Donald Trump claims B.C.’s ‘very large faucet’ could help California’s water woes

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced an idea late last week to help alleviate California water shortages — and it involves British Columbia.

“So you have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada and all pouring down,” Trump said at a press conference at his Los Angeles golf course.

Werner Antweiler with the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business said Trump’s idea is actually not a new one.

“The idea seems to be in the heads of people that Canada has all this wonderful water,” he said.

“Can we not just get it down to where we need it, where we have drought conditions, as in California? But of course, the business logic is that it’s all way too expensive to do so, and there’s just no realistic business model for that.”

Antweiler said there is a treaty that exists between B.C. and the U.S., which is called the Columbia River Treaty.

“That actually regulates how much water is flowing across the border and what it’s going to be used for,” he added.

“In fact, we’ve actually had less water because of climate change that’s going south. And so there has to be some adjustments made. But also the water is used for hydro dams. It’s used for maintaining the fisheries in the Columbia River all the way to the coast, all the way through Oregon primarily. And so there is just no spare water here, frankly, shipping it anywhere.”

Trump told reporters that “all of that water goes aimlessly into the Pacific.”

“And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles,” he added.

Antweiler said B.C. and Canada needs its own water and there is no more to reroute in bulk to other countries.

“It’s unrealistic for ecological reasons as