Supersizing the Panama Canal

By Mary Jordan
The Washington Post

KATHRYN COOK / AP A containership bound for the Atlantic Ocean passes through the Panama Canal just before the construction site of the Centennial Bridge in Panama City last month. Since 2000, Panama has maintained control of the U.S.-built canal under a treaty signed in 1977.

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It was the nerve-wracking start of a 10-hour voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean for the ship, which was ferrying automobiles from Asia to the East Coast of the United States. Crocodiles prowl and monkeys howl in the emerald jungle lining the man-made lakes of the storied waterway. As the 106-foot-wide ship was shoehorned into Miraflores Locks, it scraped the sides of the 110-foot wide passage.

Because shipyards are increasingly building mammoth vessels — some as much as 40 feet wider than these locks at the Pacific entrance to the canal — shippers worry that the passage will soon become a relic.

But now, after years of study, a radical new project to expand the walls of the 90-year-old canal is to be unveiled this summer. The project, which would have to be approved in a national referendum, would cost billions of dollars and employ thousands of workers, from ditch diggers to engineers. Andrada said the result would be "a great relief." It would speed up the crossing, he wrote in an e-mail from aboard the ship, and help prevent damage to the 33,500-ton ship's hull.

Panama's incoming president, Martin Torrijos, already throwing support to the plan, has said that determining the canal's future is the country's "most important decision of the century."

An increasing amount of the world's commerce is carried on ever-larger containerships, including billions of dollars worth of Asian-made televisions, clothing and toys bound for ports on the U.S. East Coast. Since the cost of running a 100-foot-wide ship is roughly the same as that of running one 150 feet wide, which can carry more goods, shipping-industry officials say they are increasingly moving to the more profitable larger vessels.

"If they don't take action, the canal will be obsolete for bigger ships in 10 years," said Julio De La Lastra, president for Panamanian operations of Mitsui OSK, the Japanese shipping company that owns the Iris Ace.

Mitsui OSK, one of the largest shippers in the world, is building 12 ships that will be too large to fit into the narrowest parts of the canal, De La Lastra said. He likened the canal to a two-lane road that needs to be widened to four lanes to handle the increase in traffic.

From its opening in 1914 until the last day of 1999, the canal, championed by President Theodore Roosevelt, was under U.S. control. Panama was given jurisdiction in the 1977 treaty signed by President Jimmy Carter and Gen. Omar Torrijos, then the country's military ruler and the father of the newly elected president, who takes office Sept. 1.

The canal today operates and looks much the way it did when the SS Ancon made the first official transit on Aug. 15, 1914. Although the United States no longer operates the canal, the passage continues to be important for the U.S. economy. Two-thirds of the 14,000 ships going through it every year are either leaving from or heading to U.S. ports.

"This is a big deal," said Alberto Aleman Zubieta, the canal administrator, discussing the widening project. "It will have a major impact on U.S. ports."

In the planning stage for more than five years, the project has wide support in the international shipping community, which maintains a large presence on this isthmus that connects North America and South America.

According to several people familiar with the project, it involves building separate, larger locks to accommodate the behemoth freighters. It also will likely require the building of a new dam and the creation of an artificial lake that would swallow a large swath of farmland. The Gaillard Cut section of the canal would also be widened, and all the excavated dirt would likely be used to built a new port. The lock construction alone could take a decade, and the entire master plan might not be completed until 2025.

Financed by tolls from the three dozen ships passing through daily, the canal is one of Panama's prime money makers. A ship's toll is calculated according to tonnage; the record is the $226,194 paid last year by the cruise ship Coral Princess for its day passage. Last year, the independent Panama Canal Authority turned over $300 million in profits to the government.

"Most of our economy runs around the canal," said Ebrahim Asvat, a local commentator who favors the expansion. He said the United States ran the canal like a military operation, but Panama must operate it according to the demands of maritime commerce.

But many are worried about the costs.

"What I am against — and prepared to take to the streets to protest — is that Panama takes the full financial burden of the canal," said Fernando Manfredo Jr., a former canal administrator and special ambassador to the United States during the treaty negotiations. "We are a small country, a fragile economy."

Under international treaty, he said, other countries are expected to assist in any large-scale expansion of the waterway. Canal officials have said the expansion will mean higher toll fees.

Local opposition to dams that flood villages could delay construction, if not derail it. As international engineers and environmental experts have drawn up various designs in recent years, activists have rallied against rumored plans for massive relocations. According to some of those involved, the plans have been scaled back from three dams to one, thereby submerging only sparsely populated areas. Any dislocated residents would be compensated for their loss and offered land elsewhere, officials said. But some people whose grandfathers were forced to move a century ago when U.S. engineers built a dam to form the Gatun Lake may now find themselves being relocated, some activists against the plan said.

"If farmers have to leave their land, what are they going to do?" said Marcelino Marsiaga, 41, a farmer in Caqones, a rural area near the area likely to be affected. "The government says we need to widen the canal; we are not convinced."

Miguel Antonio Bernal, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Panama, predicted a serious public debate, saying he worried that the project would "give a lot of profit to a very few people, but not to the Panamanian people."

Juan Felipe Pitty, president of the Panamanian Maritime Law Association, said he would be lobbying to make "one of the wonders of the world bigger and better." Now is the time, he said, to begin "the largest undertaking since the canal's original construction."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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