Panama Canal is bigger

Now open and presumably neo-panamax ships are converging on it from both sides.

The $5-Billion Panama Canal Expansion Opens Sunday, Amidst Shipping Concerns : NPR

The potentially competing Nicaragua Canal does not seem to have made construction progress since ribbon cutting.

 

It is a heckuva thing, must go see in person. The jungly bits nearby are in good condition too (as such things go), but Panama has not done as much as Costa Rica (for example) in promoting ecotourism.

In the middle you find Lake Gatun at 26 meters above sea level. What made the idea initially appealing is that one only needs to cut 2 half canals. Version 1 was total loss on on that water, and quite a lot for each lock cycle. The thing was recently operating at 3 or 4 times its initially expected max, so water became an issue. Besides the fact that some years, much less rain falls in Panama (El Nino linked). So, more drainage basins were plugged into the Chagras River basin.

Version 2 has bigger (bypassing) locks and a degree of water recycling.

I do not know how this could be achieved by pumping so much seawater uphill. Well I can imagine how, but at an amazing cost.

 

Panama land bridge is about 6 million years old, so that is the age of barrier. Antarctica has been icy for about 10 million, so sea level did not inundate the land bridge.

However marine populations have diverged since, land critters (north to south, and south to north) really did some amazing mixing starting 6 mya. And ending with the canal construction.

 

Seems surprising that low-water operations of (my favorite) canal may continue for 11 more months:

Panama Canal administrator hopes traffic normalizes by February 2025

Today I learned that revised operations require 200 million liters of water per ship for complete passage. And that original (total loss) system was 500 million liters.

Even with this amount of recycling, 2023 continuing drought has been bad. Panama rain is strongly influenced by El Nino. You will read elsewhere that current drought is also climate change, but that might be overstated. Country level rain records are easy to find for 100 years, and 1929, 1941, 1958 and 1977 were drier. Just keepin' it real.

 

Panama canal upgrades cost locals and their investors about USD 5 billions. Even in driest years it will operate (with less traffic). Panama is not large as a water catchment and they 'upped' it as much as possible. If later there is version 3 it can only do more water recycling and require more storage basins. In construction era, the main things were to get big machines into play, and kill less workers by yellow fever and malaria. It was notably successful in those 3. In terms of water supply, they did the best they could.

==Next we move to La Nina or neutral for a while, and higher traffic levels. More crimps will come later. Sorry.

Not sorry.

 

The 2016 expansion added new larger locks and instituted water recycling up to 60%. During the 2024 dry season, that proved to be inadequate. Panama Canal is still restricting transits. Dry years in Panama have become more frequent. In response, Panama is considering increasing land area to supply more water.


Rio Indio watershed is shown in included image. There I also drew red lines along the excavated canal.


Adding more land area to supply water for Canal operations was illegal, but Panama Supreme Court has changed that. Estimated USD$1.6 billions will build a new reservoir for Rio Indio watershed water, build an 8 kilometer pipe to transfer water, and take care of displaced locals. It will require 6 years and add a third to dry-season Canal functions, according to available information.


By my understanding of geography of Panama, no more expansion of water-supply area is possible. If Canal operations are still crimped in future dry years, so they shall be.


==

What won’t help? Pumping ocean water up to Lake Gatun solves water (volume) supply, but 4.4 million in Panama drink from that. And lake life gets killed, so, no. Desalinization and pumping ocean water up to Lake Gatun would cost more than ship-transit fees, so not that either.


Adding Rio Indio is as much as can be done. Canal will fully function year round during all but driest years, when function will be reduced by some amount.


==

Planning a sea-level canal through Nicaragua was hot for a while but faded. Young readers may read of it 2040 or after.

 

Wha? Blimps to carry (probably the smaller) Canal crossing vessels? Never thought of that. Provide details.