Egypts future irrigation water footprint
It seems to be impossible to revert to the resent glory days of having canals and their tributienaris filled with water on almost a constant bases , providing a constant supply of fish , as well as providing an ecological environment, specially the sensual environment of seeing and smelling nature at its best . There is no chance to revert to these days because of the increased demand on water resources . We will have to give up how we view the current setup within the irrigation system , and eventually stop flood irrigation . We will make less use of open canals by covering them or putting pipping systems , this process is actually being preformed on a small scale and for different kinds of reasons around the country.
The ministry of water resources and irrigation has been able to provide water for the increasing demand by expanding the tributaries of the Nile as far away as the sinia to the east and martrough governt to the west . Preforming this process of expantion is not by any means an easy task . I would consider it to be one of the most advanced irrigation system due to its ability in distributing the irrigation water equally throughout Nile valley and Delta and their expansion over the years . One of the process carried to achieve this was having to fill the canals on a cycle rotation and most of the resent delivery systems rely on the lifting the irrigation waters to higher grounds to serve the outskirts of the valley and the delta and
taking irrigation water to north sinia required the provision of water tunnels to carry the water beneath the suez canal .
Water scarcity will have negative ecological impacts on ; fisheries , seawater intrusion , increased salinity of underground water ,etc .
One of the methods suggested to
overcome water scarcity was by eliminating flood irrigation . And my suggested path to achieve the conversion was by providing big scale elevated water storage tanks .https://kassemmourad.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/solving-egypt-water-scarcity/.
The volume capacity of the elevated water storage tanks should be in the range of 20,000 cubic metres . With such capacity it would require to have in the range of 60,000 of these tanks to cover 8 million acres of agricultural land in the valley and delta .
The cost of building the tanks is enormous and it would take decades to recover their costs . The tanks can be utilised to preform 4 extra tasks in order to increase the revenue generated from them , They are as follow ;
1) The tanks will be used as fish farms .
2) Providing fertilised water from fish waste .
3) Establishing factories for filleting and packaging the fish .
4) Produce fish bone meal fertiliser from the scraps that are produced from the fish processing factories .
There will also set irrigation fees paid by the farmers for providing them with pressurised fertilised irrigation directly to their plots .
Bees kingdom
The bees have a Kingdom run by a queen. It is time to start to providing the bee Kingdom with a king . A king fit to provide , care and maintain the kingdom .
Since the bee kingdoms rule is that only a queen can rule there for a human will have to be the king . The question would be how and what qualifies a human to be a king bee ? I would like to hear your opinions for an answer to the above question , Before I give a my suggested answer to the question . Bee lovers please make an effort to join in the debate .
Water , energy nexus.
Dr. Farouk El Baz , proposer of the Desert development corridor was met with a lot of critical negativities , Specially that it would be difficult to provide water for the project. The corridor project has in its plan to provide a water pipe for civilian use mainly . Well the route of the corridor would be ideal for having 2 new ideas , but they will require much higher investment costs , but at least they will start providing a return on investment once established . The 2 ideas are based on having extra pipes of water that will be used to irrigate the whole of the west Nile valley and west delta , they will also be a source for producing energy by having turbines within the pipes , the turbines will make use gravity provided by the natural topography within the process of irrigating . The main obstacle would be that there is not enough water to be allocated for the idea mentioned . Therefore I suggest that we have to save water to be able to provide water for the project. For better understanding read the following https://kassemmourad.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/egypts-water-energy-and-agricultural-sustainability-plan/
Egypts Water , energy and agricultural sustainability plan.
During the fuel crisis in the period of ex-president Mohamed morsi , farmers were panicking because they needed the fuel to irrigate there land . Therefore I started investigating the history of irrigation principles and methods and the current national irrigation systems of Egypt , as well as looking at Egypt’s water resources . The investigations lead to the understanding that Egypt has huge problems such as ; The country’s water consumption exceeds our current renewable supply . A huge amount of water is wasted because of flood irrigation . With flood irrigation excess fertilizers are used causing contamination of both underground water and Nile water due to seepage. Most of the irrigation is operated by fuel pump engines , meanwhile the fuel is subsidized by the government . Current attempts to switch flood irrigation to drip irrigation have been very slow and difficult to achieve . Some of the underground water reservoirs are being depleted by overuse specially the some of these reservoirs àre not renewable or are slow in refilling specially with the speed of extraction . Due to the nature of soil in the delta and the old cultivated land on the nilevalley along with using flood irrigation the soil becomes clogged with water , therefore the government started providing underground drainge systems and drainage canals .
