The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) said “water filtration” issues were discovered during testing of the new Pacific locks.
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) said a leak of water through a massive concrete step in one of its locks is not expected to change the opening date for the canal.
The ACP responded Monday to queries about a video of the leak at the Cocoli Locks at the Pacific end of the canal were posted on the internet by the website gCaptain, saying it was detected during operational testing that began in June.
“This stage of testing is meant to detect and correct any imperfection,” ACP said in a statement. “As part of this testing, some water-filtration issues were detected in a specific area of the new Cocoli Locks, located on the Pacific side of the waterway. The imperfection was detected in the step that divides the middle chamber of the locks from the lower chamber, known as lockhead 3.”
The video shows water pouring out of crack or series of cracks that extend across the middle half of what the authority described as a “step” that divides the lock chambers. Ships using the canal will float over the step when the canal is completed
ACP said, “The Panama Canal technical team is closely involved to ensure that these tests meet all quality standards and is working with Grupo Unidos por el Canal, S.A. (GUPC), the contractor for the Third Set of Locks project, to resolve this issue. At this time and based on preliminary evaluations, the project’s completion timeline as well as the expected date for commercial operation are not expected to change.”
It added that GUPC, a consortium of four large international construction companies “has the obligation to ensure the long-term performance on all aspects of the construction of the locks and to correct this issue. Moreover, GUPC’s contract with the ACP dictates that the group is responsible for modifications and corrections. During this testing phase, the Panama Canal technical team is closely involved to ensure that the work meets the quality standards stipulated in the contract.”
In another development having to do with the new locks in the Panama Canal, the general secretary of the Union of Tugboat Captains and Deck Officers of the Panama Canal and a tug boat pilot are expressing concerns about the fact that the new locks will operate without “mules,” the locomotives that move boats through the current canal.
While the ACP has always said that ships will be guided through the new locks with tugs, Ivan
de la Guardia, general secretary of the Union of Tugboat Captains and Deck Officers of the Panama Canal, told the BBC that the canal administration has “not given them any guidance and has failed to include them in the relevant technical committee.”
“We haven’t had any training or any briefing by anyone from the canal administration on how they plan to do this,” he told the broadcaster. “This raises a big red flag because there are obvious safety concerns.”
Panama Canal Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano told the BBC that the ACP is providing training, and that this includes construction of a scaled model of the canal and two ships that were built at a cost of $6 million so that pilots can practice.
Captain Jose Claus, a Panama Canal pilot, told gCaptain that the new locks may be too small to hold both tugs and the large ships that some companies are planning to have transit the waterway, and also expressed concerns about ships will be affected by wind. He claimed transit times could be much longer.
The pilots have expressed their concerns about this issue in the past, including in this article and video published last November on the website Longshore and Shipping News, maintained by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Panama Canal leak not expected to delay opening
