Steam shovels will soon be clanking again at the Panama Canal. Only a little more than a quarter century after the opening of this “life line” of the U.S. Navy and crossroads of the world’s maritime commerce, workers will break ground for a monster third set of locks—a project whose $277,000,000 cost equals more than half that of the present canal!
The giant engineering scheme calls for conversion of the present “two-lane” canal across the Isthmus into a “three-lane” canal. To do this, three sets of oversize single-chamber locks will be built, parallel to the present twin-chamber locks but at some distance from them. There will be no need to dig a whole new canal, since the “Big Ditch” itself will easily carry the traffic. Read the rest of this entry »