Panama Canal
Seventy-three years after it opened to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Panama Canal remains one
of the engineering marvels of the world. At one end of the 50-mile-long waterway, the 12,000 ships that traverse it annually are lifted 85 ft. above sea level by a series of
locks, enabling the ships to sail through the mountainous spine of the Panama Isthmus~ When they reach the opposite coast, another set of locks floats them gently back down to the ocean. The operation of these aquatic elevators consumes a prodigious amount of fresh
water. Each time a ship passes through the canal, some 52 million gallons must be pumped into the locks and then, after the ship has passed, flushed out to sea. "The locks are like giant water closets," explains an official of the Panama Canal Commission. "Once you pull the chain, you never see the water again."
You say, "Each time a ship passes through the canal, some 52 million gallons must be pumped into the locks." No pumps are required to fi11 the canal's locks. They operate on the principle of water running downhill. Until now, the rainfa11 trapped in Gatun and Madden lakes has sufficed?
(Time, April6, 1987)
By Fausto Fabio de Araujo