A plan to expand the Panama Canal so that it can accommodate larger ships has Emerita Rodriguez worried her home may soon be under water.

Rodriguez lives with her husband and three children on a small island on Lake Gatun, a 420-square-kilometre man-made reservoir that supplies water for the canal.

President Martin Torrijos' government has said that no one will be forced from their homes if Panamanians approve a referendum later this year required for the expansion plan to go forward.

But Francisco Miguez, who is co-ordinating the canal-expansion master plan, said the projects being studied as part of the expansion include raising Lake Gatun's level.

And recently officials from the Panama Canal Authority, which runs the waterway, met Rodriguez and others living on the lake's islands and shores, warning them of the possibility of rising water levels.

"They told us that those of us living near the lake would have to seek higher ground," Rodriguez said.

The United States opened the canal in 1914 and turned it over to Panama on December 31, 1999. About 14,000 ships representing 5 percent of the world's trade pass through the canal each year.

But 10 per cent of the world's ships cannot pass through the narrow waterway and operators say an expansion would help the canal remain one of the easiest shipping routes between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

If approved, the project is expected to take at least six years, and includes constructing new locks that would be 40 per cent longer and 50 per cent wider than the current locks on the 80-kilometre canal.

Miguez has said it would double the canal's capacity to 600 million tons of cargo each year.

The government has not said how much will be spent on the expansion, although independent analysts estimate it will cost between US$5 billion and US$8 billion.

The expansion plan does not contemplate building new dams or flooding areas, a relief to the estimated 186,000 people living in the Panama Canal basin, a 550,000-hectare area viewed as vital to the canal's ecosystem.

Source:China Daily