> construct a cheap shade over the entire canal

That aint' gonna fly - you're going to have engineering requirements for a 100' span wither it's a shade structure or a solar panel. And don't even think about fabric shade sail types of things, nobody is going to want to replace those every 3 years.

>it takes 1/6 the time to build on developed land compared to undeveloped land.

This is not something you can just ignore