Lockout? Panama Canal running out of water

Gaillard Cut, the narrowest portion of the Panama Canal, is being widened to accommodate two-way traffic. This is expected to be completed in 2002

By Environmental News Network staff

Faced with a shortage of freshwater needed to float ships through the Panama Canal, authorities at the 51-mile shortcut are urgently exploring ways to acquire more water and conserve what they already use.

Officials with the Panama Canal Authority, managers of the locks and reservoirs since the United States relinquished control of the canal in 1999, warn that global warming, increased shipping traffic and bigger seagoing vessels could cripple the canal's capacity to operate within a decade.

Under present operations, each ship that passes through the canal requires 52 million gallons of freshwater to float it through a series of locks.

To meet new demands, the canal authority is considering the "technical, economic and environmental feasibility" of increasing the canal's capacity to capture and hold freshwater, according to Augustin Arias, project manager of the PCA's canal capacity division.

Arias says canal officials are now considering the construction of new freshwater reservoirs in the canal's western region. The reservoirs would collect and store water during Panama's seven-month rainy season.

Currently, Gatun Lake, a 163-square-mile manmade reservoir, collects most of the canal's freshwater as it drains from nearby rain forests. As if perched on a pyramid of champagne glasses, water from the elevated reservoir spills, on demand, into lower locks for canal operation. The lake also supplies freshwater to nearby Panama City and local industries.

"I think it's good that they are starting to think about this problem," says Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California. "Clearly, the canal has a major water problem."

The canal authority may have missed an critical environmental red flag for the region, says Gleick. "The fact remains that much more water from the rain forest is still running that much faster to the ocean than it normally would," he says.

To complicate matters, the canal's primary water source - Panama's rain forest - is falling rapidly at the hands of loggers, local farmers and developers.

Studies conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey before the canal changed hands suggest that deforestation in the region is degrading the quality of the canal's available freshwater. Sedimentation and biological blooms are now rampant in the locks and canals, say USGS scientists.

Ship traffic passes through Gatun Lake, which also supplies freshwater to Panama City and local industries

"I was surprised to see how much the canal authority already had to do to keep up with dredging and other maintenance problems," says Deborah Martin, a USGS hydrologist who visited the canal last year.

With water an increasingly valuable - and vulnerable - commodity in the region, canal officials say they are willing to explore new methods to conserve the existing water supply.

"The Panama Canal Authority is studying alternative technologies for water-saving systems," says Arias.

Systems currently under consideration include run-off basins to collect canal-water overflow; a smaller, parallel canal that could handle small-ship traffic; and a collection system to recycle brackish water.

Such systems could save 33 percent to 50 percent of the water now used in canal operations, says Arias.

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Panama Canal Authority
Gatun Lake
Pacific Institute for Studies U.S. Geological Survey
Thinkquest: Panama Canal.
Pacific Institute web site

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