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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

FTA: “...the canal and the lakes and rivers that make up its watershed, which also provides fresh water to three cities, including the capital.”

Presumably, “people actually need to live in the area, and cannot drink salt water” was a factor.

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It's because the Panama canal was constructed by connecting several previously naturally existing (fresh) waterways and a big lake, to the ocean on both side. The whole point of the locks is to raise and lower the ships to the higher elevation at which the lake sits. Water runs downhill, it starts as rain, then to rivers and lakes, then the ocean. So in this case rain and natural watershed basins drain into the lake and then the locks release it slowly down to progressively fill each lock, until the water is at the ocean, at which point it can't efficiently be separated from the seawater, so it just becomes part of the ocean.

The people there drink the fresh water and chose to settle in that area originally because ot was there. We then built a canal after. It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water source for the local folks.

> It wasn't like we built the Panama canal as a water source for the local folks.

Right, I am saying that the effect it would have on the existing water source is a probably a factor in why “allow more free mixing of saltwater / pump more seawater to deal with drought conditions impacts on the canal” is not done.

Not that the Canal was built as a water supply.

Gatun lake is man made. There was no lake as such prior to the building of the canal. There also weren’t a lot of people living in the area of what is now Gatun lake. Between Colon and Panama City was very sparsely populated.

About 40k people were displaced after building the Canal, not necessarily because they were in the way[0]. We like it there and I'd rather have fresh water than have the canal

0. https://www.amazon.com/Erased-Untold-Story-Panama-Canal/dp/0...

I’m surprised it’s that many people. I’d be interested to know if the displaced people primarily lived near the railroad. Colon was a small city back then so I did not think it could be so many people. We in the Zone weren’t taught much about the darker side of the building of the canal.

It seems like you could build a separate salt water basin that would hold the pumped sea water, so as to avoid having to pump it into Gatun lake. Then the salt water could be pumped into the locks to supplement the fresh water, when fresh water levels are running low. The pumps could be powered through solar or hydropower.

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