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This topic is about the Panana Canal broadly, but it is also about human mental blockage.
I'm not taking a position one way or the other here, but I note that in a Zoom meeting, RobertDyck offered the opinion that keeping salt out of the Panama Canal was worth the hardship of running dry when rains stop.
The deep dive in the post below reveals that keeping salt out of the water way is indeed the main factor leading to the present difficulty.
The mental block is this:
The Panama Canal is (and always has been) a fresh water passage, because it is elevated above the oceans on either side.
The Suez Canal, in contrast, is a sea level passage, so the water is a mixture of the two saltwater bodies at either end.
One solution to the mental block would be to accept salt in the Panama Canal, and make whatever adjustments are needed to insure fresh water supplies for the population.
However, another option is to desalinate seawater to make up for missing rain, and either nuclear power or solar power could do that.
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Here is an article that reveals the nature of the mental block ...
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/savi … 11626.html
Bloomberg
Saving the Panama Canal Will Take Years and Cost Billions, If It’s Even Possible
Peter Millard and Michael D McDonald
Tue, January 2, 2024 at 7:00 PM EST·8 min read
954 comments(Bloomberg) -- The vestiges of an ancient forest tell the story of just how bad things are at the drought-stricken Panama Canal.
A few hundred feet from the massive ships hauling goods across the globe, gaunt tree stumps rise above the waterline. They’re all that remains of a woodland flooded more than a century ago to create the canal. It’s not unusual to see them at the height of the dry season — but now, in the immediate aftermath of what’s usually the rainy period, they should be fully submerged.
Lea esta historia en Español.
They’re a visible reminder of how parched conditions have crippled a waterway that handles $270 billion a year in global trade. And there are no easy solutions. The Panama Canal Authority is weighing potential fixes that include an artificial lake to pump water into the canal and cloud seeding to boost rainfall, but both options would take years to implement, if they’re even feasible.
With water levels languishing at six feet (1.8 meters) below normal, the canal authority capped the number of vessels that can cross. The limits imposed late last year were the strictest since 1989, when the conduit was shut as the US invaded Panama to extract its de facto ruler, Manuel Noriega. Some shippers are paying millions of dollars to jump the growing queue, while others are taking longer, costlier routes around Africa or South America.
The constraints have since eased slightly due to a rainier-than-expected November, but at 24 ships a day, the maximum is still well below the pre-drought daily capacity of about 38. As the dry season takes hold, the bottleneck is poised to worsen again.
“As a canal, as a country, we need to take some measures because it isn’t acceptable,” Erick Córdoba, the manager of the water division at the canal authority, said in an interview. “We need to calibrate the system again.”
Read More: Shippers Spend $235 Million in Bid to Bypass Panama Congestion
The canal’s travails reflect how climate change is altering global trade flows. Drought created chokepoints last year on the Mississippi River in the US and the Rhine in Europe. In the UK, rising sea levels are elevating the risk of flooding along the Thames. Melting ice is creating new shipping routes in the Arctic.
Under normal circumstances, the Panama Canal handles about 3% of global maritime trade volumes and 46% of containers moving from Northeast Asia to the US East Coast. The channel is Panama’s biggest source of revenue, bringing in $4.3 billion in 2022.
To allow for 24 vessels a day through the dry season, the canal will release water from Lake Alajuela, a secondary reservoir. If the rains begin to pick up in May, the canal might be able to start increasing traffic, according to Córdoba.
But those are short-term fixes. In the long term, the primary solution to chronic water shortages will be to dam up the Indio River and then drill a tunnel through a mountain to pipe fresh water 8 kilometers (5 miles) into Lake Gatún, the canal’s main reservoir.
The project, along with additional conservation measures, will cost about $2 billion, Córdoba estimates. He says it will take at least six years to dam up and fill the site. The US Army Corps of Engineers is conducting a feasibility study.
The Indio River reservoir would increase vessel traffic by 11 to 15 a day, enough to keep Panama’s top moneymaker working at capacity while guaranteeing fresh water for Panama City, where developers have erected a mini-Miami of gleaming skyscrapers over the past two decades. The country will need to dam even more rivers to guarantee water through the end of the century.
Moving the proposal forward won’t be easy. It will need congressional approval, and the thousands of farmers and ranchers whose lands would be flooded for the reservoir are already organizing to oppose it.
