Official sources reported that the Panama Canal aims to begin the first relocations of families affected by the construction of a third reservoir that will feed the world's only interoceanic freshwater waterway around May 2027. The Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is supplied by two reservoirs and is promoting the construction of a third in the Indio River basin. This $1.5 billion project will guarantee water supply for the next 50 years, thereby alleviating the pressure exerted by the climate crisis and the growth of Panama City and its surroundings on the water resource. «Around May (of 2027), to give a date, we would be having the first relocations of the population» that is «in the most critical area of the project, the area where the infrastructure would eventually be built,» stated John Langman, Vice President of the Water Projects Office of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), on Tuesday. This involves «around 50 families that would have to be attended to with that level of priority,» added Langman, who along with the Socio-Environmental Manager of the Indio River project, Karina Vergara, explained to accredited correspondents in Panama the progress of this initiative. The Indio River project affects about 500 families totaling some 2,000 people who are mostly engaged in family agriculture and extensive livestock farming, and who live in 38 communities in the area where the new reservoir will be located. «For the rest of the families, there is much more time because the lake will not be flooded until the final phases of the project, so we have about three additional years for the resettlement of the remaining families, around 450 additional families». The ACP is carrying out a process to explain to those affected the scope of the infrastructure project and the relocation options in an area near their current residence, taking into account both socioeconomic and cultural factors, according to the two officials. «Every resident in the lake area must be resettled,» stated Vergara, detailing that 85% of the affected people have provided information to the Canal about their situation and 66% participated in meetings with the ACP. The Canal aims to publish «the main tender documents for the works by the end of this year and to award the contract in the middle of next year». The project «will be of a design-build type, so the contractor will have to reach final designs and start works probably in early 2028, to finish in 2031». «2031 is the date we are currently handling for the completion of the project,» and «if there is a good year of rains» it could be counted on to have the resource of the new reservoir at the beginning of 2032, conceived to produce between 11 and 15 equivalent transits of Panamax ships, which pass through the century-old locks, added Langman. Panama put into service the expansion of the waterway in mid-2016, a third lane through which Neopanamax vessels pass, with triple the cargo of those that cross the century-old locks, a project costing more than $5 billion and which multiplied the profits of the navigable passage, through which 3 to 6% of world trade transits.
