Expanded Panama Canal Lock Flooding to Begin This Week

The contractor in command of the design and development of the brand new set of locks for the expanded Panama Canal says it is going to start flooding the lock complexes this week.

The contractor, Grupo Unidos por el Canal SA (GUPC), says it is going to open 5 valves on the Atlantic aspect this week that may start the circulation of water into the brand new lock chambers.

Project supervisor at GUPC, Jose Pelaez, says that the as much as 5 million cubic meters of water might be used to fill the 2 chambers on the Atlantic aspect. The operation is predicted to take a complete of 4 days and marks the

“After this phase, we will be able to start testing the first two gates and so on,” he added.

The total strategy of flooding and testing may take about three to 4 months whole, GUPC mentioned.

The Panama Canal growth mission entails the development of a 3rd lane of site visitors, or Third set of Locks, which is able to permit the passage of bigger vessels and successfully double the Canal’s capability.

The two new lock complexes may have a complete of 16 gates, eight within the Pacific and eight within the Atlantic, which have been delivered from Italy starting in August 2013 and have now been put in in positioned.

The Third Set of Locks are anticipated to turn out to be operational in 2016.