The former President’s plan to bring water to the California desert is, like a lot of his promises, a goofy pipe-dream.
In an apparent effort to address the pressing issue of California water shortages, Trump said the following: “You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps and Canada, and all pouring down and they have essentially a very large faucet. You turn the faucet and it takes one day to turn it, and it’s massive, it’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. You turn that, and all of that water aimlessly goes into the Pacific (Ocean), and if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles,” he said.
Amidst his weird, almost poetic rambling, the “very large faucet” Trump seems to have been referring to is the Columbia River. The Columbia runs from a lake in British Columbia, down through Oregon and eventually ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Trump’s apparent plan is to somehow divert water from the Columbia and get it all the way down to Los Angeles. However, scientific experts who have spoken to the press have noted that not only is there currently no way to divert the water from the Oregon River to southern California, but creating such a system would likely be prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
I really tried to give the benefit of the doubt in interpreting the dumb shit he said, but there just is no version of his idiot ramblings that actually makes sense.
Dimbulb donnie is just everyone’s Crazy Uncle Liberty, and it’s been Thanksgiving since about 2015.
Trump lives in some sort of reality pastiche of Richard Scary and Marquis de Sade.
I wish he would be in prison as frequently as the Marquis was. Both violent rapists though, so that tracks.
It’s not impossible as many are thinking. However I would never vote for another Republican lying bastard asshole ever again. But think about how we move oil around the country besides stupid trains. We use pipelines. So now just build one and fill it with water rather than oil. It won’t pay for itself because the price of water is so much lower than oil. But if you all want some water, it’s just a long ass straw.
They sont have any pipelines running into California because the terrain makes them prohibitedly expensive. If BP and Exxon Mobile say it is cheaper to import Saudi crude to California because it is too expensive to pipe Texas crude, then there is no way. Canada has one pipeline to connect Albertam oil to Vancouver, but it is so expensive to pipe that oil across the Canadian Rockies that the pipe it downhill to Saskatchewan where it can then be pipped downhill all the way to Texas. Pipelines across mountains are just not feasible unless you are trying to move stuff from the top of the mountain to the bottom.
Much like oil it would probably be easier to haul the water via train than make a pipe which can cover that terrain.
The issue is how much water people actually use on a given day. The average American uses 82 gallons of water every day. Los Angeles (not the surrounding cities or suburbs) needs an average of 320 million gallons of water to meet just consumer water requirements every day. Thats 10,617 train cars or 16 LR1 Oil tankers a day for just water, for just the city of Los Angeles. The only feasible solution is discouraging people from living where there isn’t any water.
Oh, I 100% agree. Trains are not feasible. They’re just more feasible than a pipe over that kond of terrain.
Well I will leave it to you to turn the faucet as large as the building behind you in a day. If you fail to do it in a day… Which doesn’t exist, and therefore impossible, come back and let me know how it isnt impossible
He’s a 10 year old child that likes to make pretend without ever having to face any consequences should his little fantasies ever come true.
That’s our job. We’re the ones that face the consequences.
I know this is the politics community so forgive me for saying “this comment aside,” but we really need to figure out a cheaper and cleaner way to desalinate seawater.
We need to stop encouraging people to live where there isn’t any water. There’s a reason nearly 3/4 of the US population lives east of the Mississippi, and that reason is the Eastern half of the country gets a straight up order of magnitude more rain water than the Western half
Solar desalination is very viable. It’s just that water is so cheap at the moment that it’s not worth the investment.
This is a nonstarter because there is a quarter pound of salt in every gallon of salt water. A small town of 50k would easily produce close to a million pounds of salt a day. Now try to scale that up to 20 million people in LA for instance.
Just put it in Utah.
As an Oregonian, I have no idea what faucet he’s talking about.
Bonneville Dam maybe? 🤔
Someone on Reddit theorized that he saw the term Delta and associated it with Delta Faucets the company, and that is where the faucet idea of his comes from.
It’s the faucet he read about on truth social, which means it’s real. There was even a picture of the faucet, and we all know those can’t be faked. /s
No it’s the faucet across from the toilet he has to flush ten, sometimes fifteen times, which is also where he got this idea.
