High Dam to contain rising Nile flood waters
Egypt, Local, 9/5/2001

"Aswan High Dam will be able to cope with this unusually high Nile floods that have flooded acres of land in Sudan and left thousands homeless there," Minister of Public Works and Water resources Mahmoud Abu Zayed said late Monday.

"With proper management and the release of water into Toshka (spillage canal), we think we can manage it," the minister told reporters.

The Nile rises every year when summer rains in Ethiopia and Sudan cause the river to swell. The High Dam contains the excess water in its reservoir, Lake Nasser, keeping the flood waters from damaging crops and low-lying homes in Egypt.

"Our expectation is that the flood will not be extremely high, but we cannot be certain until the end september or early October," Abu Zayed said.

Officials have begun precautionary measures, releasing the excess water in Lake Nasser into the dam's spillways. They have also diverted water in the Zayed Canal, the feeder canal for the unfinished Toshka mega-project.

Spillways allow us to handle very high floods. "But the necessary release of water from the dam will submerge some low-lying islands," Abu Zeid said asserting that residents of these islands had already been alerted.

The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1964 has spared Egypt sharp seasonal Nile fluctuations. Most of Egypt's 67 million people live downstream the dam on just four per cent of the country's land.

In Sudan the situation is more serious. The Nile has reached its highest level in 22 years, washing away schools, mosques and even small villages. Dams there were unable to cope with the volume of water and flooding 70,000 acres of land and displacing 7,000 people.

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