Amid grim budget news, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been jumping on opportunities to tout the administration’s spending on water projects. Last week he joined a routine snowpack survey near Lake Tahoe. He then traveled to Merced County to join local and federal officials for a press conference announcing $19 million from the Biden administration to install solar panels over canals.
In 2022 the state invested $20 million for a pilot project in Turlock to study the feasibility of the technology. UC Merced researchers had found the concept promising for reducing water evaporation while generating renewable energy to support powerful pumps along the state and federal water systems.
At the press conference, Newsom defended the high cost for the solar projects and noted that “some folks don’t want these damn things near their canals.” He called the concept a no-brainer and reasoned that the cobenefits outweigh the steep upfront costs.
It’s easy to be “in the know” about what’s happening in Washington, D.C. and around the Coast. Sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news! Simply click here.
Newsom also acknowledged pushback in the ag community over converting productive farmland to large-scale solar development and said the canal projects would alleviate some of that pressure.
Another sobering message came from Cannon Michael, a prominent farmer who chairs the board of the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority. While Michael shared in the excitement, he noted that such projects only work if you have the water to run through them.
He described widely held frustration in the Central Valley over low state and federal allocations during an above-average water year. He also pointed to aging water infrastructure and called for more investments from the agencies at the event.