Amidst his weird, almost poetic rambling, the “very large faucet” Trump seems to have been referring to is the Columbia River. The Columbia runs from a lake in British Columbia, down through Oregon and eventually ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Trump’s apparent plan is to somehow divert water from the Columbia and get it all the way down to Los Angeles. However, scientific experts who have spoken to the press have noted that not only is there currently no way to divert the water from the Oregon River to southern California, but creating such a system would likely be prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
The fucking sane-washing continues. He’s not being poetic. He’s not laying out an “apparent plan” that we need to vet with “scientific experts”. He thinks there’s literally a fucking big faucet up there already as big as a building that “takes a day to turn” and he’s the only person smart enough to think of “turning the faucet” or the only one strong-willed enough to kill the smelt for the good of the forests or whatever.
People keep grafting actual concepts onto this absolute moron’s imbecilic utterances and giving him a leg to stand on…just fucking quote the asshole and move on with your day.
The ag lobby told him there’s an ocean of fresh water, and the only thing stopping it is all the evil librul greens demanding they protect the mosquitos or something.
The farmers in the central valley believe the same thing, they get 80% of California’s water and still fervently believe we’re all holding out on them and there’s a lake superior we’ve been hiding behind our backs all along out of spite.
The ag lobby told him there’s an ocean of fresh water
I’d say that he just says whatever. If it’ll get him more popular and/or more money then there’s no need to figure out if he actually believes something or not. It usually is self serving in some way, truth doesn’t matter.
Yeah, but does he have concepts of a plan?
I mean, I was vomiting in stanzas when I read this…
Iamblech pentameter
The PNW isn’t immune to the drought pal.
What a fucking idiot. The only dumber people are those that believe him.
Let him. Why should we do the intellectual work of disassembling his bullshit only so the campaign can come back with what they actually mean. Just let him sound stupid.
We had this bullshit in Arizona too. The state GOP is convinced that Flagstaff is hoarding water somehow. That if Flagstaff just stopped hoarding water then Sedona wouldn’t have any trouble. For the uninitiated, Flagstaff has what rains and that’s it. It’s as water stressed as the rest of the state because people won’t stop moving there.
Uhm.
Ok. He should not be in charge of the executive office. We know he’s stupid but, damn.
This isn’t an idea, or even a promise. Trump thinks that there currently exists a faucet that could divert the Columbia River, a river he does not know exists and would probably think is in Mexico somehow, and that the faucet is purposefully moving water to the ocean as a way to spite the residents of California going through a water crisis. His only promise is that he would turn said faucet to eliminate the water crisis. Why are journalists ascribing so much intelligence to someone who has consistently bragged that he thinks at an 8-year old level?
There’s a flood control gate somewhere around Vancouver, is that what he’s talking about? It’s a bit bigger than any wall though…
Yes, clearly he means demolishing Bonneville Dam, somehow reversing the flow of the Willamette and then digging a trench through Grants Pass, where, if we flood the San Joaquin Valley will provide plenty of water to LA.
See, that’s the kind of really dumb thing I would expect him to do.
No, he is talking about a faucet because he doesn’t understand any of it. There is no faucet. He’s dumb. Move on.
Even if he was, that’s not how that works. I’m not saying he’s smart I’m just trying to figure out what he’s going to do so I can be somewhat prepared.
I imagine step 1 would be planning a route for all the water. Step 2, purchasing all of the land along said route. Step 3, realizing it costs a shit ton as it is 2000km/1200 miles from Vancouver to Los Angeles, note you will also have to pay reperations to both Canadians and Americans not along the route effected to the west… Step 4. Plan the the infrastructure. Step 5, realize this was all supposed to be done in a day… Step 6 realize both Biden and Trump are long dead from old age. Step 7 remember California will move as the plates on the earth move, so the pipe needs to be flexible, get a new quote at 100x the gdp of many countries.
Start the project.
He does this shit all the time. He will greatly exaggerate something then the media blows it up and then his press people redress it with some story tangentially related. Don’t feed into it. It’s a cheap, gotcha.
He is dumb. Let him sound dumb.
We need to get a portal to the good timeline and shove him through.
It’s definitely an intriguing idea, but it seems like this “faucet” plan might be more complicated in practice than it sounds in theory. Getting water from the Columbia River down to Los Angeles involves not just massive infrastructure but also overcoming significant ecological and legal challenges. Plus, as the experts pointed out, it’s pretty costly and inefficient. While addressing water shortages is crucial, perhaps more feasible and sustainable solutions like improving water-use efficiency and investing in desalination plants would be better routes to explore.
Yeah but it’s all going down from Oregon to California. That’s down on the map, which means it’s all downhill, so it should really be quite simple. (/s obviously)
