Panama Canal Expansion Project

Due to be done in a few years, and for a while ahead of schedule (no longer at last check), this promises to save a bunch of carbon, and the new gates are more efficient water-wise than the old ones, allowing for less impact on the ecosystem of the Canal Zone, well less than would have happened with the same gate system as the old gates (100 years and ticking!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project
the one knock against this, unless you get anarchistic, is that it could have been done with a railroad system, but that might have been even more destructive, as panama would have had to build a huge port on it's pacific side, plus a huge container yard, which might have been more of an eyesore and an environmental catastrophe than just this big construction project.



Expected Completion Date: December 2015
Monitor:
this first one is a bit engineering heavy.. they haven't quite come up with a cool countdown clock yet..
https://www.pancanal.com/eng/expansion/rpts/informes-de-avance/index.html
https://www.pancanal.com/eng/index.html
https://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/webcams-works.html?cam=Expansion
wow, this is a report about the impact in the US, and it implies that I might be simplifying things a bit, but ships go places other than the US, and I know there are already ships going around Tierra Del Fuego that now won't have to, so I stick by my assertion that good will come from this.
http://www.future-science.com/doi/pdfplus/10.4155/cmt.12.65

I once drove the length of the Canal on the back of a friends moped (there is a cool train you can take too) and I saw one of the coolest things I have ever seen.. they had started digging the cut away from the existing canal to the new pacific locks, and a boat was going by that spot, and from my vantage point I could look past the boat to dry ground below it on the other side of the dike keeping the canal in place while the digging goes on.. still gives me the willies! it was a phenomenon that seemed impossible or at least physically improbable, like seeing a boat float past you from below through fresh air (which is likely possible from that hole).
I can smell the fresher air already, and what kid doesn't think the Panama Canal is cool.. c'mon.. it's like the Panda Bear of big industry!