Nicaragua Canal?

Very ambitious, but they have a long way to go before this becomes reality....It would be a real money maker though....

I have often pondered on a similar idea of having a second crossing in that area.

Given our present earth moving tech it's not out of reasonable capacity to do it!

Better get it done before the third world countries get enviro nutters messing in their governments and stop all future development progress.

What if they dig it deep enough to skip locks altogether, and just let the oceans sluice back and forth? Or would tidal conditions cause one direction to predominate?

In my location, I hate to think of Atlantic salmon, but what if it went the other way?

They'll likely use Lake Nicaragua. I assume it's a fresh water lake; so that would be a bad idea.

I heard just recently that Vanderbuilt used a rail line across Nicaragua for transporting people and material between the East and West coasts, before the Panama Canal was built.

What's wrong with using a freshwater lake? That Panama canal is fresh water powered and partly made up of a freshwater lake.

There's nothing wrong with using a fresh water lake in a lock system - but I was responding to Tornado, who suggested one large channel without locks, and letting the ocean water 'sluice back and forth'. The salt water intrusion into the lake would kill all the fresh water life in the lake.

The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are NOT the same level at the Panama Canal. Connecting them would upset the world's balance of the oceans depth then the EPA would really be ticked off and send Al Gore to film the end of the world AGAIN! Don't even get me started on how Jimmy Carter would be sooooo upset.

Are they using 2 lock systems-one from atlantic sea water to freshwater lake & other from lake to pacific ocean,to prevent lake contaminated by sea water?.

Regardless of what they do, if the ships are traversing Lake Nicaragua, there will be changes.

http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/biology/a_zm.html

Shouldn't be a problem being the lake is some 100+ feet higher than either ocean level.

They do plan on using the lake, which will destroy it as a freshwater lake. This sounds like a horrible idea.

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-workers-arrive-nicaragua-do-viability-studies-controversial-canal-1507360

Lets just widen and extend the Rio Grande over to the Pacific, and kill two birds with one stone.

We could have the world's longest moat to guard the border. But the wetbacks would just have a new swimming pool!

A good place to look for the future impact of a canal system through Lake Nicaragua is to look at Lake Gatun on the Panama Canal. Gatun is mostly an artificial lake created to support the canal and is quite fresh today. It supplies water to Colon and Panama City and supports many fresh water activities. As expected there have been accidental introductions of foreign species of which the Peacock Bass seems the one with the largest impact. It is now a popular sports fish for many users. I think the zebra mussel is limited in Lake Gatun due to low calcium levels. The specific conductivity (SC) of Lake Gatun is about 132 μS/cm and is considered very low. The SC of the ocean water will be greater than 40,000 μS/cm, a considerable difference. There is also the fact that all of the area receives about 350 mm of water each year as a rainforest. The salt water intrusions of the entering vessels is more than offset by precipitation and recharge. Lake Nicaragua is larger and will also be recharged with ample fresh rainwater. I am less concerned about salt intrusion into these systems than with introducing competing species with native species of aquatic life. Lake Nicaragua is likely similar to Gatun and I would not expect it to become brackish or salty ( I speculate this without any knowledge of the chemical quality of L. Nicaragua and may be corrected).

I am sure that there will be some form of invasion species because of the operation of the locks for incoming vessels. There is also the danger of some yahoo skipper that will want to dump bilges into the lake. It has happened in the great Lake system and the river that fronts my property. Zebra mussel are just one of the invading foreigners. I think Asian Carp are the next we will see. They entered the Mississippi system and could easily cross into Lake Michigan. Perhaps 100 years of operating the Panama canal has re-created a different balance than the onset and is now accepted as OK. I am sure if you were to rid Lake Gatun of its Peacock Bass, you would hear a very loud cry from the present day anglers.

PS. For references: Conductivity is often used similar to TDS and has a relationship of 0.5 (+/~0.1) of TDS on low measurements. A higher relationship exists in ocean waters. Most ground water aquifers will be in the 800μS/cm, lake Ontario is about 325μS/cm. We will accept drinking water with a conductivity up to about 2400μS/cm with some treatment. Problems with galvanic corrosion can occur on any elevated conductivity and most severe when it exceeds 1200μS/cm. Variations of acceptable levels can occur due to taste, corrosion, or other parameters.

Yeah, but Lake Nicaragua isn't an artificial lake, and it looks like they're going to be running these massive ships right through it.

I have to wonder if it's even necessary, considering that the Panama canal is being widened; and, whether invasive species get into the lake or not, we're talking about massive changes coming to the entire dynamic of the whole area, along with the people that live there.

There's no telling if it will be good or bad until everything is done.

Just looking at a map and considering the logistics, it makes no sense at all. The logical spot to do this, would be in Panama, where the land is the narrowest, and they could just expand the existing canal or dig another one.

I am sure the Nicaragua project is about money and reliability for the Chinese. Reliability of transportation of energy products and the use of super tankers is limited at present. There is likely a lot of politics involved on the part of the Chinese and they seem willing to put the $40 billion plus needed. It presently costs every ship $200,000 or more to pass the Panama. Don't forget the Nicaragua route was the preferred route even by the American Army Corp of Engineers.

