This photo of a remarkable project in India was recently sent to me by Richard M. Hileman, a Facebook friend who obtained it from Occupy Wall St. It came with his comment, "This would be good for Arizona."
This solar panel laid on the vast stretches of agricultural channels
in Gujarat India generates 1 Megawatt of electricity per km and
prevents evaporation of 1 crore (10,000,000) liters of water
every year.
While it might prove impractical for the mountainous regions of northern Arizona, it would seem a workable solution for clean power generation and water distribution in the southern part of the state which has higher proportion of largely flat land.
The concept would particularly suit irrigation projects and diversion canals which are already level and suffer high levels of water loss due to evaporation.
This is so logical that even a child gets this. Not only should the canal be enclosed or covered anyway, but it's a responsible double use of land area without destroying an area with Biological Soil Crusts and other life just so some giant corporation who is gifted the land for free can conduct business as usual profiteering!
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