowness of
some high modernist state planning efforts, allowing North Americans to question
the use of the capitalist interests of the state in preserving the state’s territorial and
environmental integrity. After NAWAPA, the allure of high modernist water
diversion plans dwindled. In the opposition to the plan, nature was finally
recognized as an active agent worthy of consideration in any like‐minded future
schemes . The crucial recognition that such plans, when drafted, are intended for
realization within the natural world, and that nature must never be lost in
discussions over water export or diversion, owes something to the debate over the
North American Water and Power Alliance.
That the “crisis” was also less pronounced than NAWAPA’s proponents
believed has been made additionally clear by the continued growth of the
Southwest in the years after the proposal went out of style. The reluctance of
government officials advocating for long‐distance water diversion to encourage
conservation and change in the pattern of lifestyles, in addition to the inability to
question the cult of growth, demonstrates the influence of high modernist planning
- 123 -
- 124 -
on water projects at the time. As Moss argued in The Water Crisis, “make no little
plans.”8
After 1973, the urgency of water export from Canada to the United States
dropped precipitously. Part of the reason for this is described by geographer
Frédéric Lasserre, who argued in 2007 that Canada, with one‐tenth the population
of the United States, is actually a much larger domestic water diverter than America.
He notes the key difference is that the scale has shifted from the large‐scale
diversions envisioned in the 1960s to a “multiplication of smaller, shorter
diversions…all being perfectly justifiable, but the sum of which could amount to a
large diversion.”9 Canada’s larger volume of domestic diversions has created a
debate that Lasserre fears will be as “politically contentious as is the debate over
exports to our neighbour to the south,” in addition to making Canada’s opposition to
water export less defensible. 10 NAWAPA helped convince most water engineers in
Canada and the United States that smaller‐scale domestic withdrawals or diversions
were not only more economically feasible, but also that gaining public acceptance
for these was also much easier despite the great potential for environmental
disruption.11 Debate over the Alliance also indicated that while the divide between
first and second nature can be made greater through instituting such plans as
NAWAPA, for example, there is no reason to assume that this should be so. The
crucial emphasis on smaller‐scale, inter‐basin withdrawals can also be seen as an
effort to lessen the divide between first and second natures, or at least to make the
rift no wider, as NAWAPA would surely have done.
The debate about transboundary and domestic inter‐basin freshwater
diversion in Canada is unlikely to subside in the near future, nor should it. The myth
of Canada’s superabundance of water continues to colour all discussions of
Canadian water resources, and the topic of export specifically. “With only 0.6 per
cen ulation we et of the world’s pop stimate that we have over one quarter of the
8 Frank Moss, Frank E. The Water Crisis. Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1967; this caption is the title of his chapter on NAWAPA.
9 Frederic Lasserre, ‘Drawers ersions in Canada and Beyond’ in Bakker, Karen, ed. : The Future of Ca ress, 2007, 156‐157.
of Water: Water DivE BC P
Drawers of Water 160.
- 124 -
au Canada nada’s Water. U10 Lasserre, (note 9), 151, 11 Lasserre, Drawers of Water (note 9), 157.
- 125 -
world’s fresh, liquid, surface water,” argued NANR Minister Arthur Laing in April
1965, a position that many subsequent generations of engineers and academics
have fought to dispel.12 Canada’s historic lack of federal water policies has recently
been overcome in a truly Canadian fashion by what Timothy Heinmiller termed
“policy emulation,” a system whereby provinces adopt a similar policy towards
water and water export, creating a uniformity of legislation without overstepping
jurisdictional boundaries or infringing upon NAFTA obligations.13 “By 2002,” he
indicated, “all of the sovereign jurisdictions in Canada but New Brunswick had
formed water export policies.”14
This does not preclude the need for further study of Canada’s water reserves,
and their myriad of often competing uses. MTS Minister Jean‐Luc Pépin argued as
far back as 1966 that “‘national’ water legislation could only result from the
integration of federal and provincial statutes,” and that the federal government must
take a leadership role in bringing this legislative shift about.15 In 1964, Liberal MP
and future Prime Minister John Turner touched on the importance of creating a
substantial national water policy, a “priority which must occupy us for the next
generation.”16 Coincidentally, Turner’s estimate was conservative, as ensuing
generations continue to formulate water policies that strike appropriate balances
between jurisdictions. EMR Minister J.J. Greene pointed out the difficulties in
12 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, C.O.P.
CA.R. 64, “Water ‐ The Ultimate Resource: An Address by the Honourable Arthur Laing, Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources, at a luncheon of the Pacific Northwest Trade Association, Portland, Oregon, April 12, 1965.” Ottawa, Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, 1965, 4; also see John B. Sprague, ‘Great Wet North? Canada’s Myth of Water Abundance’ in Bakker, Karen, ed. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water. UBC Press, 2007, pp. 23‐36 for more on the continued strength of the abundance myth.