There is a third option that may be on the table within a few decades and that is the North-west passage through the Canadian Arctic. There are at present a few days when ships can cross the passage, save the time and canal charges involved. It is expected that the Canadian Arctic will be open to shipping during the summer in the next 50 years. I think the Russians are also gearing up for their Arctic passage. Also the Chinese are busy building Ice Breakers even though none of their seas have ice. My guess is they are betting on the Arctic passage while hedging Nicaragua. They do not want to rely on anyone to build their trade empire. The West needs to wake itself from old thinking. We need to compete. Canada needs to invest in the Arctic in a big way. I am trying not to get political but some of our policies and abilities to co-operate suck.

For sure, China's becoming a really big gorilla in the room.

I was thinking earlier, it seems like the smart move for Central and South America, would have been to put a focus on manufacturing, and exported from both their western and eastern coasts. They could have had the US market sewed up.

Better yet, the US should have kept our own manufacturing base.

'...Better yet, the US should have kept our own manufacturing base....'

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That is pretty difficult to do when such strong disincentives are in place for maintaining manufacturing here.

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Taxes are disincentives through competition, specifically we highly discourage domestic production/employment by structuring most of the tax revenue to come from income. Not unlike the sin tax on alcohol and cigarettes, the tax on income tends to moderate the occurrence.

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Consumption would be a good place to shift a lot of that tax, so that income might not be so strongly discouraged.

Right. I wasn't blaming the manufacturers.

Between the feds and the states, 2014 will bring 40,000 new laws and regulations to the US.

Good point. The Nicaragua route may prove to be greater than 48 hours. I think the distance is 151 miles, so some differences. Panama may still be a viable time competitor. I will be crossing the Panama system from an LA cruise in February. Hope to see a few people I know working on a water plant to support the Panama expansion. Great thread and thanks for starting it. GA.

The only water that will be in the canal will be fresh. The reason they use canals with locks is to raise the boats above the salty oceans, over the land, and back down. Salt water will not be entering the system unless it is simply the small amount of wash water that will be clinging to the hulls. If the canal was at ocean levels on both sides with no locks in between, it would be different and the water from the land would flow down to the canal. The Lake would not be required. However, it is likely not going to be a sea level canal and no salty water will be pumped up from the oceans.

Yes trains were an important part of the building of the canal in Panama. Malaria and yellow fever were killing more than 50% of the workers and the French were bogged down and losing the battle to build the canal. They had underestimated the amount of earth that needed to be removed by many fold factors. The French went bankrupt and the Americans took over. Re-engineered and construction began with a good manager who knew about trains and he hired an epidemiologist who thought that mosquitoes were responsible for the deaths and were the root cause of Malaria and Yellow fever. A new revelation in the late 1800s. He was given a no holds barred freedom to help and ruled the project. The result was a cleaner work space, and a near lowering of the fevers to zero. Read the book by David McCullough for an interesting history..not boring at all.

IIRC the Caribbean Sea side is on average a few feet higher than the Pacific side. Closing the gap originally as North and South American continents came together is theorized to have cause the gulf stream to being circulating warm water north leading to significant new precipitation and buildup of large amounts of snow and ice contributing to increased glaciation.

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Who knows what the effects might be of allowing a massive flow to once again take place in that area.

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In typical Congressional brilliance, Congress at one time was considering plans to dig a second Panama canal, but this time using nuclear bombs for excavation.

How are you defining a massive flow?

a 300 foot wide 150 foot deep canals flow rates on a several foot drop over a few hundred mile run compared to oceanic circulation volumes is nothing.

Since my original statement ventured as far as 'who knows', I feel no need to back away from it.

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Fairly small shifts (of say a few million gallons a minute) might have much larger effects on the large flow patterns.... I reiterate, who knows?

I think you would have hellacious channel currents if you didn't have a barrier of some kind.

......ever see the Missouri river at Spring thaw? Divergent breakwaters ( rip-rap) every few hundred yards trying to slow down the current and keep the sediment from washing away. Its a 600 yard wide ditch.

My guess... this would be the same IF they made one big channel. That lake would disappear shortly. Still, it would have some economic benefits as do most of the changes we make in the environment.......... none of us are going back to coal oil for light, salt crocks for food storage or living without the modern conveniences we have. Progress means somebody or something has to take a hit.

There is a very interesting history behind the building of the Panama Canal. It brings together many aspects of Engineering, leadership, political will, microbiological epidemiology, and investor mistakes. I suggest it is worth the time to invest in reading a book by David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas.

Did you know that the Nicaragua route was the preferred route over Panama by almost all the Engineers including the US Army Corp of Engineers? Now 134 years later when the first decision was made, a Nicaragua canal may become a reality

For those not aware, there is on-going work to widen the Panama Canal, adding new locks and doubling the volume of cargo the canal can transport. The new locks will be 70 feet wider (180 ft) than the old locks (110 ft). The work is scheduled to be completed in 2015, though there have been cost overruns and political opposition which together threaten to delay the completion date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project

I believe this dovetails right into the overall planhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/business/worldbusiness/16iht-tanker.4.5739529.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 China is supersizing beyond the puny canal in panama

You have to respect China.

They have a pure business mentality, they don't get involved in regional politics, they don't look to own anything, and are instead, leasing long term rights to huge chunks of the planet, along with the resources....

Love em' or hate em', they are doing some really smart things, and they will be a force to reckon with, for quite some time.

http://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/1344876/chinas-expertise-secures-lead-role-iraqi-oilfields

I don't know if "respect" is a word that comes to mind for me, what I continue to see is a slow and methodical military chess mentality of boxing your opponent in. and yes its well thought out and executed.