The people of Panama have given the go-ahead to the most extensive overhaul of one of the modern world’s greatest engineering achievements. On Sunday, Oct. 22, almost 80 percent of voters approved a referendum that will allow a $5.25-billion expansion of the Panama Canal to proceed. The project consists of building a new lane of traffic along the existing canal through the construction of a new set of locks. In an interview the day after the referendum, Alberto Alemán Zubieta, the administrator of the Panama Canal Authority (or ACP), the autonomous government agency that maintains the waterway, said the project
Lima, Peru � A Brazilian consortium constructing a dam in Southern Brazil has come up with a plan to repair the damage that led to a failure in the structure�s diversion tunnels that led to the draining of the facility�s reservoir in June. The $523.9-million Campos Novos Dam was slated to go fully on-line this month but on June 20, two of three gates on a diversion tunnel built to divert the flow of the Canoas River failed. Officials now estimate more than 1 billion cubic meters of water from the reservoir flowed downstream and was captured by the reservoir
While the glory days of the Spanish conquest have ebbed into the Peru's uneasy past, its capital remains a major modern metropolitan center with all the headaches that entails. Mass transit ranks high among the problems it is struggling to bring under control. Currently, the city has undertaken an ambitious public works program that is designed to transform the chaotic road system into an organized network of upgraded thoroughfares and efficient mass transit. The 20-year plan, an extension of efforts begun in the mid-1990s, has begun to take physical form with the Miguel Grau Freeway in the heart of central