b'18American Journal ofTransportation ajot.com(WATERcontinued from page 16)waitingtoimplementmore permanent solutions based on new infrastructure would be an opportunity lost.e lN iO aND theh OuthisThePanamaCanalisa canal like no other. It relies on Lake Gatun to provide the water to lift the ships through thelocksforthe50-mile transit.Inearly2023,the weatherpatternknownas ElNioinducedadrought that dropped water levels in Lake Gatun. This is nothing new. The El Nio is regularly occurringclimatepattern thatinvolvesabove-average seasurfacetemperaturesin the central and eastern tropi-cal Pacific Ocean. It is often followed by La Nia, a cold eventinthePacificthat triggersarestorationofthe normal rainfall pattern. But 2023-2024 was a much more severe El Nio and as the drought limited the supply of water,thenumberofvesselsEXPERT LOGISTICS transiting the locks also had to be cut. By December the ships allowedtousethelockshadON DEMANDbeen reduced from the normal 36 to 22 and the queue to use the Panama Canal was nearly in triple figures. Vessel opera- ANYWHERE. ANYTIME. ON TIME. tors upwards to $4 million bid to jump the queue. ButthePanamaCanals problems werent in isolation. They are part of the ongoing stressontheglobalsupply chain,as7,700milesaway the Houthis assault on vessels transiting the water in the Red Sea, effectively choked off the SuezCanalcuttingservices between Asia and Europe and therelaystringsto-and-from the Americas. Andthealter-native to the Suez Canal route wasthemuchlongervoy-agesroughly an additional 4,400 miles on a voyage from Asia to Europe.For Asian voyages to and fromLatin AmericasCarib-bean and South Atlantic ports this is a major complication. Additionally,whilethecon-nection between Latin Amer-icasPacificportsto Asiais unaffected,routesthrough the Panama Canal to the East Coast of the US and to Europe arestrainedbytheCanals periodic droughts. It is worth notingthatChile,Mexico, Peru,Colombia,Ecuador, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil and El Salvador all rank within the top twenty nations usingthePanamaCanalin terms of long tons.Ultimately what the Canal authority must tackle is how to ensureadequatewaterlevels for the Canal and at what cost - both financially, socially and environmentally? t hem exicaNa lterNatiVe ? CONTACT USTheElNinodrought andthesubsequentthrot- 1000 Foust Road Brownsville, TX 78521tlingofshiptrafficthrough+1 (956) 831-4592the Panama Canal has againwww.portofbrownsville.com(WATERcontinued on page 20)'