Posted on 06/14/2013 8:43:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever.
The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China.
The company, HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. (HKND Group), has provided virtually no details about the canal and declined to comment to the AP on the record about its funding and backers.
The path would certainly cross Lake Nicaragua — meaning the water used by the canal's locks could seriously deplete the lake.
"We're at a crossroads because either you use Lake [Nicaragua] for floating boats or you use it for drinking water, but you can't use it for both things at once," Victor Campos, assistant director of the Humboldt Center environmental organization, told the AP.
Furthermore, global engineering and shipping experts told the AP that lowered demand for massive container shipping and increasing competition from potential alternate routes could make the project economic unfeasible.
"It's addressing a need that definitely is not here now and I'm not sure if it's 'a build it and they will come' sort of thing," Rosalyn Wilson, a senior business analyst at the Delcan Corporation, a Toronto-based transportation consultancy and author of the U.S. logistics industry's annual report. "I wouldn't invest my money in it."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Will it destroy Lake Nicaragua over time ?
They’re already controlling the Panama Canal, so if they build another one in the area, then they’ll really have the world by the ‘short curlies’...
$40 billion? That’s pretty cheap. Are they gonna use a few hundred nukes to dig it?
I know there has been a dream of a sea level canal across Nicaragua for more than a century. If there are going to be locks what’s the advantage?
So does a 1300 mile long wall
As if the Chinese are going to worry about what the environmentalists say.
There actually were proposals to use nukes to build a sea level canal there years ago.
There actually were proposals to use nukes to build a sea level canal there years ago.
Frankly, if we were not so danged scared of nukes, we could have used them to do all sorts of cool stuff now.
Hmmm. I wonder if they would work in “fracking”. :-)
The Island of Costa Rica.
Hmmm. That has a nice ring to it...
more like a few million Chinese with shovels...
Yup. They could take care of our little Syrian problem in very short order...
Hmmm. I wonder if they would work in “fracking”. :-)
Maybe little mini nukes. Probably not, though.
The Hutchinson Whampoa (Chinese) company has a 25 year lease to operate the container ports at both ends of the canal. They have nothing to do with the operation of the canal. Ships transiting the canal do not dock at either port unless they have containers to load or offload there.
Hmmm, let’s see...
The Chinese have overpopulated China and need more space...
The Nicaraguans are no competition racially — the Chinese will “out class” them and dominate the country and culture until the natives are essentially wiped out...
Then they will spread up and down the Americas...
This will be the largest migration in history, by a magnitude...
And, it is going to happen — only out and out racial war could possibly stop it.
Super-frack.
Now that we mention it, seems to me I DO recall proposals to use nucks to release shale oil.
That doesn't make sense. The canal would have to be hundreds of feet deep for most of it's length and could not use Lake Nicaragua. The lake is over 100 ft surface elevation and less than 100 feet deep.
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