Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Impacts
Impacts
Africa
Professor Jim Simpson
List of Figures:
1. Motivation for construction of Aswan High Dam.
2. Short-term impacts of Aswan High Dam construction.
3. Long-term impacts of Aswan High Dam construction.
4. Map of Lake Nasser.
5. (a)Zone of sediment deposition in Lake Nasser. (b) Volume of water storage in Lake
Nasser (1968-1990).
6. Water demands per capita - I: drinking & domestic (NYC).
7. Water demands per capita - II: irrigation (Egypt).
8. Water demands per capita - III: summary of main use categories.
9. Land area required for per capita food production (Egypt).
10. Groundwaters in North Africa - fossil water from glacial period.
11. Irrigation water demand (Egypt) per unit of land - duration of fossil groundwater resource
if withdrawn for irrigation.
Key Concepts.
1. Long-term problems resulting from current surface water management practices, such as
reservoir siltation, present major difficulties for future generations, but are generally
ignored.
2. Irrigation demand for water is more than an order of magnitude greater than domestic use
demand in arid climates.
3. Fossil groundwaters in N Africa and elsewhere are being withdrawn to supply irrigation
demands in amounts far in excess of recharge rates.
Another argument for construction of the High Dam was for generation of electricity. In the first
decade after construction, there was sufficient supply of electricity to meet demands of urban
citizens in Cairo and also some rural populations, with a surplus for smelting of aluminum ore.
By the early 1980's, the demand for electricity had overtaken available supply, which was
dominated by High Dam hydroelectricity, and construction of new fossil fuel burning generating
stations began. Operation of these new generating stations will significantly shorten the lifetime
of petroleum resources in Egypt, the sale of which currently provides a major component of the
foreign currency for purchase of food imports.
Construction of the High Dam provided more options for location of homes and other buildings,
as well as other infrastructure that would not have been feasible due to the elimination of the
annual flooding cycle throughout the country. Thus it permitted many of the kinds of
investments that are assumed to be necessary in our modern world.
Some immediate negative impacts of the High Dam construction included (Figure #2): loss of
the coastal fishery for sardines and anchovies that were important food sources caught near the
mouths of the two branches of the Nile. The Mediterranean Sea can be generally considered as a
"desert" in terms of fish production, due to its very low supply of nutrients such as phosphorus
and nitrogen that are required for the microscopic marine green plants to accomplish
photosynthesis. As a result, marine fishing in Egypt had been important only in the immediate
vicinity of the Nile outflow, especially in the months following annual flooding. Immediately
after the High Dam was completed and the last Nile flood had occurred, the fishery of coastal
Egypt collapsed, and has never recovered.
The most important building material in rural Egypt has always been bricks made from Nile
River sediments, mostly obtained by dredging of the canal network following annual floods.
After the floods ceased in the mid 1960's, there was no new supply of sediments to be cleared
from the canals, and some farmers began to sell their top soil to small-scale brick manufacturing
plants. Although this gave an immediate return of cash to the farmer who mined his fields for
soil, it then took the land involved out of agricultural production, or made it much more difficult
to use because of the need for very careful land-level controls for flood irrigation practices. This
loss of land has been mostly arrested in the last two decades by mining clay deposits from
surrounding desert lands that are not feasible to use for agriculture and building much larger
brick factories that do not use Nile Delta soils as a raw material. However, this latter
development had the negative consequence of eliminating a major source of income to the small-
scale brick manufacturers, and transferring the income to large central government enterprises.
