When Maricel Sánchez’s family buried her grandmother 15 years ago, she never expected she would have to dig her back up one day.

But that’s the morbid situation she faces due to plans by the Panama Canal Authority to build a new reservoir that will feed the crucial waterway that handles about 5% of the world’s shipping.

The canal authority — an autonomous government agency — says the Rio Indio reservoir project is essential to keep the waterway functioning because the impacts of fossil fuel pollution and El Niño, a natural climate pattern, have made this area of central Panama increasingly prone to droughts. To make way for what will be the third reservoir to serve the canal, an area of more than 11,000 acres that is currently home to schools, churches, farms and cemeteries will have to be flooded and at least 1,600 residents re-homed.

That will upend the lives of locals like 27-year-old Sánchez and her two young daughters, whose rural town of Limón de Chagres is one of dozens of communities along the Indio River that will be affected. The cemetery where her family members are buried is one of eight in the flood zone that will have to be exhumed.

“This took me completely by surprise,” Sánchez said. “I never imagined they would dare to interfere with something so sensitive to us as rural people.”The canal authority has said that relocating the remains will be coordinated in advance with family members, with respect for religious beliefs, cultural sensitivities and emotional ties. Local authorities will cover the cost of the whole process — from new coffins or urns to headstones at the new sites.

But many residents say there’s no humane way to carry out an exhumation, especially on ancestral lands where more than five generations are buried.

“It is hard enough to endure the pain of losing a family member, but I feel that when they dig them up again, you re-live that pain all over again,” Sánchez said.

A government decree ended burials at El Limón cemetery in July. The seven other cemeteries will become off-limits for burials in January 2027. Construction on the reservoir is expected to begin in 2028 with the project slated for completion between 2031 and 2032.

The canal authority says that, when completed, the new reservoir will both boost its operations by 10 to 15% and help supply water to nearby communities.

“It represents a significant step towards canal sustainability, reliability, and competitiveness, for the benefit of all Panamanians and global trade,” the ACP said in February last year, while pledging to set aside funds for compensating, resettling and supporting families and property owners.

However, many locals are skeptical of how much compensation they will receive — if any at all. They have also raised fears over whether farming and fishing communities will be able to sustain themselves.

Olegario Cedeño Rojas, 40, a farmer in Limón de Chagres, is among those skeptics.

All four of his grandparents are buried in El Limón cemetery. Exhuming them, he says, means reliving the pain of losing them. And losing his land means losing the foundation of his life, he told CNN.

“How can they compensate me with something permanent — something enduring — when I am giving up my land, my life, and everything I have?” he asked. “The land is our life insurance — our only permanent, enduring asset of value and the sole source of livelihood for all of us farmers.”For most people, farming, fishing and river transport are all they know. While farmers fear the land they’re relocated to will be less fertile, workers in river transport — such as Sánchez, who boats people up and down the Indio — fear the project could limit their access to the water. Fishermen, too, have reason to worry.

Experts warn that the dam needed to create the reservoir will disrupt the river’s natural flow, to the detriment of marine life. LeRoy Poff, biology professor at Colorado State University and a river ecology expert, says fish species moving up and down the river to reproduce will be hindered by the dam, dealing a blow to a vital source of food and income for locals and downstream communities.

The socio-environmental manager of the reservoir project, Karina Vergara, told CNN that the areas to be resettled were nearby and would have similar soil and conditions favorable to farming.

However, she admitted the land had not yet been formally acquired, saying the authority was still negotiating with the current owners and that some of the areas still needed infrastructure such as roads.

Asked to put a date on the resettlements, she said there was no specific timeline because the canal was committed to “doing this process gradually and carefully, working with the people.”But she said resettlement was still slated for sometime in 2027 and that the first relocations would be to areas where basic infrastructure such as houses, schools and roads were already in place.

For many residents, uncertainties over the timeline have only added to their anxiety, while experts say the whole process seems far behind schedule.

“I would think that at this point they would at least have relocation sites and would start recreating farms,” said Osvaldo Jordan, CEO of wetlands conservation organization CREHO.

Sánchez, meanwhile, says the process hasn’t been as mutual and collaborative as authorities make it seem.

“They make decisions about us as if we were mere objects,” Sánchez said. “We are not objects to be moved around.”Relocating populations to make way for dams is far from unprecedented in the region — though the practice often proves controversial. Similar debates were sparked by the building of Brazil’s Belo Monte dam, inaugurated in 2016, which displaced more than 40,000 people; and Colombia’s El Quimbo dam, on which construction began in 2011.

In the case of El Quimbo, the Colombian government handed over land to 94 displaced families in 2024, but some campaigners estimate the true number of people affected runs into the hundreds or even thousands.

Back on the Indio River, Panama appears to have calculated that any such controversy is outweighed by the importance of the project, which it has deemed a “top priority for national water security,” and its need to protect the canal — which contributes an estimated 8% of the country’s total annual GDP.

Panama has a traditionally dry season that spans January to March, and a traditionally wet season from May to November, according to the country’s meteorology institute.

The growing impacts of both natural El Niño patterns and man-made climate change are forcing the decision to build the new reservoir, officials say, because the country needs to store additional water during unusually wet dry seasons so it can be used when wet seasons turn out to be unusually dry.

January to March of this year saw the area’s wettest dry season on record, said Steve Paton, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s Physical Monitoring Program in Panama. That was soon followed by the driest April-to-July period ever, according to Paton, who said the effects were “almost certainly the result of El Niño making itself felt.”Still, while the canal authority insists the reservoir is “for the benefit all Panamanians and global trade,” for many locals along the Indio River it is hard to see past the more immediate effects it will have on their daily lives.

Alongside their fears over relocation and livelihoods, the expected disruptions to the flow of the river have raised doubts about whether the Indio can continue to be used as a transport route connecting many small villages and communities.

Northwest of Limón de Chagres is El Jobo de Rio Indio, where Alexis Rodriguez grew up and still visits.

He’s been living in Panama City for about a decade and travels the Indio River by boat for his trips back. Uncertainty over the dam’s effects have left him wondering how he will be able to visit his 91-year-old grandfather who raised him.

Like Sánchez and Cedeño Rojas, he has loved ones buried in a cemetery slated for relocation. His great-grandparents have been there for 30 years, and other ancestors, even longer.

“Having to open (the grave sites) up again and remove a loved one from there … it is very sad, painful and deeply shocking,” he said.

For Sánchez, the new reservoir threatens to uproot not only generations past, but her daughters’ futures. Her 7-year-old hears the conversations around her, sees the protests in her community and notices the visiting canal personnel.

“Mom, are they really going to flood us with water? Are we going to end up underwater?” she asks. “Where are we going to move?”

But without the answer from authorities, Sanchez wonders: “How are we, as adults, supposed to give it to our children?”