13 einmiller, ‘Harmonization throug adian Federalism and Water Exp
Timothy B. H h Emulation: Canort Policy.’ Canadian Public Administration; (Winter). Vol. 46, No. 4, 2003, 508. 14 Heinmiller, ‘Harmonization through Emulation’ (note 13), 508. 15 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Statement by the Honourable Jean‐Luc Pépin, Minister of Mines and technical Surveys, Prepared for a panel discussion on ‘WATER RESOURCES – A COVETED ASSET, NATIONAL OR INTE ‐28 –
- 125 -
RNATIONAL’ at the Canadian Bar Association Convention, Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Box 3, #71September 1, 1966, 7‐8.
16 Hon. John Turner, quoted by Herbert W. Herridge, “Great Lakes Water Levels.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. VIII (October 2, 1964). Queen’ Printer, 1964, 8682.
- 126 -
formulating a truly national policy in May 1971, nothing that it “is not something to
be conceived in an ivory tower but has to be developed, understood and managed as
the result of the day‐to‐day experiences of Government, regions, industries, and
people.”17 Perhaps this is why, in subsequent years, the complications of co‐
operative federalism and the restrictions of trade agreements such as NAFTA have
shifted the emphasis away from “national” water policy towards Heinmiller’s more
feasible concept of “policy emulation,” though it has bred uncertainty as to whether
water is considered a tradable good in the agreement.18 Realizing the limitations of
Canadians to agree to a truly national policy, water legislation may best be
considered regionally based on the day‐to‐day experiences of government, industry,
and citizens.
Senator Frank Moss was correct in listing further research about Canadian
water resources as a benefit of the NAWAPA plan, although he ultimately hoped that
further study would reveal the unbelievably water‐rich nation he envisioned selling
water to America. E. Roy Tinney and Frank Quinn argued at the 1969 Arid Lands in
Perspective symposium that despite Canadian unwillingness at that time to consider
large‐scale water withdrawals, Canadians as a whole were neither avoiding the
issue, nor were they outright opposed to its consideration. For many Canadians, the
problematic Columbia River Treaty saw advanced American knowledge of existing
water resources trump the inexperience and lack of knowledge of the government
with regards to Canadian water reserves, revealing the weakness of what the
Science Council of Canada referred to as “technological sovereignty.”19 It highlighted
the weakened bargaining position generated by Canadian resource ignorance: after
17 Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987 onourable J.J. Greene to the St s , “Statement by the H anding Committee on National Resourceand Public Works” Box 6, #71‐28 – Ottawa, May 11, 1971, 2.
18 See David Johansen, Water Exports and the NAFTA. Library of Parliament. Queen’s Printer, March 8, 1999; also see Ontario Water Resources Association. June 12‐14, 1984. Future’s in Water: Proceedings of the Ontario Water Resources Association Conference. Toronto, Ontario; and the Canadian Water Resources Association. Windsor, J.E., ed. May 7‐8, 1992. Water Export – Should Cana ouver, British Columbia
- 126 -
da’s Water Be For Sale? Vanc for more information regarding water export and NAFTA.
19 Science Council of Canada. Annual Report 19771978. Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1978, 32.
- 127 -
NAWAPA, the Canadian federal government saw fit to build upon its meager
understanding of water resources by expanding and accelerating the existing
inventory of national water supplies.20
Intervening in nature to secure a stable and sufficient supply of water has
been a North American preoccupation for the last two centuries. The spirit of
growth and development which opened (and closed) the American frontier has
made a lasting impression on the pattern of human settlement in the arid Southwest
to this day. What the future of water diversion in North America will look like is
unclear: while some maintain that a continental water market is the easiest and
most efficient way to facilitate trade and financial benefit from Canada’s water
resources, others are pushing for a grassroots approach to water management at the
community scale, respecting the right of water to exist as common property, if as
property at all.21 Since the environmental impacts of development and growth are
becoming increasingly clear, a change in government policy and social attitudes
towards what is needed to live comfortably is as necessary as it is obvious to many.
As American author and environmental essayist Edward Abbey noted, “there is no
lack of water in the Mojave Desert unless you try to establish a city where no city
should be.”22
A solution is urgently needed for increasing water scarcity in many parts of
North America, though the large‐scale resolution to this problem that NAWAPA and
its proponents espoused has been roundly rejected since the 1960s. Ralph Pentland
and Adèle Hurley argued in 2007 that “even though [the] prospect [of large‐scale
diversions] does not appear to be on the immediate horizon, it is one that Canadians
20 E. Roy Tinney and Frank J. Quinn, quoted in American Association for the Advancement of
Scien d Bram J. Goldman, eds. Aridce. McGinnies, William G. an Lands in Perspective: Including AAS Papers on Water Importation Into Arid Lands. University of Arizona Press, 1969, 413.
