page_title: Water resources management in Egypt
section_title: Existing infrastructure
hierarchical_section_title: Water resources management in Egypt / Infrastructure / Existing infrastructure
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Hoodkanalen voor irrigatie in Egypte
context_page_description: Water resources management in modern Egypt is a complex process that involves multiple stakeholders who use water for irrigation, municipal and industrial water supply, hydropower generation and navigation. In addition, the waters of the Nile support aquatic ecosystems that are threatened by abstraction and pollution. Egypt also has substantial fossil groundwater resources in the Western Desert.
  A key problem of water resources management in Egypt is the imbalance between increasing water demand and limited supply. To ensure future water availability coordination with the nine upstream Nile riparian countries is essential. The Nile Basin Initiative provides a forum for such cooperation. In the 1990s the government launched three mega-projects to increase irrigation on "new lands". They are located in the Toshka area, on the fringe of the Western Nile Delta, and in the Northern Sinai. These projects all require substantial amounts of water that can only be mobilized through better irrigation efficiency on already irrigated "old lands" as well as the reuse of drainage water and treated wastewater.
context_section_description: Water resources management in Egypt depends on a complex set of infrastructure along the entire length of the river. The key element of this infrastructure is the Aswan High Dam that forms Lake Nasser. The High Dam protects Egypt from floods, stores water for year-round irrigation and produces hydropower. With a live storage capacity of 90 billion cubic the dam stores more than one and a half the average annual flow of the Nile River, thus providing a high level of regulation in the river basin compared to other regulated rivers in the world.
  Downstream of the Aswan Dam, there are seven barrages to increase the river's water level so that it can flow into first-level irrigation canals. One of them is the 350 km long Ibrahimiya Canal completed in 1873, the largest artificial canal in the world. It branches off the left bank of the Nile in Assiut and then runs parallel to the river. Its discharge was increased by the Assiut Barrage completed in 1903. Other large barrages exist at Esna and Naga Hammadi on the main Nile, as well as the Delta Barrage, the Zifta Barrage and the Damietta Barrage on the Damietta branch and the Edfina barrage on the Rosetta branch of the Nile. Water also flows from the Nile to the Faiyum Oasis through a canal called Bahr Yussef that dates back to Pharaonic times. From the oasis it flows to the Birket Qarun (Lake Moesis). The Fresh Water Canal runs from Cairo to Ismailia and the Sweet Water Canal runs in parallel to the Suez Canal, supplying drinking water to the cities along the Canal. Both canals were completed in 1863. The Mahmoudiyah Canal links the Nile to Alexandria. Completed in 1820 it used to have an important role for navigation, but nowadays is used primarily for irrigation and to supply Alexandria with drinking water.
  Irrigation canals are classified into principal canals (Rayah), main canals (first level canals), branch canals (second level canals), distribution canals (Mesqas, or third level canals) and irrigation ditches (Merwas). Flow in the principal and main canals is continuous; in the branch and distribution canals it is on a rotation basis. However, the government supports a process of converting some of the lower-level canals gradually to continuous flow. Farmers pump water from the mesqas to irrigate fields (lift: about 0.5–1.5 m). A Mesqa typically serves an area of 50 to 200 feddan (20 to 80 hectares). In areas where there is no formal operational structure for proper water distribution, the tail-end users usually are not getting enough water to maintain crops. Water user associations have been formed beginning in the 1990s to better distribute water among farmers on a mesqa and to rationalize pumping, with the aim of reducing water abstraction, pumping costs and to increase yields.
  In 1994 Egypt had approximately 30,000 km of public canals (first and second level), 17,000 km of public drains, 80,000 km of private third-level canals (mesqas) and irrigation ditches, 450,000 private water-lifting devices (sakias or pumps), 22,000 public water-control structures, and 670 large public pumping stations for irrigation.
  Drainage through sub-surface drains and drainage channels is essential to prevent a deterioration of crop yields from soil salinization and waterlogging. By 2003 more than 2 million ha have been equipped with a subsurface drainage system and approximately 7.2 billion m³ of water is drained annually from areas with these systems. The total investment cost in agricultural drainage over 27 years from 1973 to 2002 was about 3.1 billion US$ covering the cost of design, construction, maintenance, research and training. During this period 11 large-scale projects were implemented with financial support from World Bank and other donors
caption: Main irrigation system (schematically)
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