New Canal To Be Built Across Nicaragua

Lake Nicaragua is the largest lake in Central America. (Image credit: Charles Taylor, Shutterstock)

A new canal will soon connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through Nicaragua, after a fast approval process by the country's National Assembly.

The governing body granted a Hong-Kong based company a 50-year concession to plan and build the canal, according to USA Today. There are no details yet as to where the canal will run, but according to Wired.com, the canal will take advantage of Lake Nicaragua, the largest lake in Central America.

Environmentalists are concerned about the plan, which will connect the freshwater Lake Nicaragua to the salty Pacific, potentially harming fish and other freshwater marine life. The economic benefits could be major for Nicaragua, however, with trade through the canal bringing in as much as $1.4 trillion annually by 2030, according to Wired. The canal will be about three times as long as the famous Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914.

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Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.