21 See Terry L. Anderson, ed., Continental Water Marketing. 1994. Pacific Research Institute for Publi de Barlow, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and lelland and Stewart Ltd., 2007.
- 127 -
c Policy: San Francisco, California; and Mau the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. McC22 Edward Abbey, quoted in Robert Glennon, Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to do
About it. Island Press, 2009, 1.
- 128 -
- 128 -
may eventually have to face.” 23 It should be understood that theirs is more a
cautionary note. Through a series of provincial and federal policies, the spectre of
bulk water diversion from Canada to any nation seems unlikely. Though in an
increasingly integrated and globalized world, as the effects of actual ecoscarcity
grow more and more acute, Quinn notes that “before much longer, Canadians will
have to decide…how much… we value our water, and, more than that, our
sovereignty.”24
For now, NAWAPA remains a footnote to water diversion or export
discussion in Canada, though its study, as I have demonstrated, has much to bring to
the debate regarding the preservation of nature and freshwater in North America,
and how those ends can best be served. It is a story that water engineers may use as
an example of an idea taken too far, or a drafting project that neglected the
environment it proposed to transform. For the sake of the environment and people
of North America, this is how the Alliance – as a feasible solution to water shortages
should remain. –
23 Ralph Pentland and Adele Hurley, ‘Thirsty Neighbours: A Century of Canada‐US Transboundary
Water Governance’ in Bakker, Karen, ed. Eau Canada: The Fut ’s Water. UBC Press, 2007, 166
ure of Canada. 24 Quinn, Water Diversion, Export and CanadaUS Relations (note 4), 14.
- 129 -
Bibliography GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS Basford, Ron. “Water Resources – Sale of Canadian Water.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates.
27th Parliament, 1st Session. Vol. VII (June 28, 1966) pp. 6995‐6997. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
erger, Justice Thomas R. 1977. Ministry of Supply and Services Canada. Northern Frontier, BNorthern Homeland. Ottawa, Ontario.
Canada. “United States Conference on Water for Peace.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 27th
Parliament., 1st Session. Vol. VIII (September 6, 1966) pp. 8056‐8057. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
Davis, Jack. “Canadian Water Resources.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th Parliament.
2nd Session. Vol. III (May 4, 1964) pp. 2891‐2907. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1964.
Davis, Jack. “Export Licences for Primary Products.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 27th
Parliament. 1st Session. Vol. VI (May 27, 1966) pp. 5842‐5849. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
Douglas, Thomas C. “Canadian Water Resources.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th
Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. III (May 4, 1964) pp. 2891‐2907. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1964.
Fulton, E. Davie. “Supply – Mines and Technical Surveys.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates.
27th Parliament., 1st Session. Vol. II (March 3, 1966) pp. 2108‐2115. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
Herridge, Herbert W. “Great Lakes Water Levels.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th
Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. VIII (October 2, 1964) pp. 8681‐8685. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1964.
Herridge, Herbert W. “Criminal Code.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th Parliament. 2nd
Session. Vol. X (December 11, 1964) pp. 11066‐11067. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1964.
Herridge, Herbert W. “The Address ‐ Mr. Herridge.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 27th
Parliament., 1st Session. Vol. I (January 31, 1966) pp. 460‐467. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
Herridge, Herbert W. “Water Resources – Participation by Canada in ‘Water for Peace’
Conference.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 27th Parliament. 1st Session. Vol. XIV (April 15278‐15281. Ottawa: Canad24, 1967) pp. ian Government Publishing, 1967.
Johansen, David. Water Exports and the NAFTA. March 8, 1999. Library of Parliament.
Queen’s Printer: Ottawa, Ontario.
- 130 -
Laing, Hon. Arthur. “Water Resources. Consideration of Canadian Requirements in Sales to
U.S.” In Canada. Parliament. Debates. 26th Parliament. 2nd Session. Vol. VII (September 2, 1964) pp. 7575‐7576. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1964.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, C.O.P.
