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I hadn't seen that. Why are they stranded?
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How many people are waiting on their new PM lathes...
- Thread starter Mr Mike
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A drought in Panama is limiting the number of ships per day they will allow through due to the water discharge in the locks. I read it is capped at 32 ships per day, so it will take a while for this backlog to clear.
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I always thought they move the water back and forth, so very low loss of water.
Not by design to save water, just because it makes sense.
My understanding is the water for the locks comes from the lake in the middle, so ships transiting each direction removes a lock worth of water each time.
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I don’t think that is possible, the water needs to flow from the lake to the ocean/sea to prevent salt water from infiltrating the freshwater lake.
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no, the idea would be to move it from lock to lock.. so salt water to salt water, no need to touch the lakes water.
that's an awful lot of water moving from a lake to the ocean.
The ships pass through the lake, so that can’t work. If they move salt water from the ocean/sea through the locks, then it will end up in the lake when they open the last lock, making it a brackish lake that will kill all the existing aquatic life, and be unsuitable for drinking water for the population in the area. They would also need to pump the water uphill resulting in massive electricity bills.
The lakes were created when they dammed the river in that area, so normally there is plenty of water flowing out to the ocean anyways, the problem now is they are going through an extended drought that has reduced the river flow into the lake. If the water wasn’t used for the locks, then it would need to go to the ocean anyways.
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so if the ship goes into the lake from the ocean, where is the water that the lock before the lake going? That has to be brackish as well.
Plus the ships are so dirty, that they bring in a ton of water from their bilges so that goes in the lake..
Plus the ships are so dirty, that they bring in a ton of water from their bilges so that goes in the lake..
The water is flowing downhill from the lake through the locks, so the uppermost lock is filled by the lake, that lock fills the one below, and so forth until it reaches the ocean level. The salt water should stay in the lower level lock and not make it up to the lake, or get diluted enough that it doesn’t have a significant impact on the lake. The locks discharge 26 million gallons of water to the lower level each time they equalize levels, so that is a lot of dilution. When I worked in the wastewater industry, we joked the solution to pollution is dilution. You can’t prevent any salt from entering the lake this way since there could be some left in the ship engine cooling system for example, but nothing like if the upper most lock was filled with salt water and then opened to the lake to let the ship in or out, you would be introducing a large volume of salt water into the lake many times per day.
I’m not familiar with all the operations of the canal, but I would assume they prohibit any bilge discharges while in the lake. It only takes 12 hours to go through, so they should be able to wait to empty the bilge until after they get out.
I’m not familiar with all the operations of the canal, but I would assume they prohibit any bilge discharges while in the lake. It only takes 12 hours to go through, so they should be able to wait to empty the bilge until after they get out.