It’s not the first time Panamanians are banding together to push back against a major infrastructure initiative. Last year, protesters regularly blocked roads after the government rushed to keep First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s $10 billion copper mine operating. Authorities have since said that they will shut the mine, a project many view as an ecological disaster.
Elizabeth Delgado, 38, lives in the last house along the road to the Indio River. It’s one of the first that will get flooded if the reservoir is built. During major storms, the Indio rises enough to get within a few meters of her unpainted wooden home, where her family lives off of the rice, plantains and cassava she grows. She has no intention of moving.
“How are we supposed to survive someplace else where we won’t know what to do?” Delgado said. “They’ve told us that we’re going to have to leave, but we’re going to stick with our land.”
Another potential fix is decidedly more experimental. In November, a small plane operated by North Dakota-based Weather Modification Inc. arrived in Panama to test cloud seeding, the process of implanting large salt particles into clouds to boost the condensation that creates rain.
But cloud seeding has mostly been deployed successfully in dry climates, not in tropical countries like Panama.
Some shippers have expressed frustration that the canal authority isn’t moving faster to address low water levels.
“No significant infrastructure projects have gone ahead in Panama to increase the fresh water supply,” Jeremy Nixon, chief executive officer of Japanese container transportation company Ocean Network Express Holdings Ltd., or ONE, wrote in a letter to Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen that was seen by Bloomberg. “We sincerely hope that as ONE, and on behalf of our customers, that some urgent action can now be taken.”
Panama’s presidential palace didn’t respond to a request for comment on the letter.
A combination of climate change and infrastructure expansion are to blame for the canal’s woes. The canal authority completed a new set of locks in 2016 to increase traffic and keep pace with the growing size of cargo ships. What it didn’t do was build a new reservoir to pump in enough fresh water.
Then the drought hit. As of November, 2023 was the driest year on record at Barro Colorado Island in Lake Gatún, according to Steve Paton, the director of the physical monitoring program at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Global warming is intensifying the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which has brought dry conditions to Panama and is expected to last at least through March in the Northern Hemisphere. Lake Gatún drains faster during severe dry seasons, and rising temperatures accelerate evaporation.
Last year was “totally different from the others,” said Gabriel Alemán, the head of the Panama Canal Pilots’ Association. He’s steered ships through the canal for more than 30 years. “We haven’t reached the peak of the impact.”
In 2023 the trade winds never fully kicked in, which contributed to record water temperatures off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Panama. Weak winds also mean that rain clouds don’t make it all the way to Gatún. On many days, it pours in Panama City while the lake only gets a few drops.
Read More: Ocean Temperatures Hit 90F Degrees, Fueling Weather Disasters
The crisis has set back available shipping routes by more than a century. When it began operating in 1914, the canal provided an alternative to the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan to send goods between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Shippers are now returning to all three options to avert bottlenecks in Panama, although vessels have recently diverted from the Suez to avoid attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels. While the Suez is a sea-level canal, the Panama is a freshwater channel reliant on artificial lakes, making it vulnerable to drought.
Jorge Luis Quijano, a consultant and former head of canal authority, says it could take a year to get back to normal volumes. Quijano says he saw the problem coming a decade ago, when he supervised the addition of a new set of locks to accommodate larger vessels in the canal. The locks are engineering marvels, but they’re also water hogs.
Salt water mixes with fresh water when the canal’s locks fill up. To prevent the country’s biggest source of potable water, Lake Gatún, from getting salty, the canal discharges enough lake water to fill up 76 Olympic-sized pools with each vessel. Giant basins inject some of this water back into the lake, but because this process increases salinity, it can only be used on a limited basis, Quijano said. Before his term ended, he lobbied the government to start construction of an additional reservoir, but to no avail.
As officials look for lasting solutions, local residents are feeling the effects of the prolonged drought. Raquel Luna, 70, has lived on the edge of Lake Gatún since she was 16. Five of her six adult children live up the road.
Most years, she charges visitors one US dollar a head to park at her shaded patch of lakefront. A row of palm trees is normally used to tie boats. But now, they’re 20 feet from the water line. Visitors need to scramble across rocks and mud to get to the water. She’s hardly getting any takers.
“Nobody is coming,” she said. “They like it when the water level is high.”
--With assistance from Hayley Warren.