CA.R. 64, “Water ‐ The Ultimate Resource: An Address by the Honourable Arthur Laing, Minister of Northern Affairs and National Resources, at a luncheon of the Pacific Northwest Trade Association, Portland, Oregon, April 12, 1965.” Ottawa: Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, 1965. Pp. 1‐12.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Water Management and Pollution by Hon. Jean‐Luc Pepin, Statement to the Conservation Council of Ontario,” Box 3, #71‐28 – May 26, 1966. Pp. 1‐17.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Water – Our Greatest Resource by Jack Davis, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Water System Manufacturers’ Association,” Box 3, #71‐28 – June 1, 1966. Pp. 1‐9.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Hydro Power and the Future by Jack Davis, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mines and Technical Surveys, delivered at the Annual Summer Meeting of the Canadian Construction Association.” Box 3, #71‐28 – June 27, 1966. Pp. 1‐10.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Statement by the Honourable Jean‐Luc Pepin, Minister of Mines and technical Surveys, Prepared for a panel discussion on ‘WATER RESOURCES – A COVETED ASSET, NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL’ at the Canadian Bar Association Convention, Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Box 3, #71‐28 – September 1, 1966. Pp. 1‐9.
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21,
Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Resource Development: The Key to Canada’s Future by Jack Davis, M.P., Delivered at the Luncheon Meeting of the Rotary Club of Vancouver.” Box 3, #71‐28. December 6, 1966. Pp. 1‐11.
Library and Archives Canada, Policy and Planning Branch, Water Sector fonds, RG 89 505
B205, “Environmental Management: A Staff Study of the Constitutional Review Section of the Government of Canada” Book C ‐‐ MacNeill, J.W., 1970. Pg. 45‐52, 66, 151‐155. In‐box folder ID 5090‐1; I through XII.
- 131 -
Library and Archives Canada, Department of Energy, Mines, and Resources fonds, RG 21, Accession 1990‐91/030, FA 21‐15, Communications Branch ‐ Press Releases and Speeches, 1950‐1987, “Statement by the Honourable J.J. Greene to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works” Box 6, #71‐28 – May 11, 1971. Pp. 1‐30.
Pepin, Hon. Jean‐Luc. “Water Resources – Sale of Canadian Water.” In Canada. Parliament.
Debates. 27th Parliament, 1st Session. Vol. VII (June 28, 1966) pp. 6995‐6997. Ottawa: Canadian Government Publishing, 1966.
Quinn, Frank J. Ministry of the Environment. Inland Waters Directorate. Water Planning and
Management Branch. 1973. AreaofOrigin Protectionism in Western Waters. Queen’s awa, Ontario. Printer: Ott
Quinn, Frank J. Water Diversion, Export and CanadaUS Relations: A Brief History. Paper
presented to the Program on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Toronto. August 2007. PRelations, University of p. 1‐17.
cience Council of Canada. Annual Report 19771978. 1978. Minister of Supply and Services S
Canada: Ottawa, Ontario. cott, Anthony, Joe Olynyk and Steven Renzetti. Inquiry on Federal Water Policy. Research
. S
Paper #7. March, 1985. The Economics of Water Export Policy. Ottawa, Canada Sewell, W.R.D. Water Resources Research in Canada. Special Study No. 5, Science
Secretariat. 1968. The Contribution of Social Science Research to Water Resource Management in Canada. Pp. 117‐140. Ottawa, Ontario: Queen’s Printer.
Sewell, W.R.D. ‘Inter‐basin Water Diversions: Canadian Experiences and Perspectives’ in
Golubev, Genady N. and Asit K. Biswas, eds. Large Scale Water Transfers: Emerging Environmental and Social Experiences. 1985. United Nations Environmental Programme. Tycolly Publishing: Oxford, England.
University of British Columbia. April, 1966. Community and Regional Planning Studies.
Student Project 6. NAWAPA: An Impetus to Regional Development in British Columbia. Vancouver, B.C.
United States Census Bureau. Historical National Population Estimates: July 1, 1900 to July 1,
1999. Accessed July 23, 2009. <http://www.census.gov/popest/archives/1990s/ popclockest.txt>.
United States Census Bureau. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United
States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008. Accessed July 23, 2009. <http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST‐EST2008‐01.xls>.
United States Geological Survey. MacKichan, K.A. and J.C. Kammerer, eds. Circular 456.
Estimated Use of Water in the United States, 1960. 1961. U.S. Department of the Interior. Washington, D.C.
- 132 -
United States Geological Survey. Hutson, Susan S., Nancy L. Barber, Joan F. Kenny, Kristin S. Linsey, Deborah S. Lumia, and Molly A. Maupin, eds. Circular 1268. Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000. 2004. U.S. Department of the Interior. Reston, Virginia.
United States Senate. Committee on Public Works. January, 1966. Special Subcommittee on
Western Water Development. A Summary of Water Resource Projects, Plans, and Studies Relating to the Western and Midwestern United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS AND SPEECHES American Association for the Advancement of Science. McGinnies, William G. and Bram J.
