Megaships May Displace Boats in Lake Nicaragua
By Sara Miller Llana, USA TODAY

If planners in Nicaragua's capital get their way in the next month, the southern portion of Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua could be transformed from a placid tourist spot to a global transportation route plied by ships spanning the length of five soccer fields.

Last month, outgoing President Enrique Bolaños announced that Nicaragua would build an interoceanic canal that would be the second in Central America and, the planners say, the largest in the world.

Nicaragua's canal would handle ships with drafts too deep to squeeze through the Panama Canal — even after Panama's expansion to accommodate bigger ships, scheduled to be completed by 2015.

A U.S. company sailing such megaships from the East Coast to Japan would save us$2 million and 34 days round-trip per ship using a Nicaraguan canal instead of going around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, Mario Alonso says. He is on the Grand Canal Working Commission, a panel appointed by the previous administration and reappointed by Bolanos.

According to the project proposal, Nicaragua's canal would:

•Accommodate ships with a dead-weight tonnage (the amount a ship can safely carry) of 250,000 compared with the expanded Panama Canal's 130,000 capacity. There are 900 such megaships today and could be as many as 3,000 by 2019.

•Cost approximately us$18 billion.

•Employ 40,000 workers during construction and provide about 140,000 direct and indirect permanent jobs.

•Double the country's GDP by 2025.

Alonso, former president of the Central Bank of Nicaragua, plans to present legislation to the National Assembly before the end of the year. If it is approved as expected, the government will open the project to private bidders. Nicaragua would earn a percentage of profits — yet to be determined — for its contribution of geography and natural resources.

"We expect this legislation to pass," Alonso says. "It is such a tremendous opportunity to change Nicaragua, and (lawmakers) realize that."

According to the newspaper El Nuevo Diario, President-elect Daniel Ortega told a group of 25 academics from the USA this month that construction of the canal will be part of his government plan.

Wilmar Cuarezma, a researcher for the Institute for Nicaraguan Studies in Managua, says China and Italy are among the countries that have expressed interest in the new transportation route.

Among the biggest challenges: The cost estimate is more than three-and-a-half times Nicaragua's current GDP, which the U.S. State Department estimates at $4.91 billion. But supporters of the project say the increase in world maritime cargo, which a commission report on the canal says grew 3.9% annually over the past 15 years, would make the project worthwhile.

"If you look at where we are getting the supply of goods, so much of it is coming from Asia. More and more is being manufactured overseas," says Marc Hershman, professor of law and marine affairs at the University of Washington's School of Marine Affairs. "To underestimate (maritime) growth is probably wrong."

The importance of such megaprojects goes beyond economics and pragmatics. "A small country can suddenly become a big country," says Paul Finch, editor of The Architectural Review, a London-based magazine. "Look at Panama. If you didn't have a canal, who cares? (Such projects) make a powerful symbolic statement about the place of that country in the world."

Environmentalists are skeptical about an interoceanic canal. They say it will ruin the area's natural beauty: Tourists flock to view the misty sunsets over the twin volcanoes of Ometepe and Lake Nicaragua, which is inhabited by freshwater sharks.

"Environmentally, it would be a disaster," says Victor Manuel Campos, co-founder of the Humboldt Center, an environmental group in Managua. "The country would have to decide between saving the lake or building the canal."

For residents of Ometepe, the canal is difficult to picture. "I can't imagine it," says Maria Elena Alvarado, 22, as she washes her clothes in the lake. A farmer who grows beans and bananas, she worries whether ships crossing the 50-mile-long stretch of the lake would pollute the water, where she often bathes.

Alvarado concedes, though, that her isolated community of San Ramon needs something. It's a bumpy, two-hour bus ride to the port to catch a boat to the mainland. "It's hard here," she says. "If it helps us, I accept it."

Luisa Amanda Tenorio, 43, who has fished the lake's waters her entire life, sees a different picture for the area if the canal becomes a reality. "It would be beautiful, all those big boats," she says.