For ships that ply the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, using the Panama Canal certainly can save fuel and time. But the shortcut has its costs, and these are not limited to the approximately US$200,000 that large vessels must pay for the 50-mile (80-km) passage. In each such trip, the channel’s lock system consumes 52 million gallons (197 million liters) of water from the Panama Canal watershed, which supplies drinking water for Panama City and supports biodiversity-rich tropical forests. With more than 14,000 ships transiting the canal annually, that amounts to a yearly loss into the ocean of around 730 billion gallons (2.76 trillion liters) of freshwater—nearly 20 times the annual consumption of Portland, Oregon. So it is not surprising that... [Log in to read more]