Goldman, eds. 1969. Arid Lands in Perspective: Including AAS Papers on Water rtation Into Arid Lands. University of Arizona Press. TImpo ucson, Arizona.
anada. Resources for Tomorrow Conference, Montreal, Quebec. October 23‐28, 1961. Vol. 1 –
erence Background Papers. Queen’s Printer: Ottawa, OC
Conf ntario. anada. Resources for Tomorrow Conference, Montreal, Quebec. October 23‐28, 1961. Vol 3 –
Ottawa, Ontario. C
Proceedings of the Conference. Queen’s Printer: anadian Water Resources Association. June, 1973. 25th Anniversary Conference. Winnipeg, CManitoba.
anadian Water Resources Association. Windsor, J.E., ed. May 7‐8, 1992. Water Export – CShould Canada’s Water Be For Sale? Vancouver, British Columbia.
he Conservation Foundation. Darling, F. Fraser and John P. Milton, eds. April, 1965. Future
of North America. The Natural History Press. GardenT
Environments City, New York. egget, Robert F. Resources for Tomorrow: The Engineer’s Stewardship. The Sixth Wallberg
cation Hall. February 10, 1953. Universit tario. L
Lecture: Convo y of Toronto: Toronto, On acDonald, Glen. Address to the President’s Plenary Session. American Association of
vada. March 22, 2009. M
Geographers Annual General Meeting. Las Vegas, Ne ational Resource Conference. Sadler, Barry, ed. 1982. Water Policy for Western Canada:
algary, Alberta. N
The Issue of the Eighties. University of Calgary Press. C ntario Water Resources Association. June 12‐14, 1984. Future’s in Water: Proceedings of
e. Toronto, Ontario. O
the Ontario Water Resources Association Conferenc Royal Society of Canada. Dolman, Claude E., ed. 1967. Water Resources of Canada. Symposia
Presented to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966. University of Toronto Press. JOURNAL ARTICLES Biro, Andrew. ‘Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debate over Canadian Water Exports.’
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism; December, 2002. Vol. 13, No. 4. Pp. 29‐50.
- 133 -
ronon, William. ‘Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson
57‐176. C
Turner’ in The Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 18, No. 2. April, 1987. Pp. 1 scobar, Arturo. ‘After Nature: Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’ in Current EAnthropology. Vol. 40, No. 1. February 1999. Pp. 1‐15.
arish, Matthew and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. ‘High modernism in the Arctic: Planning FFrobisher Bay and Inuvik’ in Journal of Historical Geography. Vol. 35. 2009. Pp. 517–544.
einmiller, B. Timothy. ‘Harmonization through Emulation: Canadian Federalism and Water
inter 2003. Vol. 46, N 3. H
Export Policy.’ Canadian Public Administration; W o. 4. Pp. 495‐51 ofstadter, Richard. ‘Turner and the Frontier Myth.’ The American Scholar; Vol. 18, No. 4. HAutumn 1949. Pp. 433‐445.
inton, Jamie. ‘The Social Nature of Natural Resources – the Case of Water.’ Reconstruction. LVol. 6, No. 3. Summer 2006. Online Journal.
cNaughton, Gen. A.G.L. ‘The Proposed Columbia River Treaty’ in International Journal; Vol. M18, No. 2. Spring 1963. Pp. 148‐165.
almer, A.E. ‘The Problem: Transfer of Water?’ Reclamation; September, 1966. Vol. VI, No. 2. PPp. 1‐2.
almer, A.E. ‘U.S. Senator Pleads for NAWAPA Study.’ Reclamation; September, 1966. Vol. VI, PNo. 2. Pg. 3.
Powell, Richard C. ‘Science, Sovereignty and Nation: Canada and the legacy of the
International Geophysical Year, 1957‐1958’ in Journal of Historical Geography. Vol. 34. 2008. Pp. 618–638.
otstein, Abraham. ‘Canada: The New Nationalism’ in Foreign Affairs; October 1976. Pp. 97‐R118.
oper, Kate. ‘Representing Nature.’ Capitalism, Nature, Socialism; December, 1998. Vol. 9, SNo. 4. Pp. 61‐65.
ewell, W.R.D. ‘Pipedream or Practical Possibility?’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 1967. SVol. 23. Pp. 9‐13.
ewell, W.R.D. ‘Water Across the American Continent.’ The Geographical Magazine; June, 1974. Vol. XLVI, No. 9. Pp. 472‐480.
S
BOOKS AND BOOK C nderson, Terry L., ed. Continental Water Marketing. 1994. Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy: San Francisco, California.
HAPTERS
A
- 134 -
Barlow, Maude. Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to 007. McClelland and Stewart Ltd.: Water. 2 Toronto, Ontario.
