Construction of Miraflores Locks
Panamanians overwhelmingly backed a plan to give their famous 92-year-old canal its biggest-ever overhaul on Sunday, an ambitious project the government hopes will help lift the country out of poverty.
With two-thirds of referendum results in, Panamanians voted four-to-one to support a $5.25 billion face-lift allowing the inter-oceanic canal to handle mammoth modern cargo ships, the Central American nation’s Electoral Tribunal reported.
The capacity of the canal, which was U.S. territory until it was returned to Panama in 1999, will double under the plan, allowing it to transport twice as many ships between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, boosting government revenue.
“History will record this as the day when Panamanians made the first major decision on the Panama Canal and their future by themselves,” Ricaurte Vasquez, minister for canal affairs and a former finance minister, told Reuters.
Expansion of the canal, an engineering wonder first opened in 1914, will create a jobs bonanza for Panama’s 3 million people and boost economic growth, supporters say.
Critics warn the plan could bankrupt the small nation, which is already burdened with huge debts and where most people live in poverty, if costs spiral. Taxpayers could be forced to pick up the tab and investors lose money.
Voters queued for hours in vicious heat to have their say.
Panama is facing a critical node in commerce as it is. Projects competing with widening of the Canal have long been considered by other Central American countries, other investors. In recent months, hard money is being devoted to bringing those alternatives forward.
I doubt they’ll be able to handle the next generation container ships. They’ll mostly serve the Pacific Rim though. 280m with a 40m beam is a big boy, the size of the New Dalian. That’s 66,000 ton capacity.
Overwhelmingly? 3/4 of 2/3 = 1/2
I’ve always wondered what would happen if the canan locks all failed and collapsed, allowing the free flow of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans possible. Since they are at different altititudes, and water always seeks to level itself, would there be a stupendous rush of water across the Panama Canal causing tremendous drainage in one side and tremendous flooding on the other? Maybe I answered my own question, not sure. Any physicists out there that can answer this?
Not sure if anyone here saw the BBC’s series “The 7 Wonders of the Industrialized World”, but the episode on the panama canal was simply mind-boggling!
Now, many decades later, and even with the advanced in technology that may be used to perform the expansion, its going to be mind-boggling all over again!
What do you want to bet they get half way through the upgrade, run out of money, and we (USA taxpayers) end up giving them $20 billion to finish it?
Well — #2, 3/4 of the reported vote makes it likely the final tally will not be 1/2. You needn’t click the link and read the whole article to understand that much. 🙂
And #5, it’s a pretty sound bet, nowadays, the Chinese Government would step in for whatever is needed, (a) the traffic benefits them, and (b) the US government is too concerned with giving money to Haliburton and Co. to think of helping a neighbor.
Just keep sending your tax dollar$ to Iraq.
#3 The quantity of water flowing through failed locks would be relatively inconsequential to the overall ocean volume for the period of time it would take to fix the problem.
Seems like a civil engineer (small scale) or geologist (large scale) would be better to answer your question than a physicist.
3,
What would happen is the water on the Atlantic side would rush back into the Atlantic, and the same would go for the Pacific side. The locks are not there to keep the oceans apart, but to bring the water up and over Panama. It’d be a terrible mess on each coast, however.
3. You wouldn’t really need locks if the canal was all built at sealevel. (Something, I think I recall, that was actually considered).
RBG
Poverty?? HOW?
Its a giant Toll road.
This is the main route for about 1/2 the ships.
The only ones they have problems with are the Tankers.
If they can improve it enough to handle Tankers, they will get ALOT of business from Oil countries to the Atlantic… tankers dont LIKE going around the Horn..
#5. I certainly hope so. Then we can undo the single most foolish thing Jimmy Carter ever did. At least the most foolish thing short of letting his brother out of the basement.
#3 If the locks failed, lake Gatun would simply drain out and nothing else would happen. The Canal was built well above sea level, hence the need for the locks. A sea level canal would create some navigation problems due to the tidal differances in the tides on the Pacific and Atlantic sides, but nothing that a couple of powerful tugs couldn’t handle.
It is only a matter of time until they decide to upgrade the canal. The current medium size container ships no longer fit the locks, let alone the newest super ships that are being built. I just think they are going to have a problem finding enough water to run super sized locks.
#3, David, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are really on the same level. If there is a canal dug directly across the Isthmus, there will be no actual water flow from one side to the other. Only something such as extraordinary high tides, such as from a hurricane, would cause any flow. The actual flow would be from the center of the canal out towards the oceans as natural rain water tries to get to the ocean. Even today, the canal is really fresh water except for some brackish water at the entrances.
The same problem happened when they built the Suez Canal. Surveyors had originally suggested the Red Sea was 20 feet higher then the Mediterranean. Even though a proper survey showed the two seas to be on the same level, many doom sayers predicted dire consequences. Of course, we know the outcome there.