Much of the fertility of the agricultural soil in Egypt resulted from the continuous resupply of
rich volcanic sediments from the Ethiopian highlands during annual flooding. Since this no
longer occurs, it has become necessary to use much greater amounts of commercial fertilizers,
such as mineral phosphates and fixed nitrogen. The latter of these nutrient sources is very energy
intensive in terms of production so it represents another drain on Egypt's limited fossil fuel
reserves and on foreign currency sources. Total annual commercial fertilizer use per hectare of
agricultural land in Egypt during the early 1990's was about 340 kg, one of the highest in the
world for any country of appreciable population. The comparable values during the same years
for the USA and Japan were 100 kg and 390 kg, respectively. It appears unlikely that higher
application rates of commercial fertilizer would significantly improve crop yields in Egypt
Lake Nasser is now steadily filling with sediments (Figure #4) that formerly reached the Delta
and the coastal Mediterranean The current locus of deposition is far upstream of the High Dam
and does not immediately threaten operation of the power station (Figure #5A). However, the
reservoir will be sufficiently filled within less than a millennium to no longer be useful for
storage of irrigation water. Order of magnitude estimates suggest that within about 600 years,
about half of the current irrigation water storage value of Lake Nasser will have been lost. In
terms of the history of civilization in the Nile Valley, this is not very long. The quantities of
sediment filling up Lake Nasser are so huge (about 100 million tons per year) as to defy
currently feasible attempts at removal. No one currently has a plausible solution to this problem,
which has effectively been postponed for later generations to confront, as is true for many major
environmental issues in other countries. The largest sediment dredging operations in the world to
maintain some of the most valuable harbors, such as that for New York City, are one-two orders
of magnitude smaller than would be required to remove the annual influx of sediment to Lake
Nasser.
The record of monthly water volumes in Lake Nasser between 1968 and 1990 illustrate quite
dramatically the years of rapid filling which occurred during the 1970's, followed by the major
decline in storage volume associated with the drought of the 1980's (Figure #5B). By the time of
the large flood runoff from Ethiopia in the summer of 1988, the active storage volume in Lake
Nasser had decreased to less than 20 km3, only about 20% of the active volume available during
the late 1970's. If the drought had continued another year, there would have been major shortfalls
of water deliveries for irrigation agriculture in Egypt.
Amounts of drinking water needed by an individual depend upon age, weight, level of physical
activity, air temperature, humidity, elevation and many other factors. However, as an
approximation, about 4 liters of fluids per day is required for an adult living in a temperate
climate. This fresh (i.e. low dissolved salt content) water should be free of any disease-causing
bacteria or other pathogens, as well as chemical contamination. A small additional amount of
high-purity water is needed for cooking and other personal uses that could lead to disease if
contaminated supplies were used. Summing these high-purity water demands, the minimum for
each person can be approximated as about 10 liters per day (Figure #6). In situations of extreme
water shortage, such as those typical of droughts in North Africa where rural populations must
collect and transport all of their water over long distances, this quantity is about the minimum
that can sustain human life for an extended period. Converting units of volume and time, 10 liters
of water per day translates to about 4 cubic meters per year.
Domestic water demands in Egypt are appreciably less than for NYC and other large cities in the
USA, but the differences are less than might be expected. Estimates of total domestic water use
in Egypt during 1976 were about 115 liters per capita per day. By 1982, per capita daily use had
grown to about 180 liters for the country, but the equivalent use amount for Cairo was about 320
liters, slightly more than typical for European cities (300 liters per day per capita). Thus urban
domestic water use does not vary as much as might be expected for large differences in
economic circumstances.
IRRIGATION DEMAND FOR WATER IN EGYPT.
Quantities of water used for irrigation are dependent on many factors such as types of crop,
climate and methods of irrigation. Lowland rice, which involves flooding of entire cultivated
fields to a depth of about 20 cm for a number of months, uses large amounts of water per unit of
land. Other crops, such as high economic-value vegetables that are suitable for drip irrigation
instead of flood irrigation, may require much smaller amounts of water per unit of crop land but
much greater investments in irrigation infrastructure such as pumps, plastic tubing and drippers.