Beck, Ulrich. Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk. 1995. Polity Press. Cambridge, England. Biro, Andrew. ‘Half‐Empty of Half‐Full? Water Politics and the Canadian National Imaginary’
in Bakker, Karen, ed. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water. 2007. UBC Press: . Pp. 321‐334 Vancouver, BC
ocking, Richard. Canada's Water: For Sale? 1972. James Lewis & Samuel Publishing.
io. B
Toronto, Ontar
Remaking Society. 19 Bookchin, Murray. 89. Black Rose Books: New York, New York. ourassa, Robert. Power from the North. 1985. Prentice‐Hall Canada Inc. Scarborough, BOntario.
ryan, Rorke. Much is Taken, Much Remains: Canadian Issues in Environmental Conservation. B1973. Duxbury Press. North Scituate, Massachusetts.
Castree, Noel and Bruce Braun. ‘Construction of Nature and Nature of Construction:
Analytical and Political Tools for Building Survivable Futures’ in Braun, Bruce and Noel Castree, eds. Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium. 1998. Routledge: London, England. Pp. 3‐42.
Castree, Noel. 'Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics' in Noel Castree and Bruce
Braun, eds. Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. 2001. Blackwell Publishing. gland. Oxford, En Pp. 1‐22.
re. 2005. Routledge. London, England. Castree, Noel. Natu ommoner, Barry. The Poverty of Power: Energy and Economic Crisis. 1976. Alfred A. Knopf:
ork, New York. C
New Y
an Needs and Resources. 1971. Harvest Ho Cram, J.S. Water: Canadi use. Montreal, Quebec. ronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. 1991. W.W. Norton and CCompany: New York, New York.
Cronon, William. ‘The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature’ in
Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. 1995. W.W. Norton & Co.: New York, New York. Pp. 69‐90.
Creighton, Donald. ‘Alternatives to the Frontier Thesis’ in Cross, Michael S., ed. The Frontier
Thesis and the Canadas: The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment. 1970. Pp. 39‐42. Copp Clark Publishing Company: Toronto, Ontario.
Cross, Michael S. ‘Introduction’ in Cross, Michael S., ed. The Frontier Thesis and the Canadas:
The Debate on the Impact of the Canadian Environment. 1970. Copp Clark Publishing Company: Toronto, Ontario. Pp. 1‐7.
- 135 -
Dalby, Simon. ‘Threats from the South? Geopolitics, Equity, and Environmental Security’ in
Deudney, Daniel H., ed. Contested Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics. 1999. State University of New York Press: Albany, New York. Pp. 155‐185.
Deudney, Daniel H. ‘Environmental Security: A Critique’ in Deudney, Daniel H., ed. Contested
Grounds: Security and Conflict in the New Environmental Politics.1999. State University of ss: AlbNew York Pre any, New York. Pp. 187‐219.
ter. 1999. Stoddart Publishing. Toronto, Ontario. de Villiers, Marq. Wa iefenbaker, John G. One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker. Vol
illan of Canada: ToronD
II. 1976. Macm to, Ontario.
ght. 2000. Routledge: New York, New Dobson, Andrew. Green Political Thou York. oster, Harold D. and W.R.D. Sewell. Water: The Emerging Crisis in Canada. 1981. James
mpany. Toronto, Ontario. F
Lorimer & Co oucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 19771978.
e MacMillan. Hampshire, England. F
2007. Palgrav lennon, Robert. Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh
. Island Press: Washington, D.C. G
Waters. 2002 lennon, Robert. Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to do About it. 2009. Island
ton, D.C. G
Press: Washing oldman, Michael. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the
tion. 2005. Yale UnivGAge of Globaliza ersity Press: New Haven, Connecticut.
E. Green Political Theory. 1 Goodin, Robert 992. Polity Press: Cambridge, England. raber, Linda. Wilderness as Sacred Space. 1976. American Association of Geographers.
, D.C. G
Washington rant, George. Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America. 1969. House of GAnansi Press: Toronto, Ontario.
Hardin, Garret. ‘To Trouble a Star: The Cost of Intervention in Nature,’ in Roelofs, Robert,
Joseph Crowley and Donald Hardesty, eds. Environment and Society: A Book of Readings on Environmental Policy, Attitudes, and Values. 1974. Prentice‐Hall Inc. Englewood Cliffs,
. New Jersey
arvey, David. Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. 1996. Blackwell Publishing: sachusetts.
HMalden, Mas
Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation
Movement, 18901920. 1959. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 136 -
Higgins, Laratt. ‘The Alienation of Canadian Resources: The Case of the Columbia River
Treaty’ in Lumsden, Ian, ed. Close the 49th Parallel: The Americanization of Canada. 1970. oronto Press: Toronto, Ontario. Pp. 223‐240. University of T
olm, Wendy, ed. Water and Free Trade: The Mulroney Government's Agenda for Canada's
esource. 1988. J.H
Most Precious R Lorimer: Toronto, Ontario.
