Posted on 04/09/2021 2:50:50 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
After the failure of talks on a mechanism to resume negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was announced Tuesday, a number of Egyptian experts and former ministers gave insight on the issue.
Water Bomb
Former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam said in a TV interview that filling the dam's reservoir without a legal binding agreement may incur a famine in Egypt and Sudan. That is because the capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters, which is almost equivalent to the annual water shares of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18 billion cubic meters) combined.
Allam also warned that the lack of regulations on the quantity of water released from the dam can cause flooding and displacement in Sudan. "If just four billion cubic meters of water are released at once from the Renaissance Dam, Sudan will be gone," Allam underscored describing the mega hydropower project as "a water bomb."
Obstinate Policies and Inflated Ego
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed al-Oraby said he had expected the failure of the Renaissance Dam negotiations because of the Ethiopian intransigence over the past decade since 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at egypttoday.com ...
Was it built by China?
Doesn’t look like it last long anyway.
GERD is also the acronym for Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease which is appropriate since a lot of the people downstream from this dam aren’t going to be able to stomach it.
Was it built by China?
The Ethiopian government has stated that it intends to fund the entire cost of the dam by itself in order to prevent relying on foreign countries who may be brought under pressure by Egypt to withdraw their support. Ethiopia has issued a bond targeted at Ethiopians in the country and abroad to that end.[17] The turbines and associated electrical equipment of the hydropower plants costing about US$1.8 billion are reportedly financed by Chinese banks. This would leave US$3 billion to be financed by the Ethiopian government through other means.[30] The estimated US$4.8 billion construction cost, apparently excluding the cost of power transmission lines, corresponds to about 5% of Ethiopia’s gross domestic product of US$87 billion in 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam
“Doesn’t look like it last long anyway.”
What evidence do you have for that statement?
Just the photo and the high standard of african quality control.
This should end well. Consider this as a precursor to the 3 Gorges.
Interesting - from that Wikipedia link, Sudan actually supports the project.
Also interesting: The generating capacity is massively oversized vs. average flow of the river. The water storage capacity is huge too. This “should” benefit all, but Egypt likely doubts Ethiopia can be trusted to manage this responsibly (from Egypt’s standpoint.)
Former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam said in a TV interview that filling the dam's reservoir without a legal binding agreement may incur a famine in Egypt and Sudan. That is because the capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters, which is almost equivalent to the annual water shares of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18 billion cubic meters) combined.
Gosh, it's almost as if the Egyptians and Sudanese don't have very astute agricultural practices.
An actual photo of the actual dam:
Right, they do. Contrary to what the Egyptian-sourced article said, the Sudanese understand that it will help control Nile flooding which annually takes its toll on the Sudanese.
Yeah, I can sort of see both sides of it. My understanding is that Egypt has adapted to and rather depends on the flooding: A nice evened out flow does not work well for them. The Aswan Dam itself has been a big problem in this regard. Lack of flooding and silt delivery to the floodplains has resulted in decreasing soil fertility and increased soil salinity.
Further, Ethiopia will almost certainly come to be dependent on using and selling as much electricity as possible whilst having a consistent supply during the dry season(s?) or droughts. Given the immense storage capacity, there’s no sense in letting energy in the form of stored water go to waste during the wet season, and there’s no sense in running it all through the generators then, as other hydro plants are at maximum capability then, too. Whose interests will come first, in Ethiopia?
Just the mere concept of another country having such potential control over one’s own country’s existential need (water) has to scare the heck out of the Egyptians. They know how unstable the region is. What if bad actors take power in Ethiopia?
There will even be significant evaporative losses of water stored in the new lake. More water could conceivably come from the White Nile River, as most of it’s volume disappears in vast swamplands in South Sudan. (Transpiration and evaporation.) A great canal was begun to bypass the swamps, but political upheaval in South Sudan has killed that project.
On their side, the Ethiopians surely look dimly on the idea of Egypt having near 100% say in how Ethiopia manages it’s dam.
I kept thinking that the excess wet season power capacity could somehow be used to pump surplus wet season water into elevated reservoirs in Egypt. But where in Egypt to do this, and without (again) large evaporative losses — well, I just don’t know...
Of note is that while the Nile is long, total water flow is dwarfed by, say, even our own Ohio River (almost 3x larger flow @ discharge.)
Links:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/aswan-high-dam-completed
https://forces.si.edu/soils/02_08_03.html
The psychological well-being of Egypt is inextricably tied with the waters of the Nile, and to a lesser extent, the ancient monuments which are found in plenty. This has been the case for at thousands of years. I think the Egyptian opposition to the dam has a lot to do with that, rather than any rational considerations.
The Aswan High Dam’s Lake Nasser suffers from that same evaporation problem, and between destruction of the shrimp fishing industry in the Delta, and the fouling of groundwater and aquifers, *and* the resulting crumbling of monuments, the High Dam has been a disaster.
Because the waters just set there evaporating, the lake levels have always been hard to maintain. From a physical standpoint, the longer the fall, the more electricity can be generated from the same cubic meter of water, so keeping the lake level at or near max should be a priority. The higher the lake level, the less water needed to generate the same amount of electricity, in turn the level is simpler to maintain.
In short, the dam also hasn’t delivered its supposed benefits, other than flood control. But the flooding was also the reason for the agricultural season, again, going back thousands of years. As Herodotus wrote, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”.
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