In 2023 the trade winds never fully kicked in, which contributed to record water temperatures off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Panama. Weak winds also mean that rain clouds don’t make it all the way to Gatún. On many days, it pours in Panama City while the lake only gets a few drops.


The crisis has set back available shipping routes by more than a century. When it began operating in 1914, the canal provided an alternative to the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan to send goods between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Shippers are now returning to all three options to avert bottlenecks in Panama, although vessels have recently diverted from the Suez to avoid attacks from Yemen’s Houthi rebels. While the Suez is a sea-level canal, the Panama is a freshwater channel reliant on artificial lakes, making it vulnerable to drought.


Jorge Luis Quijano, a consultant and former head of canal authority, says it could take a year to get back to normal volumes. Quijano says he saw the problem coming a decade ago, when he supervised the addition of a new set of locks to accommodate larger vessels in the canal. The locks are engineering marvels, but they’re also water hogs.


Saltwater mixes with fresh water when the canal’s locks fill up. To prevent the country’s biggest source of potable water, Lake Gatún, from getting salty, the canal discharges enough lake water to fill up 76 Olympic-sized pools with each vessel. Giant basins inject some of this water back into the lake, but because this process increases salinity, it can only be used on a limited basis, Quijano said. Before his term ended, he lobbied the government to start construction of an additional reservoir, but to no avail.


As officials look for lasting solutions, local residents are feeling the effects of the prolonged drought. Raquel Luna, 70, has lived on the edge of Lake Gatún since she was 16. Five of her six adult children live up the road.


Most years, she charges visitors one US dollar a head to park at her shaded patch of lakefront. A row of palm trees is normally used to tie boats. But now, they’re 20 feet from the water line. Visitors need to scramble across rocks and mud to get to the water. She’s hardly getting any takers. “Nobody is coming,” she said. “They like it when the water level is high.”


This article is republished with kind thanks to Bloomberg


94 | ISSUE 107 | MAR 2024 | THE REPORT


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