, Max. Eclipse of Reason. 1987. Continuum. New York, New York. Horkheimer ay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of JSocial Research, 19231950. 1973. Little and Brown: Boston, Massachusetts.
Katz, Cindi. ‘Whose Nature, Whose Culture? Private Productions of Space and the
“Preservation” of Nature’ in Bruan, Bruce and Noel Castree, eds. Remaking Reality: e Millennium. 1998. Routledge: London, Englad. PpNature at th . 46‐63.
uehls, Thom. Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics. 1996. Borderlines, Vol.
ty of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, Minnesota. K
4. Universi yba, Patrick. Alvin: A Biography of the Honourable Alvin Hamilton, P.C. 1989. Canadian
wan. K
Plains Research Center, University of Regina: Regina, Saskatche Landsberg, Hans H., Leonard L. Fischman, and Joseph L. Fisher, eds. Resources in America’s
Future: Patterns of Requirements and Availabilities 19602000. 1963. Resources for the Future Inc. Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore, Maryland.
Lasserre, Frederic. ‘Drawers of Water: Water Diversions in Canada and Beyond’ in Bakker,
Karen, ed. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water. 2007. UBC Press: Vancouver, BC. Pp. 143‐162.
atour, Bruno. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. 2004. Harvard
Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. L
University axer, James. The Energy Poker Game: The Politics of the Continental Resource Deal. 1970.
Toronto, Ontario. L
New Press.
The Domination of Nature. 1972. George Braziller: Ne ork. Leiss, William. w York, New Y Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. 1969. Oxford
London, England. University Press:
imerick, Patricia N. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. 1987. LW.W. Norton & Company: New York, New York.
Lloyd, Trevor. ‘A Water Resource Policy for Canada’ in Nelson, J.G. and M.J. Chambers, eds.
Water: Process and Method in Canadian Geography. 1969. Methuen: Toronto, Ontario. Pp. 285‐293.
- 137 -
Loo, Tina. States of Nature: Conserving Canada's Wildlife in the Twentieth Century. 2006. UBC Press. Vancouver, B.C.
Lowenthal, David. ‘The Place of the Past in the American Landscape’ in Lowenthal, David
and Martyn Bowden, eds. Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honour of John K. Wright. 1976. Oxford University Press: New York, New York. Pp. 89‐117.
assey, Vincent. On Being Canadian. 1948. J.M. Dent and Sons (Canada) Limited: Toronto, MOntario.
itchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, TechnoPolitics, Modernity. 2002. University of
ress: Los Angeles, California. M
California P organ, Nigel. The Case for a Canadian Water Policy. 1966. Progress Books. Toronto, MOntario.
urphy, Earl Finbar. Water Purity: A Study in Legal Control of Natural Resources. 1961.
onsin Press: MadM
University of Wisc ison, Wisconsin.
nbar. Governing Murphy, Earl Fi Nature. 1967. Quadrangle Books. Chicago, Illinois. oss, Frank E. The Water Crisis. 1967. Frederick A. Praeger Publishers. New York, New MYork.
aess, Arne. Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. 1991. Cambridge
N
University Press: Cambridge, England. Ophuls, William and A. Stephen Boyan, Jr. Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited: The
Unravelling of the American Dream. 1992. W.H. Freeman and Company. New York, New York.
Pentland, Ralph and Adele Hurley. ‘Thirsty Neighbours: A Century of Canada‐US
Transboundary Water Governance’ in Bakker, Karen, ed. Eau Canada: The Future of ater. 2007. UBC Press: Vancouver, BC. Pp. 163‐182. Canada’s W
eisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. 1986. Viking
, New York. R
Press: New York obbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capital Transformation of the American West.
of Kansas Press: Lawrence, Kansas. R
1994. University Rolston III, Holmes. Philosophy Gone Wild: Essays in Environmental Ethics. 1986. Prometheus
Books, Buff cott, James C. Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
1998. Yale University Press. New Haven, Connecti
alo, New York.
SHave Failed. cut.
Shiva, Vandana. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. 2002. South End Press:
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 138 -
mith, Neil. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. 1984. SUniversity of Georgia Press. Athens, Georgia.
Smith, Neil. ‘The Production of Nature’ in Robertson, George, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner,
Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. utledge: New Yo1996. Ro rk, New York. Pp. 35‐54.
Soper, Kate. What is Nature? 1995. Blackwell Publishing. Oxford, England. Soper, Kate. “Nature/‘nature’” in Robertson, George, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird,
Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam, eds. FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture. 1996. Routledge: New York, New York. Pp. 22‐34.
