Sept. 04, 2006 - 20:54 MDT

ALIMENTARY ?

There is one situation that cannot be solved electronically - the transport of goods, heavy cargo -- worldwide. An article in Sunday's The Denver Post discusses a possible future problem. By Marc Lacey of The New York Times, quoted here in full.

SKEPTICAL PANAMA MAY LET CANAL LAPSE

The former marvel has bcome a traffic bottleneck, and many ships are too big to pass through, but government officials fear voters will reject an expensive upgrade

PANAMA -- "Once the equivalent of a modern, multilane highway, the Panama Canal may be on the verge, say those who run it, of becoming something closer to an old, congested country road."

"The increasing number of ships hovering offshore awaiting a chance to cross the isthmus is just one sign of the 92-year-old canal's status as a bottleneck."

"On top of that, hundreds of modern superships are too wide to squeeze into the canal's aging locks at all."

"All this would seem to be evidence of the need to modernize the canal."

"But a government plan to do that, which Panamanians will vote on in a referendum in October. may be in danger of failing because of a host of considerations that say much about this country's difficult past and challenging present."

"Taking possession of the canal from the United States in 1999 was a source of enormous pride for Panama, especially since canal authorities subsequently dispelled fears that the withdrawal of American experts would turn it into a flop."

"Nonetheless, many Panamanians intend to vote against the expansion plan, which would construct new three-step locks on either end of the canal."

"They intend to ignore government cries that doing so could prompt shippers to seek alternate routes and could turn the canal into an outmoded ditch."

"The project is expected to cost $5.2 billion, the government estimates, almost as large as the country's annual $6.5 billion budget."

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This is one article which I think should have more facts and figures. Speculative reporting needs more to back up the premise perhaps.

I can't imagine the super-tankers and super-cargo ships making the trip around the Horn (what was it they called that passage in school ? The Straits Of Magellan ?) Just doesn't seem practical to me. Perhaps Panamanian diplomats should get very busy and put it to the ship lines that perhaps they should pay part of the cost of modernizing the canal. Certainly payment for use of the canal thereafter would bring in much more after modernization.

We can't back up for a running start, it would be nice if we could, perhaps our country made a grave mistake in giving control of the canal to Panama. Or perhaps that adminstration could see the need and planned to hand it off to the Panamanians. Of course our present budget, the war in Iraq, our presence in Afghanistan (whose dope crop from the poppies is larger than ever before) precludes our spending as much money on the canal as Panama itself could come up with.

Yet it does seem a shame to see that grand canal suffer its demise due to the lack of citizens desire to spend enough to modernize and widen it enough to handle present day traffic.

Will it become a two way canal, ALIMENTARY ? . . . . . . . . . . . .

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