Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission.
To the Congress of the United States:
I am transmitting the third annual report of the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission. The report covers the period July 1, 1966 to June 30, 1967.
During the past twelve months, the Commission has put its program into full operation. The site survey agreement, signed with Colombia on October 25, 1966, permitted the Commission to start the engineering survey of the alternate sea-level canal route in the northwestern part of that country. In Panama, the Commission completed the first full year of data collection on the routes under consideration. The first modern topographic maps of the potential canal area near the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica were completed by the Inter-American Geodetic Survey. The Commission's Engineering Agent made a preliminary evaluation of this route on the basis of these maps.
Inter-agency working groups finished their initial drafts of special studies on the broad national and international implications of a sea-level canal. These studies cover foreign policy, national defense, canal financing, shipping patterns and engineering feasibility.
Because of unavoidable delays in starting the field work in Panama and Colombia, and because the PLOWSHARE nuclear cratering experiments needed to determine the technical feasibility of nuclear excavation have been postponed, the Commission found that it would require additional time and funds to complete the mission assigned to it in Public Law 88-609.
An amendment for this purpose has already been approved by the Senate. I recommend its early approval by the House of Representatives.
There is little doubt that the construction of a sea-level canal is technically feasible.
The major questions to be resolved are
--when it will be needed,
--whether it would be financially feasible, and
--where and how it should be constructed.
While past studies have put the need around the end of this century, recent traffic growth has been more rapid than was earlier foreseen, and the need may develop much sooner. As legislation, planning, and construction could require fifteen years from the date a recommendation to proceed is made to the Congress, it is clearly in the national interest for the Commission's comprehensive investigation to proceed as rapidly as possible.
This anniversary finds the canal investigation well advanced on its planned course. I take great pleasure in forwarding the report of progress to date.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
The White House
August 8, 1967
Note: The 70-page report is entitled "Third Annual Report of the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission, 31 July 1967."
An announcement of the report and summary of the Commission's work since its establishment in 1965 is printed in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (vol. 3, P. 1120).
Public Law 88-609 (78 Stat. 990), approved September 22, 1964, authorized the President to appoint a five-man commission of private citizens to make an investigation to determine the most suitable site for the construction of a sea-level canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The completion of the study was postponed due to a delay in the PLOWSHARE program, an operation developed by the Atomic Energy Commission to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Message to the Congress Transmitting Annual Report of the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/237989