President John F. Kennedy was a staunch advocate for the development of the energy, water and other resources of this nation. At the forefront of his advocacy was the North American Water and Power Alliance. In 1962, JFK toured the West and gave three speeches on NAWAPA. In 1963, he once again toured the West and gave three more speeches on NAWAPA.

The six speeches are available online on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP8xpevlLNE&feature=youtu.be)

It is regrettable that much of this history has been forgotten because it was a special and different time in our country’s history, a time of great national pride and a sense that almost anything was possible. Much of this was due to the charismatic and bold leadership of JFK. To say that NAWAPA was an immense project does not really do it justice. JFK’s vision for the growth of the West was to create a “fission” (nuclear) economy. NAWAPA called for readying the ground for fission, through the development of nuclear desalination technology. It included agreements with Taiwan and South Korea and the utilization of much of the land from the Mississippi River to the West Coast, all the way north through Canada, to Alaska and the Bering Straits.

JFK’s last speech on NAWAPA was made in October 1963, just one month before he was assassinated in Dallas. For a short while, others, including leaders in Congress, continued to push his vision for the future. His death, however, was the beginning of the end for NAWAPA.

In the fall of 1966, Congress passed legislation to build a massive nuclear powered desalination plant off the coast of Orange County.The cost of the project would be $444.3 million. The plant would be built on a manmade island about half a mile from Bolsa Chica State Beach. The nuclear-powered desalination plant would be built in two phases. The first phase would produce 50 million gallons of fresh water a day. The plant’s second phase would produce an additional 100 million gallons of fresh water a day. The completed plant would produce 150 million gallons of freshwater a day.

To put the Bolsa Chica nuclear-powered desalination plant’s production capability in perspective, the $1 billion Carlsbad desalination plant that is just beginning operations is expected to produce 50 million gallons of fresh water per day. The Huntington Beach desalination plant, when it begins operating in 2018, also is projected to produce 50 million gallons a day.

Even in the 1960s the cost of fresh water produced by smaller desalination plants was not economically attractive when compared to alternative water delivery options, primarily groundwater and importing. The Bolsa Chica desalination plant would have been the first large-scale application utilizing nuclear energy as the power source in the desalination process, and the significant fresh water production of 150 million gallons a day would have allowed it to be the first desalination plant to produce fresh water that was economically and commercially competitive with alternative water delivery options.

The combination of power and fresh water production at this large a scale was seen as a significant step forward in addressing some of the bigger technological obstacles the desalination process faced at the time.

In May 1967, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the authorization to proceed, while California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed state legislation concurrently authorizing the plan to proceed. The Bolsa Chica nuclear powered desalination plant would have been the biggest desalination plant in the world. Plant oversight would have been a collaborative effort of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Department of the Interior and the Atomic Energy Commission.

In October 1963, in his last speech on NAWAPA, JFK said, “The Earth can be an abundant mother to all of the people that will be born in the coming years. … Long-term answers will be found in the successful use of new knowledge and close cooperation with other nations.”

JFK was a staunch advocate for international scientific work, new infrastructure and nuclear power to solve such problems as resource development, protection from catastrophic weather and overcoming poverty.

The vital role Orange County would have played in a fission economy, and the utilization of nuclear power to advance both energy and fresh water availability, was not to be.

It does make you wonder, however, what kind of nation and world we would live in if JFK had completed two terms as president and then spent the next 25-30 years as a statesman and leader.

Ian Lamont’s weekly column is mostly on regional and state issues. He spent 40 years in media, including the last half as publisher of various newspapers.He can be reached at ilamont@lbregister.com.