THE NILE WATERS

Evening Star, Issue 23377, 21 September 1939, Page 17

THE NILE WATERS

EGYPT SEEKS A SUBSTITUTE A survey of the possibility of providing Egypt with a substitute volume of water should it over bo deprived of the flood waters of the Blue Nile River

is being speeded up by order of the Egyptian Government. The reason is the present Italo-British tension (says a message from Cairo to the ‘ Chicago Tribune ’). The source of the Blue Nile is Lake Tsana in Ethiopia. Its significance is dual; it irrigates the great cotton lands of Gezira, in the south-eastern Sudan, and. when swollen by its tributaries, it precipitates, together with tho White Nile, which it joins at Khartum, the annual Nile flood in Egypt.

The erratic annual level of the flood and the need for controlling high floods render it imperative for Egypt and the Sudan to maintain control of tlm Nile waters. “ Tho Nile is Egypt and Egypt is tho Nile,” is an axiom of the land of tho Pharaohs, for without _it there would bo nothing to distinguish it from the Sahara, and all that ancient civilisation which, archaeologists uro taking such pains to bring to light would never hove existed.

These considerations give enormous potential importance to the_ survey being conducted by the Egyptian Government. If the project emerges as envisaged it will involve tho construction of a tremendous dam at the northern end of Lake Albert, in north-weetern Uganda, and the raising of the lake’s water level to 27ft, thus vastly enhancing its holding capacity. Also projected as part of the scheme is the canalising of the great Sudd

marshes, with the consequent saving of tremendous water resources at present going to waste. As a result of these plans Egypt would bo assured of a volume of water which, controlled and regulated by means of dams constructed between Lake Albert and the Mediterranean, largely would replace the flood waters of the Nile should the sources of the Blue Nile be blocked.

}Vhile all quarters in Egypt and the

Sudan are unanimous as to the essential need of taking everv possible measure to safeguard the flow of the Nile, certain advisers of the Egyptian Government are less concerned about the dangers of . Italian interference with Lake Tsana. They point out that only a small proportion of the Nile water comes from the l(ikc itself, while after it leaves Tsana the Blue Nile at once enters n region of precipitous ravines that make diversion almost impossible.