William Shatner proposes pipeline from Seattle to help California drought

Actor William Shatner’s idea to pipe water from the Pacific Northwest to California is not new, but his plan to pay for it is.

“I want $30 billion in my Kickstarter campaign to build a pipeline," said the 84-year-old actor in an interview with Yahoo.

Shatner believes water from the Seattle area could somehow be the coveted solution to California's record drought.

“I want to build a pipeline, say, from, say, Seattle,” Shatner said. “A place where there's a lot of water. There's too much water!”

Shatner's pipe plan did not factor in Washington Gov. Jay Inslees's drought declaration that spans 13 watersheds, or that the state’s snowpack is melting to record low levels.

Local public utilities told KIRO 7 there is not a lot of excess water this year to ship anywhere.

Shatner told Yahoo his pipeline would be 4 feet in diameter and span more than 1,100 miles from Seattle to Nevada’s Lake Mead, which already has a pipeline to Southern California.

In comparison to Shatner’s proposed 4-foot pipe, The Tolt pipeline, which connects the Tolt River runoff to Seattle, is 7.5 feet in diameter. The Tolt pipeline pumps a whopping 126 million gallons of water into the city of Seattle daily. It accounts for one-third of Seattle’s total water supply.

At 126 million gallons a day, it would take the Tolt pipe more than 200 years to replenish drought-stricken California's 11 trillion gallon water deficit.

Shatner says he does have a “Plan-B.”

"If I don't make $30 billion, I'll give the money to a politician who says I'I'll build it',” Shatner said.

In 1991, Alaska Gov. Wally Hickel proposed a 1,000-mile sub-oceanic plastic pipe which would have connected Alaska's Copper River with Southern California. The price tag of $150 billion ended the discussion. Read more about Shatner's plan here.

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