Peninsula Daily News news sources
THE MAN WHO led people to where no man has gone before on “Star Trek” wants an above-ground water pipeline from Washington state to California to end California’s drought.
William Shatner told Yahoo News that he has begun an online fundraising effort on the website Kickstarter to finance such a project.
“California’s in the midst of a four-year-old drought,” Shatner said. “They tell us there’s a year’s supply of water left.
“If it doesn’t rain next year, what do 20 million people in the breadbasket of the world do? In a place that’s the fifth-largest [gross domestic product] — if California were a country, it’d be fifth in line — we’re about to be arid. What do you do about it?”
Here’s the plan:
“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 above ground — because if it leaks, you’re irrigating.
“Bring it down here and fill one of our lakes. Lake Mead.”
Shatner said the pipeline could follow Interstate 5, the freeway that connects the Northwest with Southern California.
Shatner conceded that even if he’s not able to raise the money, the effort will at least raise consciousness about the severity of California’s drought.
