Drainage in Egypt: a story of determination, continuity, and success
2007
Abdel-Dayem, Safwat | Abdel-Gawad, Shaden | Fahmy, Hussam
The story of drainage in Egypt is about enhancing productivity and ensuring sustainability of the irrigated agriculture. It was not possible for the country to turn into highly intensive and diversified irrigated agriculture, without effective drainage to control waterlogging and salinity. It took Egypt a century to reach this level of drainage development. It is the outcome of a combination of political commitment, institutional development, technological improvement, and management capacity. The effort was sustained over many decades not only to construct new projects but to keep the installed system well performing through research, regular maintenance, and when necessary replacement and modernization.The significance and size of drainage projects required at certain point the establishment of dedicated institutions for the design, construction and maintenance of drainage systems as well as for drainage research. Egypt was pioneering in applying cost recovery to recover the investment costs of the subsurface drainage systems. The recent shift towards integrated water resources management was reflected both in planning and implementing new drainage projects. Drainage objectives are changing from the sole objective of increasing productivity to the multiple objectives of increasing agricultural production; drainage water reuse for irrigation and fish-farming; domestic water disposal; and environmental management.
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