William Shatner Wants Our Water. We Shouldn’t Give it to Him

In our bi-monthly Seattlemag.com column, Knute Berger–who writes regularly for Seattle Magazine and Crosscut.com and is a frequent pundit on KUOW–takes an in-depth look at some of the highly topical and sometimes polarizing issues in our city.

William Shatner wants our water.

The actor, responding to the ongoing California drought has proposed building a pipeline to funnel Northwest water to the Golden State. “…I’m starting a Kickstarter campaign. I want $30 billion … to build a pipeline like the Alaska pipeline. Say, from Seattle — a place where there’s a lot of water. There’s too much water. How bad would it be to get a large, 4-foot pipeline, keep it aboveground — because if it leaks, you’re irrigating!”

Scotty, beam us a billion gallons a day!

Shatner has apparently not heard that Washington State is suffering from drought conditions too. Just last week, Gov. Jay Inslee doubled the area covered by emergency drought declarations in Washington watersheds due to the winter’s low snowpack. Seattle’s water supply is fine, but many areas around the state—especially agricultural areas that rely water from melting snow—could be hard hit. Too much water? Not this year.

You might say, “Who cares what Shatner thinks?” You would be right, except for the fact that he’s giving voice to an idea that has been kicking around for over 50 years. Growing California has been surfing on the edge of drought for years and has wanted to import water from the Columbia River before.

Peter Jackson, son of the late Washington Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, reminds me that his father fought off Californians from tapping the Columbia back in the 1960s. He got a law passed that said the feds would need approval from the governors of Washington and Oregon before they could study its feasibility—in other words, they’d have to commit political suicide.

A many-decades advocate of getting Columbia water for California was longtime Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who back in 1990 said “Each day, the Columbia River dumps in the Pacific Ocean 90 billion gallons of fresh water. That is 3.7 billion gallons an hour, 61 million gallons a minute and 1 million gallons a second. That is wasteful and sinful.”

It looks wasteful and sinful if what you care about is your ability to accommodate massive sprawl and watering golf courses in the desert. Or if you ignore the fact that the “wasted” Columbia water benefits fish, salmon restoration, wildlife, marine habitats, international shipping and is used for hydro power generation. Sinful!

There is another factor to consider. While the Northwest appears water-rich by comparison to California—especially given projected climate models based on future carbon emissions—the source of Columbia waters are not simply an endless source to be tapped. A new Canadian study finds that the glaciers of British Columbia and Alberta will be 70 percent gone by 2100, and this includes ones like Alberta’s Columbia Icefield, a mass of glaciers that feed the river (and others as well).

No one is saying the Columbia River is going to suddenly dry up, but climate change indicates that we can’t take the status quo for granted, and that the war over resources—perhaps increasingly scarce ones like water supply—is going to heat up. Expect Shatner’s goofy Kickstarter campaign to be the first of an ongoing—and perhaps increasingly desperate—struggle—to boldly go where….the water is.