NEW EDEN IN IRAQ

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 28, 14 May 1947, Page 8

NEW EDEN IN IRAQ

CONSERVATION OF WATER British business is playing a big role in a series of ambitious public works that are creating a new Iraq —turning large areas of desert into the Eden that flourished there thousands of years ago. For Iraq is investing her considerable war profits (£10,000,000 in the case of the railways alone) and the major part of her oil revenues in these enterprises. The country depends on water; so the major schemes naturally concern jvater conservation and distribution. •,

First in importance is the Lake Habbaniyah scheme for conserving water by a “flood relief” system. The plan is for flood water to be diverted at Ramadi, 50 miles west of Baghdad, from the Euphrates by a canal into Lake Habbaniyah.

Another channel takes the excess from Mu jar ah, at the southern end of the lake, into the Abu Dibbis depression, to the south-east, for storage.

Then, during the low-water season, water is returned from the depression into the Euphrates at Dhibban for irrigation purposes. . Altogether it is calculated that this scheme will store 2,200,000,000 gallons of water. This will permit the irigation of a new winter cropping area near the Euphrates of 494,000 acres, and a new summer cropping area of 148,000 acres.

So far, the Mujarah channel has been completed, the Ramadi Canal nearly finished, and work is now proceeding on the Dhibban section. All this work, estimated to cost £2,000,000, is in the hands of Balfour, Beatty and Company, the London engineering firm. Two other enormous barrage schemes are under way: The first is on the Tigris at Tharta’, north of Baghdad. It will serve two purposes—irrigating new ground and checking the floods which deluge the Baghdad area every five years or so. The second is on the Great Zab at Bekhme, in the foothills of Kurdistan. 7

It is part of a hydro-electric power plan.

Besides these river developments, there are other equally important schemes under way. They include: The half-British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company is to double its oil pipe lines from Kirkuk to Haifa' in Palestine and Tripolis in Lebanon, trebling their capacity. This will increase the Iraq Government’s revenue from £1,600,000 to £4,800,000 a year when the scheme is completed within three years. The railway is to be extended from Kirkuk jto Erbil in the north. This work is also in the hands of Balfour, Beatty and Co. Holloway Brothers (London) Ltd., the public works contractors, are to build a new railway terminus at Baghdad, a road-cum-rail bridge over the Euphrates and still another over the Lesser Zab on the new Kirkuk-Erbil line.