The Blue Nile is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It travels for approximately 1,450 km (900 mi) through Ethiopia and Sudan. Along with the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile and supplies about 85.6% of the water to the Nile during the rainy season.
The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1980s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan Low Dam initially completed in 1902 downstream. Based on the success of the Low Dam, then at its maximum utilization, construction of the High Dam became a key objective of the government following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952; with its ability to better control flooding, provide increased water storage for irrigation and generate hydroelectricity, the dam was seen as pivotal to Egypt's planned industrialization. Like the earlier implementation, the High Dam has had a significant effect on the economy and culture of Egypt.
Gezira, also spelt Al Jazirah, is one of the 18 states of Sudan. The state lies between the Blue Nile and the White Nile in the east-central region of the country. It has an area of 27,549 km2. The name comes from the Arabic word for island. Wad Madani is the capital of the state. Gezira is known as an irrigated cotton-producing state as it is a well-populated area that is suitable for agriculture.
The Mott MacDonald Group is a management, engineering and development consultancy headquartered in the United Kingdom. It employs +18,000 staff in 150 countries. Mott MacDonald is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the world.
The Gezira Scheme is one of the largest irrigation projects in the world. It is centered on the Sudanese state of Al Jazirah, just southeast of the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers at the city of Khartoum. The Gezira Scheme was begun by the British while the area was governed as part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Water from the Blue Nile is distributed through canals and ditches to tenant farms lying between the Blue and White Nile rivers.
Merz and McLellan was a leading British electrical engineering consultancy based in Newcastle.
The flooding of the Nile has been an important natural cycle in Egypt since ancient times. It is celebrated by Egyptians as an annual holiday for two weeks starting August 15, known as Wafaa El-Nil. It is also celebrated in the Coptic Church by ceremonially throwing a martyr's relic into the river, hence the name, The Martyr's Finger. The flooding of the Nile was poetically described in myth as Isis's tears of sorrow for Osiris when killed by his brother Set.
Sir William Willcocks was a British civil engineer during the high point of the British Empire. He was an irrigation engineer who proposed and built the first Aswan Dam, the scale of which had never been attempted previously. He later undertook other major irrigation projects in South Africa and in Arab regions of the dying Ottoman Empire.
The Sennar Dam is an irrigation dam on the Blue Nile near the town of Sennar in the Al Jazirah region of Sudan. The dam is 3,025 metres (9,925 ft) long and has a maximum height of 40 metres (130 ft). It was designed by the Scottish engineer Sir Murdoch MacDonald, begun in 1914 and completed in 1925 by the British contractor S Pearson & Sons.
Sir Murdoch MacDonald was a notable civil engineer and British politician. Born in Inverness, Scotland, MacDonald was educated at the Farraline Park Institution there, and would serve later as the constituency's MP from 1922 until 1950.
Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice CMG was an Irish civil engineer. He was apprenticed to Benjamin Baker and worked with him on the Forth Railway Bridge before going to Egypt to build the Aswan Dam for which he was appointed both a member of the Ottoman Order of the Mejidiye and a companion of the British Order of St Michael and St George. Following this Fitzmaurice was Chief Engineer to the London County Council and was responsible for the Blackwall, Rotherhithe and Woolwich tunnels. In later life his consultancy advised on docks and harbours across the British Commonwealth as well as the Sennar Dam in Sudan and he was recognised with the prestigious honour of the presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the 1916-17 session.
The Egyptian Department of Public Works was established in the early 19th century, and concentrates mainly on public works relating to irrigation and hydraulic engineering. These irrigation projects have constituted the bulk of work performed by this entity in Egypt. During its almost 200-year history, the Egyptian Department of Public Works employed many notable engineers and constructed massive public works projects throughout the country. It became the most respected engineering entity and was regarded as the 'best school' for civil engineers in modern Egypt. Its history can be broken into three periods:
- The Classic Period (1818–1882).
- The Occupation Period (1882–1952).
- The Modern Period.
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.
Sir John Watson Gibson was an English civil engineer. He designed dams in England and in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and port installations in England and Ireland. In the UK he is most notable for having designed a key part of the Mulberry harbours for the 1944 Normandy landings.
Egypt's environmental problems include, but are not limited to, water scarcity, air pollution, damage to historic monuments, animal welfare issues and deficiencies in its waste management system.
The Aswan Low Dam or Old Aswan Dam is a gravity masonry buttress dam on the Nile River in Aswan, Egypt. The dam was built by the British at the former first cataract of the Nile, and is located about 1000 km up-river and 690 km south-southeast of Cairo. When initially constructed between 1899 and 1902, nothing of its scale had ever been attempted; on completion, it was the largest masonry dam in the world. The dam was designed to provide storage of annual floodwater and augment dry season flows to support greater irrigation development and population growth in the lower Nile. The dam, originally limited in height by conservation concerns, worked as designed, but provided inadequate storage capacity for planned development and was raised twice: between 1907 and 1912 and again between 1929 and 1933. These heightenings still did not meet irrigation demands and in 1946 it was nearly over-topped in an effort to maximize pool elevation. This led to the investigation and construction of the Aswan High Dam 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) upstream.
Energy in Sudan describes energy and electricity production, consumption and imports in Sudan. The chief sources of energy in 2010 were wood and charcoal, hydroelectric power, and oil. Sudan is a net energy exporter. Primary energy use in Sudan was 179 TWh and 4 TWh per million persons in 2008.
Water conflict in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) primarily deals with three major river basins: the Jordan River Basin, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin, and the Nile River Basin. The MENA region covers roughly 11.1 million square km. There are three major deserts in the MENA region:
Sudan had a modern irrigated agriculture sector totaling about 800,000 hectares in 2010, out of about 84 million hectares that were potentially arable. This was a slight decline from the prior year and well below the more than 2 million hectares of the early 1990s. The Nile and its tributaries were the source of water for 93 percent of irrigated agriculture, and of this, the Blue Nile accounted for about 67 percent. Gravity flow was the main form of irrigation, although pumps served part of the irrigated area.
Oswald Longstaff Prowde was an English civil engineer, particularly associated with irrigation projects, dams and other water-related projects.
