The Panama Canal Today

Today, the Panama Canal is still a roaring thoroughfare (although an increasingly outdated one). After more than 60 years under the near-exclusive control of the United States, Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera of Panama and President Jimmy Carter negotiated a path to full Panamanian sovereignty. Their Panama Canal Treaty, which went into effect in 1979, granted full control of the canal to Panama after a transition period of 20 years. On Dec. 31, 1999, the Panama Canal Authority assumed full control of the waterway.

Miraflores Locks
Kip Ross/National Geographic/Getty Images
Highway traffic stops as freighters pass through the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal.

And although the Panama Canal Authority has managed the canal successfully since then, the waterway's age and its volume of traffic are starting to catch up to it. It's become somewhat of an international trade traffic jam, with fleets of ships waiting offshore to go through. Many vessels are also no longer built as Panamax ships, the maximum size the canal can accommodate. The owners of post-Panamax supertankers and naval ships find it more efficient to increase their loads and take alternate routes than wait in line at Panama.

Panamanians who depend on the canal for their country's livelihood can't afford to see it become obsolete. With Nicaragua planning its own canal and threatening the old monopoly, Panamanians enthusiastically voted in favor of a 2006 referendum to modernize the canal. An additional larger set of locks -- a third lane -- will double the waterway's capacity [source: Lacey].

Some environmentalists, however, aren't too happy about the expansion plan. The canal's traffic, as well as the populations of Panama City and Colón, already take a tremendous toll on the area's watershed -- an area filled with diverse wildlife and important to intercontinental migrations. But planners say that the new set of locks will use water-saving basins to conserve 60 percent of the water used on each transit [source: Matalon]. Reforestation of surrounding areas should also help keep the reservoirs flowing and traffic bustling.

My Fellow Americans?
The U.S. Constitution requires that a president be a "natural-born citizen," that is, born on American soil. This stipulation caused a slight bump for 2008 presidential candidate John McCain. The Republican nominee was born in 1936 while his military father was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. Although a 1937 law granted retroactive citizenship to American children born in the Canal Zone after 1904, one analysis suggested this law came a year too late to make McCain "natural-born." However, such technicalities didn't cause any real issues for McCain's run. The Senate approved his eligibility in April 2008 [source: Liptak].

To learn more about the Panama Canal and international trade, traverse the links on the next page.