Bracing for a sea change

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’s 7 a.m. and Sandra Rodríguez and her teenage daughter are standing in their wooden boat pulling in the last of 15 fishing nets laid out in these shallowprotected wetlands just south of the small fishing village of San Miguelito.

It’s the season for catching guapote and gaspar. The latter is traditionally eaten during Holy Week, so it fetches a high price this time of year.

“If they don’t harm the wetlands and the environment, I think it’s good,” Sandra said when asked her opinion of the $50 billion Nicaraguan canal that the government says will pass through here. San Miguelito is one of 12 municipalities that lies within the area of direct influence of the project, though even here many of the details remain shrouded in mystery. “The problem is a lot of people haven’t been told what will happen.”

Lake Nicaragua, or Lake Cocibolca, is the second largest lake in Latin America. Locals have nicknamed it mar dulce, or “sweet sea,” as the freshwater lake is so large it stretches to the horizon. Besides supplying a source of income for fishing communities like San Miguelito, the lake is an important reservoir for drinking water and irrigation — one that scientists caution will grow in importance as climate change intensifies and threatens global water supplies.

 
A DEEP DIVIDE
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A DEEP DIVIDE
San Miguelito
After it crosses Lake Nicaragua, the canal will pass just south of the small fishing community of San Miguelito. The original route was adjusted to avoid destroying the protected San Miguelito Wetlands as well as to bypass the town of El Tule, where peasants and police clashed during canal protests in December.
Managua Rivas San Miguelito Bluefields Bangkukuk
San Miguelito fisherman Paulo Padilla checks the weight of fish he is preparing to sell to Julio Cesar Murrillo Torres, at rear. (Click to enlarge images)

The Nicaragua government agrees. According to Article 97 of Nicaragua’s General National Waters Law (Law 620), passed in 2010, Lake Nicaragua “should be considered as a natural reservoir of drinking water, being of highest interest and national priority for national security.”

That is why environmentalists throughout the country fear catastrophe if the government and its Chinese business partner, the holding company HKND, proceed with plans to build a 172-mile canal across Nicaragua, 66 miles of which will bisect Lake Nicaragua. In order for the enormous Triple E-class ships to pass through this shallow lake, which has an average depth of just 12.5 meters (41 feet), the project will require dredging 90 percent of the canal’s route through the reservoir.

Centro Humboldt, a prominent environmental NGO in Nicaragua, has called the canal and its sub-projects “the biggest threat to the environmental conditions of the country in its history.”

“They’re talking about moving 500 to 700 million metric tons of soil and rock from the bottom of the lake,” said Victor Campos, a civil engineer and deputy director of Centro Humboldt, sitting in his office in Managua. “So even though it’s not much surface that will be impacted it’s the intensity of how they’ll disturb the bottom of the lake that will significantly deteriorate the quality of the water. The other thing is the sedimentation and rocks are going to change the chemical composition of the lake. And this will not only diminish the water’s drinkability but it will also affect the habitat of the species that live in the lake.”



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