I'll research this topic for you. Let me search for both historical proposals and more recent ideas on bulk water transfers from Western Canada to the US.
I have rich material. Let me do one more targeted search on recent (2024-2026) Trump-era discussions and any Alberta-specific proposals to round out the answer.
I have enough material to write a comprehensive response. Let me compose it now.
Ideas and Past Proposals to Transfer Water from Western Canada to the US
Proposals to move water south from Western Canada span more than 60 years, ranging from continental-scale engineering schemes to commercial tanker exports, with renewed political attention under the Trump administration in 2025–26. Below is a synthesis of the major ones, roughly chronological.
The continental megaprojects (1950s–1970s)
NAWAPA (North American Water and Power Alliance) — 1964
The most ambitious proposal ever conceived. Developed by the Ralph M. Parsons Company in California, with roots in 1950s US Army Corps of Engineers studies, NAWAPA envisioned diverting water from the Yukon, Liard, Peace, Fraser, Skeena, and Columbia rivers into a 500-mile-long reservoir flooding the Rocky Mountain Trench along the BC–Alberta border (Wikipedia – NAWAPA, California Water Library brochure). Water would enter the US in northern Montana, be pumped over the Rockies via the "Sawtooth Lifts" in Idaho, and feed the Colorado, Missouri–Mississippi, Rio Grande, and the depleted Ogallala Aquifer. The plan called for 240 dams, 112 diversions, 17 aqueducts, up to six nuclear plants for pumping, and a "Transcontinental Canal" linking Alberta to Lake Superior. Parsons even floated using peaceful nuclear explosions to excavate trenches. Total delivery: ~158 million acre-feet/year. The Corps studied it through the 1960s but it was never formally adopted.
Central North American Water Project (CeNAWP) — 1968
Proposed by Roy Tinney of the Washington State Resource Centre as a less extreme alternative to NAWAPA: canals and pumping stations linking western Canadian waters through Great Bear, Great Slave, Athabasca, and Winnipeg lakes to the Great Lakes.
Kuiper Diversion Scheme — 1966
Professor E. Kuiper (University of Manitoba) proposed diverting the Mackenzie River across the Prairies along a similar route to CeNAWP.
Western States Water Augmentation Concept (WSWAC) — 1968
L.G. Smith's two-part plan: (1) divert the Liard south to the Rocky Mountain Trench, then through tunnels into the Fraser, Columbia, and Kootenay to the US; (2) move Smoky, Athabasca, and Saskatchewan river water through the Qu'Appelle to Lake Winnipeg and south.
Magnum Diversion Scheme — late 1960s
L. Magnusson's plan to divert the Peace through the Athabasca, North Saskatchewan, Battle, South Saskatchewan, and Qu'Appelle systems into the Souris (which flows south into North Dakota).
Saskatchewan-Nelson Basin study — 1972
A nine-volume report from the Prairie Provinces Water Board outlining 23 diversion and 55 dam projects. Officially framed as serving western Canadian needs, critics argued its real purpose was US export.
North Thompson Reservoir Project
Proposed by US firm K.V.A. Resources and William Clancy's Multinational Power and Water: 1 million acre-feet/year from BC's North Thompson into the Columbia drainage, ultimately to Shasta Lake in California.
GRAND Canal — 1959, revived 1985
Newfoundland engineer Thomas Kierans proposed damming James Bay to create a giant freshwater lake, then pumping 20% south through the Great Lakes and onward to dry regions of Canada and the US, including potentially the Ogallala Aquifer. Estimated C$100 billion to build, C$1 billion/year to operate. Failed environmental assessment but periodically resurfaces.
Commercial tanker and pipeline proposals (1980s–1990s)
BC export licences (mid-1980s–1990s): British Columbia issued licences to seven companies totaling ~44,626 acre-feet/year, mostly for tanker export.
Snowcap Waters / Sun Belt Water Inc. (1990–1999): A California firm partnered with BC's Snowcap to ship water by tanker to drought-stricken California. After BC imposed a moratorium, Sun Belt filed a NAFTA Chapter 11 notice seeking US$10.5 billion, arguing water was a tradable commodity under CUFTA/NAFTA. No arbitration ultimately proceeded but the case became the defining cautionary tale (CBC News, Public Citizen analysis).
These efforts triggered the 1999 federal moratorium on bulk water exports and provincial bans (BC's 1985 Water Protection Act and later the federal Transboundary Waters Protection Act) (Minnesota Journal of International Law, Colorado Environmental Law Journal).
Modern revivals and adjacent infrastructure
Site C dam (BC, completed 2024): Critics including agronomist Wendy Holm have argued Site C's location on the Peace River makes it "exactly where it needs to be" to enable NAWAPA-style transfers east across Alberta and the Prairies toward Texas and the US Southwest — a long-game bulk-export thesis BC Hydro disputes.
Frontier Centre for Public Policy (2019): A "tidewater" policy paper from the Prairie think tank revisited the case for treating Canadian water as an exportable continental resource.
Alberta Water Act amendments (2025–26): Alberta merged the Peace, Slave, and Athabasca into a single basin and, for the first time, permitted "lower-risk" interbasin transfers by ministerial order rather than requiring a special act of the legislature. Critics note this loosens a long-standing barrier that had foreclosed export-style diversions.
Trump's "giant faucet" claims (2024–2025): President Trump repeatedly asserted there is a "very large faucet" in British Columbia that could be turned to send Canadian water to drought-stricken Southern California. Fact-checkers, BC officials, and the US Army Corps confirmed no such infrastructure exists, but the rhetoric — paired with US moves around the Columbia River Treaty — has revived Canadian anxieties about bulk export pressure (Washington Post fact-check, NYT on the Columbia River Treaty, The Tyee).