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For RobertDyck....
In the Zoom meeting, you offered a suggestion for solving the Panama Canal water supply problem.
At the time, I did not have the insight provided by the in-depth article above, which revealed that protecting the fresh water supply for the population was (and is) the highest priority for the Canal Authority.
If you recall what you suggested, this topic is available for you to offer it to a wider audience.
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Now that I understand that protecting the fresh water supply for the residents of Panama is the highest priority for the Canal Authority, I am better able to attempt to (at least try to) come up with a solution.
The only solutions on hand (apparently) are (a) to dig a big lake and tunnel the water to the canal or (b) seed clouds.
There are other solutions ...
1) Build a huge desalination plant and pump desalinated water into the canal when rain is insufficient
2) Build a wall along the ship lanes, to keep fresh water in Gatun Lake separated from sea water in the shipping lanes.
The wall could be quite inexpensive, since it would have no function other than to separate two bodies of water, but even with very inexpensive material, such a wall would ** still ** be expensive, because the canal is so long and it is quite deep.
Forum members may well have better ideas.
This topic is wide open for suggestions to help the folks in Panama enjoy continued supplies of fresh water, while shippers are afforded the opportunity to navigate the canal with minimal delay.
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There ** is ** an alternative to nuclear power to desalinate seawater .... The surface of Lake Gatun and much of the passage between the oceans is potentially available for solar panels. Both Void and SpaceNut have shown us images of solar panels deployed over water in China and other locations around the world.
The folks in Panama would need a lot of solar panels to desalinate enough seawater to support ship traffic, but there ** is ** a lot of sunlight to work with in that part of the world.
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There are reasons to do this before the crisis in the Middle East, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and missile, terrorism events, Iran drone attacks. I'm not sure if it was 'Covid' or regulation but there was a huge backlog of cargo ships at southern California ports, they event decided to go the long way around and use the Panama canal, before this in March 2021, the Suez Canal was blocked by the Ever Given, a container ship that had run aground in the canal slowing down world shipping.
Australia has a similar process but for 'Drinking Water' they take in seawater, sometimes sell it as slat after a desalination in Australia, solar powered desalination is used for smaller or more remote frontier communities.
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For Mars_B4_Moon re #6
Thank you for the links you provided, and for your comments and suggestions! This is indeed an urgent problem, not only for residents of Panama and their customers, but the the entire public that benefits from convenient and reliable passage through the canal.
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I found a solar panel installation company online and entered the following into their inquiry page:
The Panama Canal Authority might be a customer for a solar panel installation. They are short of water due to Climate Change, and are looking for solutions. At this point, the only solutions they've considered are creating a lake elsewhere, and shipping fresh water to Gatun Lake. The other idea is to seed clouds. A nuclear power plant could desalinate seawater, but I think that would be a hard sell. On the other hand, Panama has lot's of open water where solar panels could be floated, and the output of the desalination facility could be directed to the population so they don't have to pull water from Gatun Lake as they are doing now. This proposal would require partnership with a major desalination enterprise, but those exist. Best wishes for success. This proposal may well be at the upper level of your corporate experience, but aside from the challenge of securing the needed panels, it should be do-able. (th)
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A couple issues. Here in Manitoba lakes are getting infected with zebra mussles. When people carry a fishing boat on a trailer from Ontario to Manitoba, zebra mussels adhere to the hull of the boat. They're difficult to get off. In nature they adhere to rocks, and must stick strongly enough that waves in a storm do not wash them off. They not native to North America, they're from southern Russia and Ukraine. Cargo ships from Europe crossed the Atlantic, sailed up the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Great Lakes. When traveling through the ocean they fill ballast tanks to sit low in the water to avoid capsizing in rough seas, but empty those ballast tanks in the Great Lakes to navigate shallow water. Zebra mussels are beleived to have been in that ballast water. Since the 1980s this has been an issue. Fishing boats carry them to inland lakes.
Ships traversing the Panama Canal have probably already brought alien species to the lake in Panama. But most salt water sea life cannot survive in fresh water. Pumping salt water into the lake could change that.
Another concern is contaminating water that is used as drinking water or irrigation by locals. And another is salt accumulating in soil around the coast, making farmland no longer arable.
