“A blue lagoon sits outside of Sayreville, New Jersey, inside a lush preserve of spruce, maple, and oak trees. The 35-acre basin holds some of the town’s water supply, which requires enormous amounts of electricity to pump and treat. A few years ago, local officials decided to install a solar panel array to power the water treatment plant. Only they couldn’t decide where to put it.

Some 400 acres of woodland surround the treatment facility in Sayreville, a suburban town of 43,000 people just south of New York City. To build a solar plant big enough to meet their electricity needs, the town’s water department would need to clear some 15 acres of trees. “That’s not a very green thing to do,” said David Samuel, a consulting engineer for Sayreville who worked on the solar initiative…”

Read More: https://grist.org/article/no-land-no-problem-floating-solar-panels-might-be-the-next-big-thing/