Columbia River Treaty (1961/1964, renegotiation 2024–25): Not a diversion proposal per se, but the only operational large-scale managed cross-border water arrangement involving Western Canada. Its modernized terms reduce BC's hydro-related downstream obligations by ~25%, and the Trump administration's pause on ratification has reopened debate about leveraging Canadian water for US benefit (Government of Canada, NYT).
Where things stand
Despite recurring interest, no large-scale Western Canada–to–US bulk water transfer has ever been built. Federal and provincial moratoria, Indigenous rights, treaty obligations, environmental impact, and sheer cost (NAWAPA was projected at US$300 billion in 1990s dollars) have kept every megaproject on the shelf. The active fronts today are (1) the Columbia River Treaty renegotiation, (2) Alberta's loosened interbasin transfer rules, (3) ongoing small-scale bottled/tankered exports, and (4) political signaling from Washington that periodically resurrects the underlying idea (Broadview, The Tyee).
If you'd like, I can go deeper on any single proposal (e.g., NAWAPA's hydrology assumptions, the Sun Belt NAFTA case, or the implications of Alberta's recent Water Act changes for Red Deer / South Saskatchewan basin flows).
With the Western US drying out, I sense many eyes looking north...
You're reading the signal correctly. The pressure differential is real and growing, and the political economy that kept these proposals dormant for 50 years is visibly weakening on several fronts at once. Let me search for the most current evidence of who is "looking north" and how seriously.
Your instinct is sound — and the evidence shows the gravitational pull northward is intensifying right now, not theoretically. Here's what the gradient looks like in May 2026.
The pressure has gone from chronic to acute
The Colorado River system is no longer drifting toward crisis; it is inside one. As of February 2026, the seven basin states missed their federal deadline to agree on post-2026 operations, and Reclamation announced it would move forward unilaterally with a draft EIS. Lake Powell sits about 8 feet above minimum power pool, with hydropower cessation possible by December 2026 (Drought.gov, Climate Adaptation Center). The May 2026 Lower Basin bridge deal commits Arizona to a 27% cut of its Colorado allocation — roughly 10% of the state's total annual water use. That is the kind of number that changes political math.
Meanwhile the Ogallala continues its long decline across the High Plains, and 100% of the Colorado Basin was in drought as of late summer 2025. When senior water rights start getting curtailed in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Imperial Valley, the political tolerance for "the water is wasting into the sea up north" rhetoric goes up sharply.
The barriers that held for 50 years are softening
Three of the four pillars that kept the megaprojects shelved have cracks:
Federal moratorium architecture. Canada's 1999 federal ban and the Transboundary Waters Protection Act still stand — but Alberta's 2026 Water Act amendments now allow "lower-risk" interbasin diversions by ministerial order rather than a special act of the legislature (CBC Calgary). That removes a major procedural barrier inside the province most ideologically inclined to monetize water.
Trade-law shield. NAFTA Chapter 11 is gone, replaced by CUSMA, which most lawyers read as offering Canada stronger ground to refuse bulk export — but that hasn't been tested, and a future US administration could reopen the trade frame as leverage.
The political "third rail" status of water export. This is the pillar most visibly weakening. Trump's repeated "giant faucet in British Columbia" framing (Washington Post), the July 2025 US walk-away from the modernized Columbia River Treaty (NYT), and pieces like Phys.org's January 2025 analysis "Climate change is fueling Trump's desire to tap into Canada's water" have moved the conversation from think-tank fringe to White House podium. The Tyee's coverage frames it as an "obsession" (The Tyee).
Engineering feasibility. This pillar actually got stronger on the export side: Site C is now operational, and critics like Wendy Holm have long argued it sits "exactly where it needs to be" for NAWAPA-style continental transfers east of the Rockies (Watershed Sentinel).
What the eyes looking north are actually looking at
From a watershed-management perspective, the realistic vectors aren't NAWAPA 2.0 — that remains politically and physically improbable. The more plausible pressure points are, roughly in order of likelihood:
Columbia River Treaty leverage. The US already gets Canadian-stored water; the live question is how much, on what terms, and whether ratification of the modernized treaty becomes a bargaining chip for broader "water cooperation" language. This is the most likely actual battleground.
Incremental commercial exports — tanker, bottled, and small pipeline — reopening through provincial discretion, especially if Alberta's new interbasin rules get tested.
Aquifer-recharge framing. Politically easier to sell than "selling water" — pitched as restoring the Ogallala or stabilizing Lake Mead rather than as export. The original NAWAPA brochure used exactly this language (California Water Library).
Sub-basin transfers in the Saskatchewan-Nelson and Milk/St. Mary systems, where transboundary infrastructure already exists and modifications are less visible than a Rocky Mountain Trench reservoir.
Indirect transfer via electricity and food. "Virtual water" embedded in Canadian hydropower exports and irrigated Prairie agriculture is already flowing south at scale and avoids the political symbolism of pipes.
The Central Alberta angle
The piece worth watching closely from where you sit is the South Saskatchewan / Red Deer / Bow basin envelope under Alberta's amended Water Act. The province has now formally opened the door — narrowly, with environmental conditions — to interbasin moves that were previously legislatively gated (Alberta.ca, CBC). The South Saskatchewan basin is already fully allocated and stressed. Any "lower-risk" ministerial transfer from the Peace-Slave-Athabasca system into the southern basins would, in effect, be infrastructure-compatible with onward delivery to the Milk River and the US — even if that's not the stated intent. The legal and physical preconditions are quietly being assembled.
Whether anyone in Edmonton or Washington intends to walk through that door is a separate question from whether the door is now open. Your instinct that "many eyes are looking north" is well-calibrated; the people most worth watching are not the ones giving speeches, but the ones quietly rewriting the procedural rules.
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