In 2021, our team at UC Merced found that covering California’s extensive network of irrigation canals with solar panels could make significant contributions to both clean energy and water conservation, serving two of the state’s most pressing needs at once.
Beside a canal that runs through farmland, rushing water roared through an irrigation gate and flowed down a concrete culvert toward a wetland fringed with cottonwoods and willows.
For decades, so much water has been diverted to supply farms and cities that the Colorado River has seldom met the sea and much of its delta in Mexico has been reduced to a dry riverbed, with only small remnants of its once-vast wetlands surviving.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
