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

irrigate Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

part of the sandy wastes of the Western Desert of

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

, which is part of the

Sahara Desert , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

. In 1997, the Egyptian government decided to develop a new valley (as opposed to the existing Nile Valley) 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. 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 ( ar, باريس) 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 (Arabic: , ) ; Coptic: ( "Oasis of Hib", "Oasis of Psoi") ...

, 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 served as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. Before retiring as a general in the Egyptian mil ...

. Half of the land will be given to college graduates, 1 acre each, funded by the Long Live Egypt Fund. 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, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials ( gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characteris ...

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 Lake Nasser 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

New Valley Governorate Geography of Egypt Agriculture in Egypt Irrigation in Egypt Interbasin transfer Western Desert (Egypt)

See also

External links