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by Mahmoud Fouly, Abdel-Meguid Kamal
CAIRO, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) – The ongoing Nile River flooding does not pose a serious threat to Egypt despite the damage and casualties it caused in the downstream Nile basin country Sudan, an Egyptian official said.
“The flood situation in Egypt is different and society here will not be seriously affected as in other states in the Nile Basin,” Mohamed al-Sebai, spokesman for Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, told Xinhua.
The ministry’s monitoring and forecasting center said the Nile flood is quite useful for Egypt this year, as there is an opportunity to use amounts of flood water to refresh and improve the quality of the Nile’s water, as well as reduce its contamination and quantity. of ammonia in the Rosetta branch of Egypt’s Nile delta, the spokesperson added.
The Nile River is Egypt’s main source of fresh water, supplying the country with 55.5 billion cubic meters of water per year.
Sebai noted that flooding will continue in Egypt until the end of October, in light of continued rains in the countries in the Nile basin upstream.
The ministry recently announced that the Nile floods this year are “high and likely to continue to increase”, while the government tasked the ministry to establish an “emergency plan”.
Egypt has 13 riparian provinces along the Nile River that would be the first to be affected by the floods, located between Aswan in the south and Damietta in the north.
The biggest problem of these provinces is their invasions in the course of the Nile, either through construction or plantations on adjacent lands, which makes them the most vulnerable.
Invasions lead to bottlenecks in the river’s course, and therefore the amount of water that enters cannot be absorbed.
However, the Water Ministry spokesman told Xinhua that “any possible damage will be limited to the Nile islands and the riverside lands, which are considered an integral part of the river’s course.”
Experts expect the water level of the Nile in Egypt to rise by about 120 centimeters, overwhelming the lowlands, including islands and riverside buildings and crops.
Abbas Sharaqi, professor of water resources at Cairo University, stressed that the current floods are not the most violent in Egypt’s history compared to those that occurred in 1999 and 2000.
“But the difference is that Lake Nasser, the Aswan High Dam reservoir in Egypt, was filled earlier this year during the current floods,” said the Egyptian professor, attributing the current rise in the Nile’s water level to Egypt to the increasing flow of water. from the central Ethiopian highlands.
Although Egypt and Sudan are the two downstream Nile basin states, this year’s floods caused fatal damage in Sudan, while Egypt is likely to pass it safely, mainly due to its gigantic high dam that helps contain a lot of flood water.
“Sudan was exposed to increased flooding that submerged some states due to heavy rains amid an increasing flow of water coming from Ethiopia upriver,” Sharaqi told Xinhua.
He explained that the capacity of Sudanese dams is limited and that they cannot reserve large amounts of water.
Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation has other ways of dealing with such a flood, as it can resort to using Edfina Barrage on the Rosetta arm of the Nile, which releases excess water into the Mediterranean Sea, or other levees. north in case of continuous water flow.
“The situation is under the control of the ministry, because it can increase or decrease the water level of the Nile, which is still at a safe level, or increase the amount of water that is discharged into the sea when necessary,” said the professor. Egyptian. Final product