As an approximation of water use in a large, complex irrigation network, water budgets in Egypt
can be considered as representative of a mixture of crops grown in an arid climate throughout the
year. Since nearly all of the Nile River water released from the High Dam at Aswan (55 cubic
kilometers per year) is eventually used for irrigation within the country, the mean annual
discharge at Aswan can be divided by the current population of the country in the early 1990s
(about 60 million) to yield a per capita demand for irrigation water of about 1000 cubic meters
per year (Figure #7). This estimate excludes water losses associated with storage in Lake Nasser,
mostly from evaporation, which account for about another 12 cubic kilometers per year.
Egypt is currently able to produce food crops plus export crops such as cotton that are equivalent
to only about half of food demand from the resident population. Thus, to obtain a value of
irrigation water equivalent to total per capita food demand, the number derived above can be
multiplied by two, suggesting that a more appropriate per capita irrigation water requirement is
about 2000 cubic meters per year, assuming all food production occurs from irrigated crops.
The high ratio of per capita irrigation use to that for minimum drinking plus cooking water
(about 500 to 1) is indicative of the large amounts of water required for transpiration fluxes of
crop plants, compared to those needed for direct consumption of humans. For Egypt, with the
only significant source of renewable water supply being the Nile River, the largest quantities of
water demand are always likely to remain in the category of irrigation. On the other hand, with
diseases transmitted by contaminated water as a major health issue in the country, the quantities
of clean water required to improve conditions of the population are much less than the total water
demand for irrigation.
Some of the evidence that establishes the likely periods of groundwater recharge involve
measurements of the isotopic composition of the water molecules themselves. There are several
stable isotopes of both hydrogen and oxygen in the natural environment, including deuterium
(hydrogen with 1 neutron and 1 proton in the nucleus, as opposed to the most abundant hydrogen
atom which has 1 proton and 0 neutrons in the nucleus) and oxygen-18 (oxygen with 10 neutrons
and 8 protons as opposed to the most common form of oxygen which has 8 neutrons and 8
protons). The proportion of "heavy" isotopes (those with "extra" neutrons) in natural waters
varies significantly from one area to another, due primarily to atmospheric processes involving
evaporation and condensation. However, once water passes below the surface, away from
influence of the atmosphere and into groundwaters, its stable isotopic composition no longer
changes and it can retain the same relative proportion of "heavy" isotopes for millions of years.
In contrast, the chemical composition of groundwaters can be modified substantially in the
subsurface by dissolution of aquifer minerals or chemical precipitation of new mineral from
solution. Thus much about the atmospheric transport history of water which recharged a
particular aquifer is preserved indefinitely in the stable isotope composition of the water
molecules and can serve as a "fingerprint" of that particular water resource. The stable isotope
compositions of deep groundwaters beneath the Sahara are completely different from those of
the modern Nile River, and are relics of a past climate that differed dramatically from that of the
present.
A second line of evidence about the time of recharge of deep North African groundwaters
involves the amount of carbon-14 (radioactive carbon with a half-life of 5600 years) remaining
in the dissolved bicarbonate ion of these waters. The carbon-14 "age" of these water range from
about 5000 to 25,000 years, based on the very low amounts of this radioactive isotope remaining
dissolved in the water. Thus a consistent picture exists of the time of recharge of these waters
that excludes the possibility of their being related to the "modern" hydrologic cycle of the region.
They should be considered as being "fossil" waters that receive no significant recharge today.
The total amounts of water present in these deep groundwaters beneath the Sahara are large
compared to the volume of water flowing in the Nile River each year, but actually represent a
very limited resource when considered for potential use over an extended period since they are
not being renewed in today's climate. With this knowledge in mind, some potential uses of this
resource can be considered: irrigation, drinking water, other?
