The Panama Canal: Why the Water Is Running Out

One point one million dollars. That's what a single ship paid... to skip the line. Panama Canal, August this year. Slot auctions averaged one point one million dollars, sixteen times what they cost a year earlier. And here's the thing that makes no sense. The canal connects two oceans. It is SURROUNDED by water. So what exactly is running out? Fresh water. Because the canal isn't a ditch between seas... it's a staircase, and every step is filled from a rain-fed lake. One ship through means about fifty-two million gallons of fresh water... released, downhill, into the sea. Gone. Every single transit. Because the canal climbs a hill. Ships have to be lifted about eighty-five feet above sea level, over the spine of Panama, and the thing doing the lifting is a lake sitting up there. Gravity fills each lock chamber from that lake. And gravity only runs one way... so the water that lifts you can never climb back up. It drains to the ocean. So picture that hill. Why couldn't they just cut straight through at sea level, the way Suez does?