Mubarak, new life into Sinai
With the unleashing of the ever-streaming Nile waters into Sinai, a new leaf has been turned in the history of Egypt. Sinai, demographically considered a vacum for long, now turns into an inhabited, cultivated, industrialised and well-mined area with many schools and trading firms; a wholly integrated community whose members are bound to the land with the strings of patriotism and interest.
Over centuries, almost all invading armies pushed their way into Egypt through Sinai. In most cases, they succeeded because Egyptians did not manage to make Sinai a permanently prosperous part of the whole. But now it is part and parcel of Egypt.
And today the giant project, expected to breathe a new life into the once neglected Sinai peninsula through feeding it with Nile water for the first time in Egypt's modern history, was inaugurated by President Mubarak who gave the go-ahead to such great project.
The scheme combines with another colossal project underway in Toshki in Upper Egypt, to create new deltas eventually designed to give the country a ticket to a bright future and lure its mushrooming population into flocking to new vistas away from the narrow confines of the traditional valley now bursting at the seams.
Al-Salam Water Canal will carry Nile waters beneath the Suez Canal to irrigate the vast areas of land in the Sinai peninsula. The project is one of the government's aggressive projects to water the desert from Egypt's lifeline, the Nile, and build new towns to relieve pressure on cities like Cairo.
The Ministry of Public Works and Water Resources is planning to increase the cultivated area 3.4 million feddans by the year 2017 add to 7.6 million feddans now.
Earlier this year, Mubarak gave the go-ahead for work to start on the Toshki project in south west Egypt, near the Sudanese border. It includes a canal to be dug from just upstream of the Aswan High Dam to irrigate 500,0000 feddans. The plan also provides for utilising ground water at the oases region to cultivate another 500,000 feddans.
There was no quick or easy way to realize such end, as work in Al-Salam Water Canal took up to three years. It stretches for 87 km from Damietta gate to the west bank of the Suez Canal, as the project was expected to build 37 new urban communities. The total cost of the scheme, he continued, was LE 5.75 billion.
The land reclamation scheme will be carried out on two stages. The first will cultivate 220,000 feddans in the governorates of Damietta, Dakahleya, Sharkia, Ismailia and Port Said. The canal course in this area is 87 km.
As a matter of fact, Sahl El-Tina which will be cultivated by the Nile water through Al-Salam canal, was an ancient expansion of the Nile Delta. Pictures taken by satellites four years ago reveal that the Sinai plains were natural expansion of the Delta.
The government's agricultural expansion plan till 2017 would cover all provinces of Egypt, with special attention all the way to Toshki, the Western Desert Oasis and Sinai.
Water resources for these agricultural projects are already provided, including 5.9 billion cubic meters of underground and 2 billion of irrigation water.
Egypt, however, can get some extra amounts of Nile waters till the year 2017, in cooperation with the Nile Basin countries.
It is a new accomplishment to be added to Egypt's record of achievements under Mubarak.