Panama Canal sill repairs pass inspection

With the successful completion of testing of reinforcements to sill number 3 of the Cocolí locks, the expansion project is now 96 percent complete and moving toward a Q2 opening, according to Panama Canal Authority Administrator and CEO Jorge L. Quijano.    The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) said Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), the consortium designing and building of the third set of locks for the canal, has successfully completed testing of the reinforcements in sill number 3 of the Cocolí locks.
   The leak was discovered in the sill between lower and middle lock chambers after subjecting it to much higher pressures than it would experience during normal operations. After the leak was detected, additional steel reinforcements were made to six sills on both the Cocoli locks near the Pacific entrance of the canal and the Aqua Clara locks near the Atlantic entrance.
   GUPC technical personnel, designers and its own specialists monitored the testing process which consisted of gradually raising the water behind the lock gate to the level in which the seepage was first detected in sill number 3 last August, according to ACP.
   The testing was also inspected by “a team of independent experts, professors and structural engineers from the Technological University of Panama, all of whom expressed satisfaction with the final results,” the agency said.
   GUPC will now test the electromechanical components necessary for the expanded canal to operate.
   ACP said less than four percent of the project still needs to be completed before the waterway can begin to transit larger ships.
   Jorge L. Quijano, the Panama Canal Authority administrator and chief executive officer has said he expects the canal to ceremonially “inaugurated by the second quarter of 2016, with commercial opening to follow shortly there after.”