Are there risks of any poisons or chemicals from the solar panels leaking into the water system over time?
Are there risks of heavy metal and tire contaminates from vehicles leaking into the water system over time?
Are there risks of dust blown contamination from the megatons of shit humans leave everywhere we go leaking into the water system?
The answer is everything has risks, the risks from solar panels are unbelievably tiny in relation to all other pollution sources and I have to deal with a bunch of redneck solar panel haters that have bought in to massively overblown risks around them.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00693-8
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/s41893-021-00693-8
But more importantly it found that these solar panels are replacing diesel generators that pose a much larger pollution risk so water quality actually improved.
Australia is leading the world in rooftop solar adoption. By June 2025, 4.2 million rooftop solar systems had been installed nationwide representing 26.8 gigawatts of clean power generation capacity connected directly to local electricity networks that serve homes and businesses.
“In the evenings homes typically consume power, which flows from large power generation plants, such as wind farms, hydroelectric, coal and gas-fired power plants. Let’s call this the ‘low-tide’ time in local electricity grid operation,” he said.
“In the middle of a sunny day, however, today about 40% of Australian homes generate their own power from rooftop solar panels. When the rooftop solar generation exceeds the power consumption in the houses, the excess power is ‘exported’, flowing back to the grid, supplying other homes and beyond. Let’s call this the ‘high-tide’ time in local electricity grid operation.”
Grids are useful to balance out sources and sinks, make battery farms economical at scale. You do need smarter grids to deal with phase imbalances.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00693-8
The concern is not completely unwarranted:
> Because over-canal systems are subject to a more humid environment than ground-mounted systems, over-canal PV panels might have increased reliability problems45. In tropical conditions, the water content in the encapsulant can exceed solubility, which can lead to the formation of droplets of water in the modules, sometimes causing corrosion or other problems
But overall "field experiments have shown that CdTe semiconductors can withstand hot and humid environments."
Of course, if a solar panel is broken, ground up and falls into a canal, it would put some heavy metals into the water.
The risk is basically zero and far lower than any other power generation source. It is a nonsense, bad faith "concern".