Sprague, John B. ‘Great Wet North? Canada’s Myth of Water Abundance’ in Bakker, Karen,
ed. Eau Canada: The Future of Canada’s Water. 2007. UBC Press: Vancouver, BC. Pp. 23‐36.
wyngedouw, Erik. Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power. 2004.
iversity Press: New York, New York. S
Oxford Un ykes, Philip. Sellout: The Giveaway of Canada’s Energy Resources. 1973. Hurtig Publishers: SEdmonton, Alberta.
urner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 2008.
ks. Great Ideas Series, NoT
Penguin Boo . 52: London, England.
an Without a Country. 2005. Seven Stories Press: New . Vonnegut, Kurt. A M York, New York aterfield, Donald. Continental Waterboy: The Columbia River Controversy. 1970. Clarke,
ny Limited: Toronto, OW
Irwin and Compa ntario.
d. Marxism and Literature. 1977. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Williams, Raymon orster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West.
Press: New York, New York. W
1985. Oxford University orster, Donald. The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological WImagination. 1993. Oxford University Press: New York, New York.
Worster, Donald. ‘Two Faces West: The Development Myth in Canada and the United States’
in Hirt, Paul W., ed. Terra Pacifica: People and Place in the Northwest States and Western Canada. 1998. Washington State University Press: Pullman, Washington. Pp. 71‐90.
Worster, Donald. ‘Wild, Tame, and Free: Comparing Canadian and U.S. Views of Nature’ in
Findlay, John M. and Ken S. Coates, eds. Parallel Destinies: CanadianAmerican Relations he Rockies. 2002. UniversiWest of t ty of Washington Press: Seattle, Washington.
right, Jim. The Coming Water Famine. 1963. Coward‐McCann Inc: New York, New York. W
- 139 -
Zimmermann, Erich W. World Resources and Industries: A Functional Appraisal of the Availability of Agricultural and Industrial Materials. Revised Edition. 1951. Harper & Brothers Publishers: New York, New York.
DIVERSION PROPOSALS AND REPORTS Alberta. Department of Agriculture. December, 1968. Water Resources Division. Water
Diversion proposals of North America. (Prepared for the Canadian Council of Resource berta. Ministers). Edmonton, Al
arsons, Ralph M., Co. 1964. NAWAPA: North American Water and Power Alliance. Brochure No. 606‐2934‐19. Los Angeles.
P
MAGAZINES, NEWS
NAWAPA Promotion Stirs N known.
PAPERS, AND WEBSITES American Statesman. ational Interest. Un
ater in North. October 3, 1966. American Statesman. Experts Eye W
. Calgary Albertan. October 7, 1965
1965. Calgary Herald. October 4, hristian Science Monitor. Conservationists Look Again at California’s Big Water Project. CMarch 8, 1963.
am the Dams Campaign. The Water Plot. 1965. Dam the Dams Campaign: Thunder Bay, DOntario.
ent Star‐News. How to Make a Desert Bloom , 1964. Pasadena Independ . September 13
ournal. Manitoba Has Hopes for pril 23, 1968. Edmonton J its Cool, Clear Gold. A
PA: Watering a Continent. Febr Newsweek. NAWA uary 22, 1965.
er. October 23, 1966. New York Times. Canada to Press Study of Wat
APA Oregon State University. Campana, Michael E. Canadian Water Exports: Will NAWReturn? January 25, 2008. Accessed August 5, 2009.
c.typepad.com/waterwired/2 to‐cana.html>.< http://aquado 008/01/kennedy‐ Ottawa Citizen. ‘Canada ower Engineering. Can We Use Water and Power from Alaska? It’s Costly, but Feasible.
Comes First – Greene.’ January 16, 1970.
PJanuary, 1967.
1, 1965. Public Utilities Fortnightly. Importing Water from Canada. November 1 San Jose State University Department of Economics. Watkins, Thayer. The North American Water and Power Alliance. Accessed August 5, 2009.
- 140 -
<http://www.applet‐magic.com/NAWAPA.htm>. un Belt Water Inc. Water – The World Looks to Canada. Accessed August 5, 2009.
nbeltwater.com/>. S
<http://www.su Toronto Daily Star. A Res oronto Globe and Mail. U.S. Proposal to Share Canada’s Water Evokes Anger, but Need May
, 1965.
ource Pool with the U.S. Wouldn’t be a Sellout. December 11, 1969.
TBring it About. July 23
Scheme to Divert Canadian Water Assailed. y 25, 1966. Toronto Globe and Mail. Februar
ail. Clean U.S. Water First Step – Udall Toronto Globe and M . June 24, 1966.
all Street Journal. Policy Riddle: Ecology vs. the Economy. February 2, 1970. W