Panama Canal Expansion

During a senate debate on the Panama Canal Treaty in 1978, United States Senator S. I. Hayakawa of California argued, "We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square."

One argument opponents of the treaty used was the claim that Panama would never be able to manage the canal effectively.

That was then. Now, under the auspices of Panama, a massive project to triple the cargo capacity of the original canal is halfway completed. It is scheduled to open in 2015.

The project is truly international. "The 16 lock gates," The Washington Post reports,  "some weighing 4,000 tons, were designed by the Dutch and built by Italians. Beginning next month, they will be lifted onto a barge by Belgians and shipped by South Koreans to Panama in a project managed by the French."

The United States is almost nowhere to be seen. Which doesn't mean we will be unaffected. Ports on the US East Coast, including New York City, Baltimore, Norfolk and possibly Savannah and Miami are being modernized to handle the larger ship sizes allowed by the expansion.

The modernization may even improve mobility of the U.S. Navy. Since completion of the USS Essex class of aircraft carriers at the end of WWII, aircraft carriers have been too wide to transit the canal. This will no longer be a problem after adding new channels 180 feet wide.

The expanded canal is expected to open in April 2015, The original canal opened in 1914, a bit more than a century earlier.