Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 March 1905 — A SEA[?]EVEL CANAL. [ARTICLE]

A SEA[?]EVEL CANAL.

Engineers Favor One as a Solution o» Waterway Problem. The engineering committee of the Isthmian Canal Commission has laid before that body the first definite plans for the construction of the Panama canal. These plans call for a sea-level canal to com $230,500,000 and that will require from ten to. twelve years to complete. The proposed waterway is to have a bottom width of 150 feet and a minimum depth of water of 35 feet; with twin tidal locks at Mirafiores. whose usable dimensions shall be 1,000 feet long and 100 feet wide. The engineering committee recommends that file Chagres river be controlled by a dam at Gamboa. Under no circumstances, according to the committee’s report, should the surface of the canal be more than 60 feet above the sea. and cost at this level being estimated at $178,013,406. A 30-foot level is estimated to cost $192,213,406. “With a sea-level canal across the isthmus,” the committee finds, “there would be a waterway with po restriction to navigation and which could easily be enlarged by widening or deepening at any time in the future, to accommodate an increased traffic, without any inconvenience to the shipping using it. Where*s, a lock canal is in reality a permanent .restriction to the volume of traffic and Size of ships that use it. The additional cost of a sea-level canal over that of a canal with locks with a summit level of flO feet above mean tide is $52,462,000, or $79,742,000 more than the estimated cost of the lock canal with a summit of 85 feet above mean tide, proposed by the former Isthmian Canal Commission, after allowing $6,500,000 for the Colon breakwater and direct entrance not previously estimated. This committee considers this additional expenditure fully justified by the advantages assured.”