permaculture

["souscayrous" <souscayrous@tiscali.fr>]

Hello everyone, the New Delta Project in the South West desert of Egypt is a
project long since set in motion. I don't know if terraforming appropriately
describes what has happened/is happening there, but it is an enormous
project (see some details below).
The Toshka region where the main work is currently concentrated is low lying
and has been flooded in recent years by high levels in the Nile, making for
some amazing satellite photos of the Sahara Desert under water.
Unfortunately, rather than work with this natural gift, designers have
chosen to hard landscape the region, grow crops under rigid commercial
conditions (i.e. chemically) and then flying them out of Africa to Europe
and the Middle East.
I cannot rid myself of the idea that all the effort and resources involved
in such a project are wasted. It is not that the energy needed to keep
pumping the water out of the river and into the Sheikh Zayed Canal is
unsustainable (the pumping station as well as the other infrastructure are
supplied by the hydroelectric scheme in the Aswan Dam), but that there will
probably soon come a time when the financial cost of transporting the crops
from the desert to population centres will become prohibitive.
Elephants, whether white or not, have long since disappeared from this part
of Africa, but I suspect Mubarek's project, intended to be his substantial
legacy to Egypt (as Nasser had his Aswan Dam), will soon become a mausoleum
worn smooth by the ever shifting sands of the desert.
Such technological project design takes as its first principle its goal,
which in this case is the commercial production of food crops, ignoring the
simple fact that it is life that is the only sustainable system for the
production of food. When the commercial imperative is no longer absolute,
the massive infrastructure organised to support this production will
collapse and the area will return to desert.
If only seeds had been scattered onto the flooded desert, if only huge
aircraft could have overflown this massive natural depression dropping
millions of seedballs, then nature might have been able to once again bring
this area back to life. The Nile Valley is densely populated and has been
for millennia. The New Delta Project is intended to be densely populated
too, although there is not the enthusiasm of the local population to move
there. Perhaps this is because they realise that it is not housing, jobs,
electricity or roads that produce a place to live that one can call home,
but the pulse of life generated elsewhere in Egypt by the Nile itself. If
life were created in the Toshka Depression by following simple revegetative
methods, the population would soon follow. There is no reason then why this
area could not indeed be a new delta, returning to the vital and intense
life that it once had.
It is not that the seeding of this area would have been cheaper but that for
humans, animals and plants alike, it is life itself that encourages life and
for all the extraordinary things we can do with technology, concrete, tarmac
and electricity are all products of and not creators of life.
I fear we might narrow our vision while opening the field of technology so
that all we see are the fresh deserts of uninhabited worlds just waiting for
terraforming. Implicit in this vision is the understanding that the earth is
expendable because there will soon come a day when we can create our own
earth, any number of them.
I might be wrong in my fears but with what seems like a growing ecological
crisis and the success or failure of the New Delta Project still far from
being decided, our record of technological success is far from assured.
Utopian visions are inspiring but perhaps we need no new visions, no new
concepts, just the ability to see what 'is' more clearly.

Jamie
Souscayrous

Description of the Project
The New Valley Canal (the Sheikh Zayed Canal) aims to move water from Lake
Nasser to the New Valley. The canal will start from a site lying 8 km to the
north of Khor-Toshka on Lake Nasser. The first phase of the canal's course
has been determined to start north of Khor-Toshka then move westward to
Darb-el-Arbe'ien then to the town of Paris. The course's length will be 310
km. 500,000 acres of arable land, on the two banks of the course will be
reclaimed during this phase.
The targeted length of the canal till its final phase will be some 310 km
and it will irrigate an area of 3.3 million acres of virgin arable lands.
The Infrastructure of the Project:

A - The Main Pumping Station

This station will pump water from Lake Nasser to the New Valley Canal
(Sheikh Zayed's Canal). It was designed to pump water safely at all levels
from Lake Nasser through 6 water tunnels each of which will be 1.5 km long.
Water will be pumped to 30 pumping stations to repump it to the New Valley
Canal's course. The station will be located 500 m inside Lake Nasser.
It will pump water to the canal at the rate of 300 m3/s., i.e, some 25
million m3/day. At full-capacity, the station will require 375 mw/h.
B - The New Valley Canal
The canal will be 310 km long, 30 m wide (at bottom and some 58 m at
surface) and 6 m deep. It will start from the pumping station on Lake Nasser
and end in Al-Wahat Al-Bahareya (Bahareya Oases).
The main canal will have 9 branches (of different lengths) that will
irrigate 447,000 acres.
C- Complementary Projects

There will be some infrastructural projects the most important of which are:
Erecting a high-tension network (200 km long) from the High Dam to the major
pumping station.
Implementing an ambitious plan in the field of transport (till the year
2017) with aim of facilitating movement between those new areas.
In January 1997, some of these projects were started; following are some
examples:
Building Toshka/Owainat road (220 km) at a cost of L.E.67 million.
Building and Macadamizing Armant / Wahat road on the west bank of the Nile
(70 km) at a cost of L.E. 25 million.
Widening Dakhla / Gharb-el-Mawhoub road, the 1st phase, 50 km long, at a
cost of L.E. 12 million.
Linking the 53 km Aswan/Abu-Simbel road to the work sites in the New Valley
Canal (Toshka Canal) and macadamizing the roads to those sites.
Providing telephone lines for sites of the project (30 lines for each).
A 200 lines capacity telephone exchange for connecting Toshka area and
pumping station with Abu-Simbel telephone central is being installed.
Opening the phase of making Edfu/Aswan railway (100 km) two-way and
finishing the Safaga/Qena/Abu-Tartour line.
Modernizing the Abu-Simbel International Airport at a cost of L.E. 75
million. Developing and upgrading the High Dam /Abu-Simbel/Halfa river line
at a cost of L.E. 500,000. The Urban Planning Authority has chosen 7 sites
for development and construction over an area of 18,500 acres in Toshka,
Kharga, Farafra, Dairout, East Owinat, Beiram and Dakhla for housing about
980,000 persons.


-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Lawrence F.
London, Jr.
Sent: dimanche 22 janvier 2006 11:22
To: john@eco-living.net; permaculture
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Sahara project

John Schinnerer wrote:

> Aloha,
>
> Yeah, I got some of this site googling
>
> sahara project
>
> What I said was, I didn't find anything that seemed relevant.
>
> If this is actually "it"...is it...?
>
> 'nuff said.
>
> John S.
>

That .... is .... IT, unfortunately

Its a reference from along time ago, had the link in my website
thought I remembered reading that it was a real (projected) project.
wild goose chase

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