Although this simple calculation suggests that extensive pumping of fossil groundwaters for
irrigation supplies probably should be considered as the least economically valuable potential use
of the resource, this policy has been exactly that planned in Libya. The same type of deep
groundwater resource that lies under Egypt is also found beneath large areas of Libya and
definite construction proposals have been made to pump that water out and into a large pipeline
for irrigation of crops near the Mediterranean Sea in northeastern Libya. The wisdom of such a
choice appears to be no less shortsighted for that country than it would be for Egypt, yet it
remains as a major development goal for Libya. During the 1980s Saudi Arabia initiated large
irrigation projects for grain production based on pumping of old groundwaters from beneath the
deserts of that country. Thus despite the lack of a sustainable supply of irrigation water, large
investments have been or are planned in the Middle East based on "mining" of fossil
groundwaters.
Such shortsighted practices are not confined to oil-rich states with arid climates. Much of the
irrigation expansion which occurred in the mid continent of the USA during the 20th century in
the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and
New Mexico is based on withdrawals from the largest continuous groundwater resource in North
America, the Ogallala Aquifer. Although this groundwater resource currently does receive some
limited recharge, the rate for most of the aquifer is less than half of current irrigation pumping.
As the resource becomes depleted, beginning first with the states towards the southern end of the
region, large investments in irrigation infrastructure will be abandoned and economic returns
from farming in the region will contract dramatically. The process of rapid groundwater resource
depletion has already reached the point that large areas producing high economic value crops
based on "temporary" irrigation in the central USA have already been lost.
Without going into details, some other potential uses of fossil groundwaters in Egypt are worth
exploring. One would be to use this water resource as a temporary source of high quality
drinking water for populations that currently receive only untreated contaminated surface waters
(about half of those living in the country). At present, USAID is heavily involved in delivering
small-scale treatment plants for villages of 2000 to 3000 people that are based on filtration and
chlorination of contaminated surface waters. These treatment facilities cost more than $50
thousand to install for each village unit, appreciable ongoing costs to operate and the necessity of
expensive supplies such as chlorine to be purchased. Because of many difficulties of maintaining
such equipment and obtaining chemical supplies, many of these small-scale domestic water
treatment facilities were not operating as designed within a few years of construction, or are
likely to go out of service completely. In contrast, if the same capital investments were made in
providing groundwaters as a source of drinking water, a factor to ten greater population could be
served with a supply that would not need to be treated at all to eliminate bacterial contamination
because this water is already completely free of such organisms. If these high-purity "fossil"
resources were used exclusively for drinking and cooking, the resource lifetime would be about a
factor of 500 longer than for irrigation. By not having sufficient understanding of the natural
environment to permit taking advantage of favorable circumstances for development, agencies
that are intended to improve the lives of low-income populations in countries such as Egypt often
use their limited economic resources very inefficiently. This is definitely the situation for rural
water supplies in Egypt.
Considering some options for long-term sustainable energy resources for the world, another
possible use of the fossil groundwaters in Egypt and other countries in North Africa could be
considered. The Sahara Desert is the largest continuous area of intense solar radiation to the
surface on the planet. Essentially cloudless for most of the year and having high influx of energy
from the sun, this huge area would be ideal for construction of solar-electricity facilities. One
proposal for storage of energy from solar-generated electricity is to split water molecules into
hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. The hydrogen gas then becomes a valuable fuel that could
be transported by pipelines or other means to sites of energy consumption, similar to current
practice for natural gas. If such a possibility were to be pursued for the Sahara, the presence of
high quality groundwater would probably make it more economically favorable. The total
economic value of these groundwater resources might be many orders of magnitude greater as
part of a large solar electric generation network for production of hydrogen as a portable fuel
than for any of the currently proposed uses for irrigation?
Egypt has a very limited supply of domestic petroleum resources, the sale of which on the
international market is the greatest single source of foreign currency to the government of Egypt.
Revenues from these sales of petroleum are used in large part for purchase of wheat and other
basic foods. Completion of new oil-fired power stations will shorten the number of years until
this source of purchasing power is eliminated and there will no longer be sufficient money to buy
food that cannot be produced domestically. Here is a situation where the net effect of providing
loans from international sources may make it more difficult for Egypt to adapt to the severe
limits of its natural resources by shortening the period over which changes must be
accomplished.