All Clear

For eleven months, 156 men working with massive earth-moving machines have been removing the stone face of Contractor's Hill, where the Panama Canal cuts through the Continental Divide (TIME, May 10, 1954). It has been ticklish work; the very reason for blasting away the hillside was that it threatened to slide into and block the canal--carrying with it the nervy men who were destroying it. Last week the danger ended. With 3,000,000 cubic yards of rock removed, engineers believed that the remaining potential slide-rock was too light to break loose. They will go on to remove the last 500,000 cubic yards, however. Then Contractor's Hill, once a sheer wall when seen from the canal, will be a terraced slope.

Dallas' Tecon Corp., the lively youngster of the construction business that underbid older firms to get the Contractor's Hill job, expects to finish by Aug. 15, and to make a profit of between 30% and 40% on the $4,100,000 it will receive.

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