Posted on 08/26/2023 3:53:29 AM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
The Pacific side is 8 inches higher than the Atlantic side. If you connected sides, would the Pacific ocean be lowered?
This is another staged ‘environmental/global warming’ BS event. I do not remember hearing this ‘out of water’ story ever since the Canal was dug. Furthermore, there is seawater on both sides. Why do they not have pumps from the ocean running 24/7 from either or both sides to replenish the reservoirs? No, lack of water fits the narrative, and by golly, there’s no way around it.
Wasn’t China planning on digging through Nicaragua? Or maybe if we had kept the canal we could have added large pumps?
Be conveniently closed for a war in Asia. It I controlled by China....
My son works for one of the largest container shipping companies. He told me that they’re loading the ships only halfway to lessen the draft in order to get through the canal. Hence they have to use twice the number of ships to get the same amount of cargo to where it’s going. That causes problems and backups at the ports.
Nicaragua would be the route for a sea level canal.
Well this certainly is serious.
“Be conveniently closed for a war in Asia. It I controlled by China....”
Yes, it is.
Oh wow, someone with actual information. Thank you for posting.
Not at all, nobody has even contemplated a sea-level Atlantic to Pacific canal since the French briefly dabbled with the idea. The problem is the angle of the banks on each side. A sea-level canal would need to be as wide as the Grand Canyon so to speak.
Others including China have considered a canal across Nicaragua. But any canal using locks requires massive rainfall to keep the lake full that runs it all.
In what world does pumping ocean water into freshwater reservoirs make any sense?
The expansion of the canal to accommodate Panamax ships is a major player in the water shortage. Unmentioned in the article.
>> Wasn’t there a plan to dig a sea level canal across Panama using nuclear explosives? <<
The locals just might have objected?
That would ruin one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world turning it from fresh to salt. Lake Nicaragua.
Beautiful lake I’ve been on.......has fresh-water sharks too........
Why do they not just put in some pumps to recycle the water volume needed to run the elevator/locks. Store it at elevation or pump it both ways.
Maybe our best president(s) EVER!!! need to repatriate our investment and inject some good old americano technocracy. Yeah that’s you bidenobamo maybe you two can scrape up some brains from outsource and fix what the 3rd worst president in this country’s existence messed up.
this.
In 1903 no one cared.
Bingo
/\This!/\
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