Panama's Promising Eco-Paradise

Savannah Port Anticipates Panama Canal Expansion in New York Times

by Keith SchneiderMarch 24, 2015March 24, 20150

SAVANNAH, Georgia — The business, art, and transactional legitimacy of reporting is to recognize that everything is connected. That’s especially true when your beat is global, your opportunity is unlimited, and your bank account is a like a hungry fledgling fish hawk. Case in point: this article on the Savannah port’s increasing traffic which was posted today in the New York Times. Much of the port’s success is wrapped around its anticipation of the opening …

U.S. Ports Modernize While Water Supply and Quality Deteriorate

by Keith SchneiderMarch 13, 2015March 24, 20150

SAVANNAH, Ga. — There’s not much about water infrastructure that gets America’s lawmakers excited these days unless it’s a big coastal port. The New York/New Jersey port, with a big assist from the federal government, is spending $1.3 billion to lift the 84-year-old Bayonne Bridge high enough to allow a new generation of super-sized cargo vessels to pass underneath. Charleston, S.C., with state and federal support, is spending $2 billion to deepen the harbor and …

Stanley Heckadon-Moreno is Panama’s Great Conservationist and Patriot

by Keith SchneiderMarch 5, 2015March 24, 20150

COLON, Panama â€“ Across the expanse of a half-century-long career as an ecologist, reformer, and skilled raconteur, Stanley Heckadon-Moreno saw his native Panama engulfed by one spasm of political transition after another. A weak democracy and resentment of American ownership of the Panama Canal in the 1960s begat the corrupt military dictatorship of the 1980s. A damaging American invasion in 1989 gave rise to a decade of hardship and confusion in the 1990s. Even the …

Panamaâ€™s Hydropower Development Defined By Fierce Resistance and Tough Choices

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 16, 2015March 24, 20150

CHANGUINOLA, Panama â€“ Rain clouds regularly settle atop the 1800-meter (5900-foot) summits of the Cordillera de Talamanca, the mountain spine that separates the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean in Panamaâ€™s Bocas del Toro province. When the mist clears, the full measure of the blue sea, powerful rivers, and splendid forests full of toucans and cacao trees is visible and stunning. In the five centuries since Christopher Columbus alighted on the beaches of Bocas del Toro …

This Is Panama — Ambitious, Gorgeous, And Independent At Last

by Keith SchneiderFebruary 1, 2015March 24, 20153

PANAMA CITY, Panama — The Spanish explorer, Vasco NÃºÃ±ez de Balboa, was so inspired by Christopher Columbus’s four voyages to the new world, including Columbus’s last trip in 1502 to Central America, that Balboa undertook his own expedition. In 1510 Balboa and his men set ashore in the Caribbean rainforest near present day Colombia and established Santa MarÃa la Antigua del DariÃ©n, the first permanent European settlement in the Americas. Three years later Balboa, setting …

Panama Canal Expansion Will Have Big Effect on Energy, Water, and Grain in U.S. and China

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 28, 2015March 24, 20151

PANAMA CITY, Panama â€“ It was an elaborate, even theatrical display of national pride and elite engineering. On January 19, Panamaâ€™s four-quarter,Â red and blue star flag gleamed in bright morning sunlight as a 2,300-ton steel gate slid into place inside a colossal new lock of the Panama Canal. It was the first of eight mammoth gates, ranging in height from seven to nine stories, to be installed in the three concrete locking chambers near …

Boquete, Panama Is Banquet of Coffee, Flowers, Water, and Rainbows

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 21, 2015March 24, 20152

BOQUETE, Panama — A mile high in the western highlands, near the border of Costa Rica and in the shadow of 3,474-meter (11,398 feet) Volcan Baru, a dormant volcano that is Panama’s tallest peak, lies a convergence of water, sun, soil, and altitude that produces superb coffee. The very same union of God-given natural bounty also yields a prodigious bounty of beautiful flowers and an afternoon banquet of rainbows that arc, mountain range to mountain …

Panama’s Water-Rich Eden Confronts Snake’s Temptation

by Keith SchneiderJanuary 10, 2015March 24, 20155

PANAMA CITY, Panama â€“ Quebrada Ancha, a community that settled in Panama’s thick forest 50 years ago, lies at the northern end of Lago Alajuela, a freshwater lake built by the United States at the end of the Great Depression to control floods in the Panama Canal Zone. It takes 20 minutes in a fast 40-foot dugout boat to get there. In early morning’s luminous light and cooling breeze the trip is a passage across …