Along the rural California-Oregon border, where drought has been chronic, a small water agency is set to become one of few in the nation to test a novel way of tackling both high pumping costs and water scarcity: covering an irrigation canal with solar panels.
The Klamath Drainage District, which provides water to farms, expects that its pioneering solar-over-canal project will generate enough renewable power to partly offset the expense of pumping while saving considerable water by shading the channel and reducing evaporation.
The concept was brought to life last year in the San Joaquin Valley. To great fanfare, water officials in the agricultural community of Turlock, with funding from the state of California and support from the UC system, showed that a solar-over-canal project could achieve the intended results. Their aim was to inspire the innovation elsewhere…