[tharkun__]

The pull seems to have been to get Canada to either sell their own water or even bring down water all the way from Alaska.

I tried to find it quickly but can't. I seem to remember hearing on the radio about some 100 year contract to sell water cheaply from BC or Alberta to CA. So potentially it's one of those scrapped plans or maybe they figured how bad the plan was just buried it. I can easily find propaganda trying to co Vince us that Canada has so much water and that it magically renews itself that it would be stupid not to sell it. Over and over.

Which is in stark contrast to my experience here. We have had less and less snow in recent years. We've had rivers running lower. We've had watering bans and lawns looking like we are in Arizona (yes, an exeggeration to make a point) more often in recent years. This year is an exception with more normal sun/rain cycles returning after a really dry spring (lawns recovered - who cares - some crops not so much, other are doing much better than in recent years)

[SllX]

Not sure if this is still the case under USMCA, but as I recall, Canadians have been very against selling water into the US because under NAFTA once they started, they couldn’t stop. Well, whether that was ever true or not, that was the reason I heard cited.

[dehrmann]

This doesn't sound right. The pipeline would be longer than the Alaska Pipeline, but carry a commodity that retails for 3 2-3 cents per gallon, not $3.50.

[tablespoon]

> This doesn't sound right. The pipeline would be longer than the Alaska Pipeline, but carry a commodity that retails for 3 2-3 cents per gallon, not $3.50.

That's a gasoline price, but don't they typically pump crude through pipelines? So more like $1.50 a gallon, based on my calculations.

I suppose if they built such a pipeline, they'd have to charge a lot more than 2-3 a gallon for the water. Though as a project, it seems less ambitious than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran....

Edit: I wonder if this was the (defunct) North American plan that was being referred to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power....

[dehrmann]

You're right on the price, but I compared retail to retail since there isn't really something like a barrel of crude water.

[tharkun__]

I didn't know before trying to find online sources for what I remember hearing on the radio. But apparently there were/are some pretty crazy schemes people thought up out there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Pow...

(this is old stuff, what I remember from the radio was pre-pandemic drive to the office radio reporting of recent events at the time)

[ashtonkem]

How much of the cost of an oil pipeline is tied up in fighting opposition to it getting made and mitigation against the catastrophic effects of leaking oil? Surely a water pipeline would be cheaper to build, given the lower risks involved and the obvious benefits to everyone living near its path.