Drought-hit Panama Canal to restrict access for one year

France 24 ^

[FarCenter]

Panama City (AFP) – The drought-hit Panama Canal will maintain restrictions on the passage of ships for one year, a measure that has already led to a marine traffic jam as boats line up to enter the waterway linking two oceans.

The canal is facing a shortage of rainwater needed to transfer ships through locks that function like water elevators, an engineering marvel that moves six percent of the world's maritime commerce up and over the isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The canal's sub-administrator Ilya Espino, told AFP that unless heavy rains fall in the next three months, "we are looking at a period of one year" of restricted access.

That period will give clients "a year to plan" how to adapt, she said late Thursday.

Each ship moving through the canal requires 200 million liters of freshwater to move it through the locks, provided by two artificial lakes fed by rainfall in a surrounding watershed. The lakes also supply drinking water to half the country of about 4.2 million people.

However, Panama is facing a biting drought, made worse by the El Nino warming phenomenon, which has forced canal administrators to restrict the waterway to ships with a maximum draft (water depth) of 13.11 meters (43 feet).

In 2022, an average of 40 ships crossed through the canal a day, a number which has now dropped to 32 to save water.

[JohnBovenmyer]

The higher Pacific side is broadly connected to the Atlantic via the Arctic Ocean and the southern ‘ocean.’ I wonder what processes maintain that 8” difference. And although netting only 8 vertical inches the current canal goes up and back down much more in crossing the mountainous center of the Isthmus. The heavy rainfall over the Isthmus is collected in high artificial lakes and released as needed to power the upward locks. The widened canal for larger ships needed more water per locking. Current rainfall isn’t enough. If, as claimed, half the rained lake water goes for (mostly sea level) human consumption replacing that with desalinated water would be cheaper than pumping desalinated into the top level lake. Still expensive but perhaps the canal fees could be raised enough to cover that and be justified by full rather than partial shipload transits.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

It's weird. Normal elevations are given as "above sea level" or "below sea level".
So what sea level are they talking about: Pacific or Atlantic? Throw in the tides,
and then it's definitely above my pay grade.

[Graybeard58]

The canal’s sub-administrator Ilya Espino

`````````````````````````````

But of course! Everybody knows that submarines need deeper water.

[JohnBovenmyer]

>it’s connected to an OCEAN on both sides. How can it be affected by drought?

An ocean at each side of a hill. Their water won't run uphill on its own. Rain water onto the hilltop, running downhill, powers lifting ocean water and boats up the hill. Not enough rain and you can't power as much up the hill. Just like a water powered mill can't grind as much stuff when the stream level is low.

[GailA]

btt

[Svartalfiar]

In what world does pumping ocean water into freshwater reservoirs make any sense?
_______________________
The reservoir was built to operate the locks. The reservoir already has salt water in it because of the action of the locks.

The amount of sea water that manages to travel up the locks really isn't that much. It's not nearly close to the amount of salt you would add by pumping ocean water into the Lakes.