Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 22.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press
During multiple campaign stops, Donald Trump has said that the solution to California’s parched forests and fields lies in Canada, reigniting concerns that the U.S. could press Canada to help solve its mounting water shortages.
Exactly what the Republican presidential nominee’s plan entails or how it involves Canada, if at all, remains unclear.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for clarification. Global Affairs Canada declined to weigh in.
“It would not be appropriate for Global Affairs to speculate on Mr. Trump’s assertions,” said spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod in an e-mailed statement. “Canada and the U.S. have long-standing co-operation on water and other environmental issues and a number of mechanisms for dialogue on these issues.”
Mr. Trump first mused about irrigating California with water from Canada during a campaign stop in September, then repeated the plan on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast over the weekend.
“I could have water for all of that land,” he said, relaying an anecdote about touring dry agricultural fields with a group of congressmen several years ago.
In Mr. Trump’s recounting, he asked the congressmen why the land was so barren. They explained that the water wasn’t allowed to flow from Canada.
“It’s got a natural flow from Canada all the way up north, more water than they could ever use,” Mr. Trump explained. “And in order to protect a tiny little fish, the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean. Millions and millions of gallons.”
Diverting the water to California would be a simple matter of turning a giant valve, he said.
Those scattered details have confused and alarmed water experts on the Canadian side of the border, who speculated that he could have been talking about the Columbia River. The Columbia’s headwaters sit in B.C.’s southern Rocky Mountain Trench, and the river winds through the southeastern corner of the province before crossing into Washington state, meandering past Portland, Ore., and surging into the Pacific along the Washington-Oregon border.
There is no valve capable of sending it to California, said Eileen Delehanty Pearkes, the author of A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change. “If such a scheme were to be proposed, a delivery pipeline would have to be constructed, at a very steep price,” she said.
There have been proposals over the years to send a portion of the Columbia south.
The North American Water and Power Alliance, hatched in 1964 by a California engineering firm, proposed damming the Yukon, Skeena, Fraser, Peace and Columbia rivers to divert Alaskan and Canadian water south as far as Mexico. The scale was audacious and completely impractical: 240 dams and reservoirs, 112 water diversions, 17 aqueducts and canals, 40 years, US$100-billion – more than a trillion dollars in today’s money.
Today’s more stringent regulations would extend the timeline for such a megaproject closer to 100 years, said Ralph Pentland, a former director of water planning and management for Environment Canada who now consults on water policy around the world. “We don’t have to worry about this kind of project ever happening,” he said. “Nobody takes these kinds of proposals seriously any more.”
Even if the financial and logistical challenges were overcome, significant legal, environmental and political barriers would remain.
The provinces have effectively banned mass water exports, and the federal Transboundary Waters Protection Act prohibited the bulk removal of transboundary waters in 2013. Once the Columbia crosses into the U.S., however, it’s no longer considered a transboundary water body, according to Mr. Pentland. “They can do what they like with it at that point,” he said.
A major diversion of water from the U.S. side could affect the Columbia River Treaty, which governs the creation and use of dams along the river and is considered a model of international transboundary water management. The treaty is currently under renegotiation.
Under international law, countries can use an international waterway in an “equitable and reasonable manner.” The Trump plan remains too vague to parse for legality.
“You’d have to know a whole lot more to decide whether this proposal is reasonable and equitable and whether it’s legal under international law,” said Richard Paisley, the director of the International Waters Governance Research Initiative.
Northern anxieties about Mr. Trump’s water story could be misplaced. E&E News, a U.S. publication focusing on energy and the environment, suggests Mr. Trump may have been referring to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in California.
Flows in those rivers have been controlled to revitalize the delta smelt, an endangered species endemic to the delta, upsetting farm owners. Mr. Trump has been sacrificing farms for fish since 2016, the publication reported.
So why invoke Canada? Was it a mistake in geography? A subtle warning? Whatever the answer, Mr. Trump is wading into fraught political territory.
“We export hockey players to the U.S. and all kinds of other stuff,” Mr. Paisley said. “But water, boy, that becomes a real political issue.”