Cascadia has been promoted as the premier cross-border region (CBR) along the western US-Canada border. However, most studies of this CBR have a strong normative inflection that assumes a great desire by the actors to emancipate themselves from dominance by the nation-state. Unlike as in other regions of the world such as Europe, little micro-level empirical investigation has been done of this hypothesis. This study seeks to address that issue by focusing on a proposed power plant in the heart of Cascadia which was to integrate resources and services between the border towns of Sumas, Washington and Abbotsford, British Columbia which lie at the western end of the enclosed Fraser Lowland. After an initial agreement between the towns collapsed based mainly on grassroots opposition concerned over impacts on the shared air shed, the two cities found themselves at loggerheads ever more willing to appeal to more distant political levels to support their case. This eventually resulted in a move by the Canadian National Energy Board to favour Canadian environmental interests over US economic ones, an apparent move to reaffirm the border as a shield. The paper explores how the micro-scale relationship that emerges from this dispute fits into the emerging discussion on CBRs and more importantly what this failed attempt at cross-border integration in the Fraser Lowland tells us about Cascadia as whole.