The New Valley Project or Toshka Project consists of building a system of canals to carry water from

Lake Nasser Lake Nasser ( ', ) is a large reservoir (water), reservoir in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It was created by the construction of the Aswan Dam, Aswan High Dam and is one of the List of reservoirs by volume, largest man-made lakes in the wo ...

to irrigate part of the sandy wastes of the Western Desert of

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, which is part of the

Sahara Desert The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

History

In 1997, the Egyptian government decided to develop a new valley (as opposed to the existing

Nile Valley The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the longest river i ...

) where agricultural and industrial communities would develop. It has been an ambitious project which was meant to help Egypt cope with its rapidly growing population.

Project

The canal inlet starts from a site 8 km to the north of Toshka Bay (Khor) on Lake Nasser. The canal is meant to continue westwards until it reaches the Darb el-Arbe'ien route, then northwards along the Darb el- Arbe'ien to the

Baris Oasis Baris () is a town in Egypt. It contains the ancient Egyptian temple of Dosh. It is south of the New Valley Governorate, from the Kharga Oasis The Kharga Oasis ( , ) ; , "Oasis of Hib", "Oasis of Psoi") is the southernmost of Egypt's f ...

, covering a distance of 310 km. But as of April 2012, the canal is still 60 km short of the Baris Oasis. The Mubarak Pumping Station in Toshka is the centerpiece of the project and was inaugurated in March 2005. It pumps water from Lake Nasser to be transported by way of a canal through the valley, with the idea of transforming 2340 km² (588,000 acres) of desert into agricultural land. The Toshka Project has now been revived by President

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil El-Sisi (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has been serving as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and 201 ...

. Half of the land will be given to college graduates, 1 acre each, funded by the Long Live Egypt Fund. Toshka-see

The essential problem is that the Western Desert's high saline levels and the presence of underground

aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing material, consisting of permeability (Earth sciences), permeable or fractured rock, or of unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Aquifers vary greatly in their characteristics. The s ...

s in the area act as a major obstacle to any irrigation project. As the land is irrigated, the salt would mix with the aquifers and would reduce access to potable water. There is also the difficulty that the clay minerals found in the soil are posing technical problems to the big wheeled structures moving around autonomously to irrigate the land. Often their wheels get stuck in a little bowl created by wet clay that dried, and the irrigation machines come to a standstill. The only objective met up to April 2012 is the diversion of water from Lake Nasser into what little of the Sheikh Zayed Canal has been built. The Toshka Lakes are a by-product of the rising level of

and lie in the same general region as much of the New Valley Project.

External links

South Valley Development Project in Toshka
Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation
Egypt's new Nile Valley grand plan gone bad
''The National'', 22 April 2012
On Toshka New Valley's mega-failure

Toshka Project - Mubarak Pumping Station / Sheikh Zayed Canal, Egypt

{{coord, 22.63, N, 31.12, E, display=title New Valley Governorate Geography of Egypt Agriculture in Egypt Irrigation in Egypt Interbasin transfer Western Desert (Egypt)

History

Project

See also

External links