Danube-Black Sea Canal
Encyclopedia : D : DA : DAN : Danube-Black Sea Canal
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It opened in 1984, and the 64km canal reduces the distance by boat from Constanţa to Cernavodă by 400 km, being an important part of the European canal system that links the North Sea to the Black Sea. The Canal has a width of 60 metres and a depth of 7 metres. The Northern arm has a length of 26.6 km, width of 50 m and a depth of 5.5 metres.
Construction
The canal took over nine years to construct, 300 million m3 of soil was excavated, by hand, by over 30,000 people. 4.2 million m3 of reinforced concrete was used in the construction.
There earliest plans for building of this canal were created in 1839, but after the building of a railway connection in 1860, goods could be easily transported from Constanţa by railroad, so the plans were forgotten. In 1927, the Romanian engineer Jean Stonescu made a new set of plans.
Construction began only in 1949. During the communist purges more than 40,000 people, most of them Romanian political convicts in forced-labour camps, were worked to death on the project between 1949 and 1953. As such, it became known as the Death Canal (Canalul Morţii in Romanian). In 1953, the project came to a halt, all work being suspended for another 23 years. In 1976, the project was restarted. The southern arm was finished in 1984, with the northern arm being finished in 1987.
The cost of the building of the canal is estimated to be around $2 billion, and was supposed to be recovered in 50 years. However, nowadays it has a yearly profit of only a little over €3 million.
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