Water resources management in modern
Egypt
The river Nile in Egypt
Green irrigated land (3.4 million ha) along the Nile amidst the
desert
Most of this article was written in 2009, with subsequent
updates on certain aspects, most recently in 2013.
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
Aswan High Dam (NASA satellite photo)
Western Desert.
A key problem of water resources management in Egypt
is the imbalance between increasing water demand and
limited supply. In order 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
(the "New Valley"), 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.
1 History
The history of modern water management in Egypt begins with the construction of the Old Aswan Dam in 1902
and barrages on the Nile in the 19th and early 20th century. The Old Aswan Dam partially stored the waters
of the Nile to allow the growing of multiple crops per
year in the Nile Delta, while the barrages raised the water
level of the Nile so that water could be diverted into large
irrigation channels running in parallel to the river. The
water regime of the river was changed fundamentally in
1970 when the Aswan High Dam was completed, elim-
1
2 2 INFRASTRUCTURE
Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam
inating the annual Nile flood. The dam brought major
benefits such as increased water availability for Egyptian
agriculture leading to higher income and employment,
hydropower production, flood control, improved navigation, and the creation of fisheries in Lake Nasser. But it
also had environmental and social impacts including resettlement, loss of fertile silt that now accumulates in the
reservoir behind the dam, waterlogging combined with an
increase in soil salinity, and increased coastal erosion.
See also: Aswan Dam § Environmental and social impact
Unrelated to the construction of the Aswan High Dam,
water quality deteriorated through drainage return flows
and discharges of untreated municipal and industrial
wastewater. Beginning in the 1980s wastewater treatment improved and water quality in the Nile gradually improved again. Until 1992 the government decided which
crops farmers had to grow, which allowed the authorities
to deliver specific volumes of water to each canal based on
the water needs of the crops. In 1992 a major change occurred when cropping patterns were liberalized and farmers were free to grow what they wanted.[1] At the same
time the government began to transfer the responsibility
for the management of branch canals to water user associations, a process called “irrigation management transfer”. In the mid-1990s the government also initiated three
mega-projects to expand irrigation to “new lands” in the
desert.
2 Infrastructure
2.1 Existing infrastructure
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 hydro power. With a live storage
capacity of 90 billion cubic the dam stores more than one
The Ibrahimiya Canal in Minya
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