The Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND) is constructing a 172-mile transoceanic canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans costing $50 billion dollars. This collaboration between the private HK organization and the Nicaraguan government was granted in June 2014.
The groundwork of the project has already been initiated with roads being constructed for the purpose of the conveying heavy machineries and supplies needed for the construction. This will be called the Nicaragua Interoceanic canal designed to be longer, wider and deeper than the 51-mile Panama Canal. From what it looks like this is going to be one the greatest structures in the history of our planet.
As per the quotations of a report, according to Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez, a co-corresponding author of a paper titled “Scientists Raise Alarms About Fast Tracking of Transoceanic Canal Through Nicaragua,” said that the project’s “biggest environmental challenge is to build and operate the canal without catastrophic impacts to this sensitive ecosystem”.
Alvarez also states that “Significant impacts to the lake could result from incidental or accidental spills from 5,100 ships passing through every year; invasive species brought by transoceanic ships, which could threaten the extinction of aquatic plants and fish, such as the cichlids that have been evolving since the lake’s formation; and frequent dredging, impacting aquatic life through alterations in turbidity and hypoxia, triggered by re-suspension of nutrients and organic matter that exert a relatively high biochemical oxygen demand.”
CNN reports that HKND who is fully equipped for developing the canal has been provided 50 year old allowance by the Nicaraguan government in the year 2013 for the purpose of building and operating the canal. It is being anticipated that if all goes according to the plan the first ships to be scheduled to bypass the canal will be during the late 2019.