Desalination is not necessary. Tom was right, water to move one ship is always the same regardless of size. The reason is the water to lift or lower a ship is beneath the ship, not around it. It takes one lock full of water to move one ship all the way from an ocean coast up to the lake, and another lockfull of water to drop the ship on the other side. Volume of water is surface area of the lock, multiply by distance raised or dropped for a single lock cycle. Doesn't matter if another ship is in the lock in front or behind, same volume of water per ship.
My solution is a reservoir beside the seaside lock, the lowest lock. When the lock drains down to sea level, instead of draining the water into the ocean, drain it into the reservoir. That water will come from the lake, fresh water. Pump water from the reservoir back up to the lake. It must be actively pumped because water level must be below sea level for the lock to work. A roof to keep rain out so you don't need to pump rain water out too. Every time a ship goes through in either direction, a lock full of water is drained into the reservoir. When the reservoir water level is sea level, it's full, the seaside lock can't work anymore. Backup is to drain lock water into the sea, but that defeats the point. So this system must actively pump a lockfull of water back up to the lake in the time that a lock normally operates.
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For RobertDyck re #8
Thank you for sharing your points from the Zoom meeting!
You have clearly not had time to read the article, but I hope at some point you find time to do so.
The Canal Authority has NOT been using the fancy new holding tanks for the new Supermax locks, because of their discovery that salt was ** still ** entering the canal, despite the precautions intended.
The Canal Authority is considering building a new lake to hold fresh water, some distance from the canal, and using a conduit to carry fresh water from that new lake to the canal as needed.
I invite your comments on the actual thinking of the Canal Authority.
My guess is that since the canal has been in operation for over 100 years, the water in the canal and the related bodies of water is well infused with animal life from the two oceans. I deduce that that has not turned into a problem. The flushing of the canal by fresh water may account for the clearing of any such life, but I haven't seen any data one way or the other. All I can do is to note the absence of alarm about sea life in the canal.
I'll definitely be interested in your comments after you've had a chance to study the article.
I've adjusted my thinking to accommodate the Canal Authority concerns. While lifting seawater into the canal would certainly be the best solution from a cost/efficiency standpoint, the reluctance to introduce salt into that waterway is overruling, to the extent that the Authority is giving up revenue and creating havoc in shipping to preserve fresh water for the residents of the Nation of Panama.
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I realized this might cause some salt water to get into the lake. I hoped it would be so little that it wouldn't matter. When a ship enters the first lock from an ocean, a volume of water equal to the displacement of the ship will be pushed out of the lock. That much fresh water is released into the ocean. This isn't the problem. But when a ship exits the last lock, ocean water will enter the lock. Volume of ocean will equal the displacement of the ship. When the next ship enters that last lock from the next higher lock, fresh lake water from that higher lock is drained into the lower lock. So salt water is diluted with water left in the last lock, then firther diluted by water from the next higher lock. When this second ship moves into the last lock, a volume of water moves from the last lock to the 2nd from last. Again volume is equal to displacement of this second ship. Water from the last lock to 2nd last, is not pure salt water, it's dilutes as mentioned. This gets further diluted with water already in the 2nd last lock. When a 3rd ship comes through, water gets into the 3rd last lock. Each time it gets diluted. However, this process slowly transports water up the lock system. Ironically this is from ships exiting, from the lake to an ocean.
A second salt pathway: when the last lock drains down to sea level, that water goes into the reservoir. That will include diluted salt water, but only diluted once. If that's pumped up to the lake, that would be the primary source of salt water.
Solution may be to flush water into the final exit lock as the ship is exiting. The goal is to ensure salt water does not enter. Flush a volume of fresh water equal to the displacement of the ship. This is tricky, water must be flushed at the same rate as the ship. If the ship leaves the lock in 2 minutes, then a volume of fresh water equal to displacement of the ship must be flushed behind the ship in the same 2 minutes. The goal is to prevent salt water from being sucked in. Source of the fresh water for flushing will be the same reservoir. Flushing water quickly enough may require a second water storage tank placed higher, at the level of the second last lock. Drain water from the tank into the last lock behind the ship as it exits. Large drainage pipes to drain fast enough, with computer controlled valves to ensure water is drained at the same rate as the ship exits. Sensors could measure the speed of the ship as it exits. Ships would have to wait until water in the tank has a volume equal or greater than the displacement of the ship. The tank would be filled by pump from the reservoir that I mentioned.
