Posted on 02/04/2015 10:42:14 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach.
From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic.
They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an obscure Chinese billionaire to cross Central America and challenge the Panama Canal for the world’s cargo traffic. And some in Nicaragua are gearing up for the fight of their lives to stop it.
"For a country as poor as Nicaragua,” said Roonell Carrillo, a cattle farmer who works along the proposed canal route, “this is an enormous risk.”
Last month, on a riser erected next to Carrillo’s farm, the son of President Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist guerrilla, stood alongside Wang Jing, a Chinese telecom magnate, to herald the official start of construction. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Rafael Bermudez opened his jean jacket to reveal his holstered pistol.
“We don’t want the canal,” he said. “And we don’t want this president.”
Bermudez, a farmer and former guerrilla who fought alongside Daniel Ortega against the Somoza dictatorship in the ’70s, now accuses his onetime comrade of betraying his country to the Chinese.
“He sold us out like animals,” he said.
I was going to comment on how cheap land is when a totalitarian government can just take it away from their disarmed population, but then I read the part about them having to move enough dirt to cover the District of Colombia 92 feet deep and started to fantasize about DC being covered with 92ft of dirt.
What? By himself?
Nicaragua was one of the early proposed sites but uts a considerable distance.
Spending $50 billion to build this canal would be as idiotic as constructing 500 million square feet of new office space in Manhattan. You’d never come close to recovering your initial investment — even after 500 years.
100 or 150 years ago, America was a country where individual entrepreneurs took on risky projects like this with private capital. Alas, those days are gone in Cradle-to-Grave Welfare State America, where everyone’s goal is to figure out how to get on the public teat. Now its Communist China who has the risk-taking entrepreneurs.
Fresh water lake? Not for long.
When you have a situation like that, it’s not intended to make money on the initial startup. You seed the project with some capital, then finance the other 90 some odd percent of it with bonds you sell to old ladies and retirement accounts and school districts etc... Then the construct goes belly up and the asset[s] get sold to other companies you control/friends/associates/cronies for 10-20 cents on the dollar and THEN you make money operating the project.
The old ladies, retiree’s, etc... can eat cat food.
it isn’t going to be 50 billion. 350 billion or more.
The lake is much higher than sealevel. Its water is needed to operate the locks. It’ll remain freshwater, but only until it vanishes for good.
Except the "District of Colombia" and "D.C." are totally different places separated by at least 1900 miles...
I don’t disagree with you, but many of the “risky” projects in this country 100-150 years ago were actually some of the worst examples of crony capitalism.
You caught that as well...;^)
Don’t know how this would financially be viable. The least costly route would be along the San Juan River but that won’t happen because Costa Rica, which is on one side of that river, will object so the alternative is an overland route. That forces massive increases in excavation, soil stabilization and other construction costs.
What really sinks it will be the operating costs. While the route to and from the canal would be shorter, the passage time would be just as long due to all of the locking and unlocking. Financially they would have to compete with the Panama canal which could easily undercut the new canal’s pricing because its construction and financing costs have long since been paid.
Don’t think it will be built.
LOL!
This reads like a riddle; Why did the Chinese Billionaire cross the canal into Nicaragua? The answer “To get to the other side” is already taken.
talk to Iran...want a crater with that?
I think that someone sent a stamp of Nicaragua with an active volcano on it, and that dissuaded the builder(s), and they chose Panama for its stable terrain.
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