From The Star

Central America already has a canal – the famed Panama Canal – but Chinese businessman Wang Jing says he is going to build another. If it goes ahead, it will be a massive project with both supporters and opponents.

If it goes ahead, the proposed inter-oceanic channel will traverse Nicaragua from west to east, including the width of Lake Nicaragua.

If it goes ahead, the proposed inter-oceanic channel will traverse Nicaragua from west to east, including the width of Lake Nicaragua.

It is difficult to believe – but apparently true – that the Central American republic of Nicaragua remains committed to its plan to construct a waterway between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to rival Panama’s storied canal.

Not only that, but Nicaraguan authorities and their Chinese partners have now selected the route of the proposed canal – this according to a report posted July 14 on the indispensable website dredging.com, which bills itself as “the industry’s ground-breaking news provider.”

Oddly, the dredging.com report contained no actual information about the proposed route.

Fortunately, an AFP account from Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, does.

Estimated at 278 km. in length, the waterway is to traverse Nicaragua from west to east, beginning at the mouth of the Brito River on the Pacific coast not far from the border with Costa Rica and then continuing across Lake Nicaragua (105 km. wide), before tracing a series of the large lake’s tributaries and eventually reaching the Caribbean.

The eastern portion of the channel’s length will include the construction of a 400-square-kilometer lake, according to Chinese engineer Dong Yung Song. As a result, he said, the canal’s construction will not reduce the depth of Lake Nicaragua itself.

Last year, the government of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega – formerly a leftist rebel who led an armed struggle against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza – granted a concession to a Chinese company known as HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. to build the proposed canal.

Company president Wang Jing was in Nicaragua for the announcement of the route selection.

At a cost estimated at $40-billion – or four times Nicaragua’s current GDP – the project will also include the construction of two seaports and an international airport.

Supporters of the project say it will offer reduced travel time for cargo vessels making their way between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and will also be able to accommodate larger container ships than the Panama Canal can manage, either now or in the future.

Critics say they are concerned about the waterway’s environmental impact and also raise alarms about the potential for graft. Not everyone is convinced the massive project will benefit the country’s poorest citizens.

Nicaragua is the poorest country in the Americas, next to Haiti.

IMAGE: CANAL PROJECT PROFILE ISSUED BY THE NICARAGUAN GOVERNMENT

For more on this story go to: http://www.thestar.com/news/the_world_daily/2014/07/nicaragua_chinese_partnership_announces_planned_route_for_proposed_inter_oceanic_canal.html