Effect of this system is total water loss equals displacement of the ship, not volume of the lock. Rest of the water would be pumped from reservoir back up to the lake.
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For RobertDyck .... Thanks for further explaining your recommendation for improved procedures for water management.
I think (just guessing?) you may be missing the bigger point ... there isn't enough rain ....
The amount of water in the canal system has to provide for ship transit, and ** also ** for the fresh water needs of much of the population of Panama.
This is another guess on my part, but as I read the article, the managers of the system are aware of the risk of salt being drawn into the locks, so they are flushing the system to keep that salt from reaching up into the canal.
That said, as I think about the scenario you've provided (well written) word pictures, this would be a good example of a situation where animation would help someone visualize what you are talking about.
If your theory of this situation is correct (and it certainly ** might ** be) then there should be salt in the canal.
However, if my understanding of the Canal Authority policy is correct, they are managing the fresh water so that it is constantly greater than any incursion of salt water might be.
The result is that they deny traffic when water levels fall too far, which means they lose revenue.
I still get the impression you did not read the article.
These folks need more than a salt-water-incursion-prevention policy.
They need a massive supply of fresh water.
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For RobertDyck re your (quite interesting) theory of salt migration at the Panama Canal ...
After pondering your word picture for a while, I've come to the conclusion that your concept makes sense, except that it seems to me (in the absence of animation) that the problem would occur in both arriving and departing vessel situations.
The bay that opens to the ocean will fill completely with sea water. I don't see a way around that conclusion. The bay has to be deep enough to float a fully loaded vessel. The actual figures are published at the Canal Authority web site, but they are probably available at Wikipedia and perhaps other sites.
The depth of the bay that opens to the ocean is on the order of 40 feet. That's just a guess, but whatever the number is, that body of water is going to become entirely seawater. Those bays are open to the ocean for extended periods of time, so I think it is reasonable to assume thorough mixing takes place, because the vessel uses it's main drives to pull away when it departs, and that will shove seawater into the open bay. Upon arrival, on the other hand, it will push water in the bay out to make room for the hull, and sea water will be there to mix thoroughly while the vessel is settling in for the lift.
In short, I think there should be measurable salt near the entrances to the upper locks. However, the canal is a river, and like all rivers, the fresh water will push the salt (brackish) water back out to sea, just as the Mississippi pushes salt back out to the Gulf of Mexico after it rolls in with the tides.
***
The issue confronting the Canal Authority is not salt incursion. It is lack of rain. I am proposing they enlist either nuclear or solar power to desalinate ocean water and pump it into Gatun Lake to support the canal operations ** and ** to supply the population with fresh water when natural water flows are insufficient.
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Wikipedia offers a comprehensive history and status of the Panama Canal.
In studying the article today, I found further vindication of RobertDyck's forecast:
Environmental and ecological consequences
In 1978, it was published that "clearing the forest in the watershed might kill the canal".[150] In 1985, the forested portion had dropped to 30%.[151] As of 2000, deforestation through growth of human population, land degradation, erosion, and overhunting continued to be threats to the ecosystem of the Panama canal watershed.[150] Deforestation causes erosion, raising the bottom of the Gatun and Alajuala lakes lowering their water holding capacity.[151] Ship traffic routinely contaminates the water; In 1986, a crude oil spill east of the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal caused mortality to plants and invertebrates.[152]Especially with the 2016 expansion, invasive species can travel faster, either on the hulls of ships or in ballast water.[153] Lake water has become salty over time.[151]
While the authors of the article do not mention the cascading dilution effect predicted by RobertDyck, the report of increased salt in the canal waterway might be caused in part by the prediction.
Thus, a supply of salt-free water to resupply the canal during the dry season might be welcome.
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One can place solar panels across the surface of the lake to minimize land used to achieve the goal of power and quantity of water for use.
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For SpaceNut re Post #14
Thanks for your suggestion of floating solar panels on the Gatun Lake and it's tributaries!
For anyone who might be interested in the topic, PBS ran an interview with the Assistant Director of the Canal Authority on 2024/01/31.
https://www.pbs.org/video/high-dry-1706739837/
The only firm planning that seemed to be on the agenda is to build another reservoir to supplement the existing system.
Most of the issues at hand were discussed, but salt did not make the cut.
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