The last pasture

Leah’s tap water is brackish, which means it contains enough dissolved salt to taste unpleasant or require treatment. The town has marked its last pasture for a solar field, while the harbor desalination plant sits idle around noon. The decision is about water as much as land.

Solar power is electricity made from sunlight. At midday it can be plentiful and inexpensive when a solar field is producing more power than local users need. The useful question is not simply where to place panels. It is whether those daytime hours can run equipment that improves the town’s water supply.

Duneport must weigh several needs: grazing land, roofs that can host panels, the cost of power, the plant’s capacity, and the quality of the water that reaches homes.

A solar field is one possible part of the system. Safe drinking water is the outcome the system must deliver.

A common mistake is to treat the marked pasture as the solution before defining the water problem.

Next, put the land requirement in scale.