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Comment by ShinyLeftPad | Hacker News Reader

> Harris said he spent a lot of his life in France, where he noticed how trees lined the canals and protected their precious water from the wind and sun

So why not plant the trees?

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They used to do that in Phoenix. There were trees all along the canals. They replaced that setup with a solid uncovered concrete canal system. The issue with trees is that the roots will cause leaks in your canal.

Also take care to have trees close to a swimming pool, just like us, they won't say no to a free source of liquid, and many species have quite powerful roots.

Redoing swimming pools due to close by trees seems to be quite common construction work job.

Strange how France didn’t have this problem

France didn't use concrete to build it's canals.

it probablz does, it just has a lot more water and less sun and heat so its not as noticeable

> it just has a lot more water

What? France has had to shut down or down rate nuclear power plants because of a lack of cooling water.

Yes, and it still has more available water than a literal desert.

It's a bit of a challenge to get suitable trees to grow in the central California desert.

Beside water?

Are you suggesting to plant trees in such a way that they can tap into the water stream they're meant to protect from evaporation? Doing the calculation on which of the two effects will outweigh the other would surely be a fun exercise.

You could! But this generates power and has the same benefit. Also you do not have to just do one. Plant trees in areas with denser populations and use solar panels when there are fewer people around and beautification is less of a concern.

I'd assume trees aren't just for people, they're probably good for the ecosystem in other ways...

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