Being a fanatic about discovering Egypt through Google earth I became familiar with Egypt’s geography and topography .
While investigating irrigation systems I came across ; Elevated water storage tanks and there capacity and ability to produce enough pressure to irrigate a certain amount of acres . Hydram pumps that uses water flow and pressure to left a percentage of water to almost 5 times of the water drop . Turbines that use water pressure to produce electricity . Through the research carried out I came up with the following proposal :
1) Managing water resources through eliminating flood irrigation , which will be achieved by using elevated water storage tanks which will provide the means of using drip irrigation. https://kassemmourad.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/solving-egypt-water-scarcity/
2) Implementing green energy irrigation system on the west Nilevalley and west delta by harvesting the power of ; water levelling , water flow and pressure by making use of available terrain and engineering concepts such as ; elevated water storage tanks , turbines for electricity production . https://kassemmourad.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/egypts-green-energy-irrigation-system/
3) As for the delta and east Nilevalley using elevated water storage tanks , they will use solar powered pumps .
Egypts Green energy irrigation system .
Implementing green energy irrigation system on the west Nile valley and west Delta region. By harvesting the power of ; Water leveling , Water flow , and pressure By make use of available terrain and engineering concepts such as Elevated water storage tanks .
The geography of the west Nile Valley has unique natural characteristics : it slopes downwards from south to north , it slopes downwords from west to east , it has a huge water reservoir (lake Nasser ) on the heights of its south side.
That natural topography will be used to move the water from lake nasser through several main pipes heading North on the west heights of the valley , branching out along the route into sub-maine pipes heading downwards East towards the Nile , the sub-maine pipes will also branch out into sub-sub- main pipes , And placing Above Ground Water Storage tanks allocated along the route of sub-sub -main pipes .
The tanks will be filled by means of water levelling and drip irrigate by mains of water pressure.
Solving water scarcity in Egypt .
If there was a real solution to the water scarcity in Egypt , how much would the country be prepared to sacrifice in order to solve the issue. If the intention of the government and citizens to solve the long term or the future of the country’s water scarcity then a big study has to be done on how the following idea can be achieved : One of the major water consumer in Egypt is agriculture , specially that most of the irrigation is achieved by means of flood irrigation . Many national and international bodies have been attempting find ways and means to convert farmers in Egypt to switch from flood irrigation to drip irrigation, But for the following reasons they are not achieving the conversion process ; – When the water fills the canals there is enough of it to flood the plots – There is no real charge for irrigation water therefore no incentive to save water – Since most of the canals are filled on a cycle process , therefore farmers must store water for the interim when drip irrigating . – Farmer assume that the more water applied the better production . That mentally is due to lack of education and that old habits are hard to change – Since majority of agricultural land are small plots 1 to 5 aces therefore the cost of setting up drip irrigation process is too expansive. – Irrigation costs are cheaper when flood irrigating on old clay soil lands. Therefore the idea of building big scale elevated water storage tanks that would provide the means and process for converting to drip irrigation . The elevated water storage tanks will also play a role in in achieving the following tasks; – control the quantity of water for each plot. – It will aid the government to control the eating away of agricultural land , from the urban expansion since it governs the area it is watering. – the operator of the elevated water tank will be given the task of registering the types of crops it is providing water for, therefore a more accurate concise of produce planted in the areas covered by the tanks , Which could aid in marketing and distribution of the produce nationally and internationally. The main obstacles foreseen when converting the Nile Delta and the shores of the Nile valley to drip irrigation , would be that underground water will no longer be replenished as it did with flood irrigation , which will effect the farmlands on the outskirts of the Nile delta and the Nile valley , plus it could aid in the intrusion of sea water from the Mediterranean Sea into the delta . For the above reasons I have stated in the being of the article that major studies have to be done . As well as fisablity studies . It would be much appreciated if I could get responds about the matter .
kassemmourad 