REPORT OF BOARD O141CONSULTING ENGINEERS, PANAMA CANAL.21


 When the moment comes of determining upon the transformation, this decision may be due to two different orders of considerations. It may be due to the pressure of the increasing traffic and to the foreseen necessity of handling, within a limited number of years-ten or twenty-at traffic having an importance comparable to that of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal, or of that passing before Detroit. It may be due also to the purely moral or military consideration of having a canal without artificial works save a tidal gate, without any pressure from the traffic.
 Upon the first hypothesis it seems to me inadmissible that the improvement to be obtained by the suppression of the superior levels will not be accompanied by a corresponding improvement in the width of the channel bottom, and I fixed 300 feet as the -probable minimum which will then be adopted.
 Under these probable circumstances I wished to establish that the transformation will be made without any restriction upon the unhampered use of the standard bottom level now admitted. I did not consider the increase of the bottom level as necessary for the execution of my plans. I simply said that if it were ordered for the higher consideration of traffic development the effect would be the one I tried to show.
 I do not, therefore, think that it is justifiable to say that the cost resulting from the method I recommend would be extravagant, because the cost does not apply to the method, but to the end supposed to be in view-to have at the same time a sea-level and wider waterway.
 This conception of the future necessity of incre asing the bottom width of the canal is not limited to me. It can be found very clearly expressed in one of the other gray pamphlets prepared for the Consulting Board, namely, on page 197 of Part III, entitled, Sea-Level Plan." In anticipation of the future necessity of increasing the width and depth of the canal, it is recommended there that, if a sea-level canal construction is contemplated at once, a supplementary excavation should be made imme(,diately, to satisfy the eventual need of enlarged dimensions in the navigable prism. It is for that purpose recommended there to widen the berms 50 feet on each side; that is, to increase the width of excavation above the berms by 100 feet, which leads to a supplementary excavation of 36,320,000 cubic yards before any operation of the canal.
 This provision to make immediately above the berms the works necessary for a future increase of the channel width by 100 feet corresponds, I may say, exactly to my proposition, and there is no real difference between supposing that the demanded increase would be 100 feet and supposing that the demanded increase will be 150 feet.
 If the stigma of "extravagant cost" were applied with justice to the proposition of increasing by 150 feet the width, it applies also to that of increasing itf by 100. The two-thirds of an extravagant cost is still an extravagant cost.
 If the increased width of the canal should be decided to be only 100 feet instead of 150, it can be established that the international navigation will retain the constant and unhampered use of a channel larger than 150 feet until the summit level has been lowered down to 25 feet above sea level and that it will be gradually restricted down to 125 feet, which will be the inferior limit of contraction of the free channel by the works. This- will only happen -when the sea level is reached, to be followed immediately by the enjoyment of a 250-foot channel.
 If we remark that the bottom width of the Suez Canal is 115 feet, that of the Manchester Ship Canal 114, that of the Amsterdam Canal 118 feet, and that of the Kiel Canal 72, we must express the opinion that the restriction of the free channel down to 125 feet during the very last period of the work of transformation will not in the least interfere with the free transit of international navigation.
 We shall, however; continue to argue on a supposed increase of width of 150 feet in case of an enormous traffic in sight, because it seems to me better justified than an increase of 100 feet, and also because the diff erence in cube between 100 f eet increased width and 150 f et increased width would amount only to about 18,000,000 cubic yards above the berms between Bohio and Mirafiores, or to about 28,000,000 cubic yards down to the bottom level. This is a mass of excavation relatively secondary compared with the total amount to be removed, and which will be fully justified by- the facilities afforded to passage of ships across the Isthmus in the sea-level canal,


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