Here is another story on the issues of safety in the Panama Canal operations.
The Panama Canal Authority insisted Thursday its new expanded locks are safe and handling increased traffic from the $5.25 billion expansion project inaugurated last June.
The statement came a day after The Associated Press, citing captains who navigate the waterway, reported that the locks’ rubber defenses have been worn down prematurely by repeated contact with the enormous vessels.
A Canal Authority statement said nearly 800 so-called New Panamax ships have transited the locks since June, an average of 5.3 vessels per day.
“During their nearly eight months of operations, the new locks have offered a safe and efficient service to maritime industry,” the authority said.
In a separate letter to the AP, the authority characterized problems as “isolated” and more than offset by the increased speed and volume of maritime traffic.
As part of the report, AP journalists traveled on a tugboat guiding a cargo container ship through the locks and witnessed rubber defenses that in multiple places were worn, hanging into the water or in some cases missing entirely from the walls of the locks. The bumpers are designed to protect the ships and the locks themselves.
Several captains told the AP that maneuvering the massive vessels in the lock chambers is a delicate operation, which one likened to “threading the eye of a needle.”
The authority statement said the bumpers “fulfill requirements to withstand the different conditions of the loads to which they are subjected, protecting the ships from contact with the concrete walls, avoiding damage.”
It did not address how long the defenses were designed to last, a question the authority had declined to answer for the article. Captains who navigate the new locks told AP the bumpers were expected to last at least a couple of years.