Agreed - Looking forward to a B1M episode about it. I found this tweet thread [1] which has a lot of interesting information. Some maps make it appear to be connected to the Nile, while this poster continues to say it transfers "wastewater from Alexandria to western desert". Quite cool if it's all wastewater, but I suspect it must be a combination of Nile water and wastewater.
The California aqueduct (444 miles, 714km) would like to have a word :-).
Basically built for the same reason, the central valley of California was mostly arid but the top soil was good for agriculture. The underground aquifer was a limit on how much farming (and of what type) could be done.
Whilst it could be that the editor or author are technically wrong it’s also quite possible that they might be technically correct and were just arguing semantics here.
As far as geography/geology/hydrology goes rivers have a specific definition which the grand canal might not fit especially as one big system since afaik it extends and connects to multiple rivers and the water doesn’t flow in a single direction into a larger body of water.
An aqueduct isn’t a river. While the exact definition may seem vague the use of multiple pumping stations along the Californi aqueduct are one obvious difference.
It's unclear that the river in the article is a river in the conventional sense, either: it seems to be routed underground for long stretches of tunnel at points.
(The longest tunnel in the world is also a water tunnel, and supplies NYC with water[1].)
The Erie Canal (362.9 mi) is not as long as the California aqueduct nor the Grand Canal in China but it is also longer than the "man made river" of the article, and IT HAS A SONG, and a good one at that.
Let's nitpick then. It says: "According to its website, it is the largest underground network of pipes (2,820 kilometres (1,750 mi))[3] and aqueducts in the world.".
It could concievably have no pipe longer than 114 km.
Even the Romans (Byzantine if you wish) built the aqueduct of Valens supplying Constantinopole with fresh water over 426km so yeah I'm also not sure what is this so impressive. And anyway, if the Egyptian one stays uncovered as the pictures show it, I wonder how much water will it have left on a hot day (which are almost all) when it approaches destination.
Doesn't California also contain the largest earthen dam or something to that extent? It's not as impressive as the Hoover dam or the Three Gorges dam but it's still huge from what I understand.
Are there any prior examples of rehydrating the desert that have actually worked? (note: from an agricultural perspective, not as artificial oases turned into gambling destinations :-).
The question is in relation to the quality of the soil after millenia of arid conditions. The Nile valley and delta are historically fertile due to seasonal sedimentation, but that too has stopped with the Aswan High Dam [1]
Egypt's previous de-desertification project "Toshka" kinda of worked. It wasn't the massive job creator that it was sold as because most of the farming was very large scale and mechanized. But it was able to produce large amounts of high quality food that Egyptians rarely saw because it was more valuable for export.
> Are there any prior examples of rehydrating the desert that have actually worked?
As others have noted, there are large swaths of productive agriculture land in California that were, and would continue to be, giant deserts without extensive irrigation projects.
This (and the other examples in comments) are somehow comforting, in the sense that they seem to suggest that soil processes are fairly reversible (though the effort required for achieving results in a reasonable timescale might be enormous).
While I won't check my facts, it feels likely the publication is to blame on this one. I'm pretty sure the Egyptians are not referring to it as anything in English. Meanwhile, how can a writer resist playing on "the world's largest river in Egypt"? (Okay, perhaps they should have resisted harder.)
I guess if they would have called it 'world's largest canal', it would have been more obvious that the title is not true.
That honor goes to the Grand Canal in China, with a length of 1776km.
No I don't think there's a reason. Possibly that the primary sense of a canal is to transport things and this is to transport water. But that's the other sense of the word. I blame it on the firing of copy editors. Maybe this is another thing chatgpt can save us from.
Are you sure you're talking about the same project? That contradicts the maps others have posted in this thread [1], and would also be way longer than 114km to reach the New Delta.
Readit News
1. A map would be nice.
2. Where is the water coming from, and how is it ensured that this water source is sustainable?
3. A general overview of Egypt's "New Delta" project, and how this is central to its goals.
1. https://twitter.com/mahmouedgamal44/status/16332314978376622...
https://www.egypttoday.com/siteimages/ArticleImgs/2021/3/30/...
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Basically built for the same reason, the central valley of California was mostly arid but the top soil was good for agriculture. The underground aquifer was a limit on how much farming (and of what type) could be done.
The longest one that I know of is the Grand Canal in China, which begain construction approx. 1400 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)
As far as geography/geology/hydrology goes rivers have a specific definition which the grand canal might not fit especially as one big system since afaik it extends and connects to multiple rivers and the water doesn’t flow in a single direction into a larger body of water.
There's one underground that's even longer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_Aqueduct
Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonston_Pumping_Plant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos_Amigos_Pumping_Plant, etc.
(The longest tunnel in the world is also a water tunnel, and supplies NYC with water[1].)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_Aqueduct
It could concievably have no pipe longer than 114 km.
Also if it's underground it's not a river?
Fairly recently it decided to shorten it's own spillway a bit though. Shortly afterwards it gained a whole lot of concrete.
Juan Brown has a very comprehensive series on that excitement[0]
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wikin2TJ7b0&list=PL6SYmp3qb3...
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The question is in relation to the quality of the soil after millenia of arid conditions. The Nile valley and delta are historically fertile due to seasonal sedimentation, but that too has stopped with the Aswan High Dam [1]
[1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-30216-4_...
Here are some photos I shot of it for The National: https://www.daviddegner.com/photography/toshka/
https://www.unccd.int/news-stories/stories/chinas-efforts-ha...
As others have noted, there are large swaths of productive agriculture land in California that were, and would continue to be, giant deserts without extensive irrigation projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Valley
Some posit that the reason for the rise and fall of the various fertile crescent civilizations was due exactly to this.
If you wanna know more about it Cadillac Desert is an excellent start.
1: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2007/03/15/restori...
Wait a minute, how are we scoping and measuring initiatives when there’s at least one Great Pyramid plus a few others that may rank fairly high.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/04/egypt-plans-new...
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[1] https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/100343/10-information-t...
> Spanning a length of 114 kilometers,
Even the Mittelland Canal in Germany is 326km[0], so how it it the largest 'manmade river' in the world?
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelland_Canal
It says the schedule got sped up from 10 years to 2 years. I wonder if the Ethiopian Dam scheduled for completion in the coming months had anything to do with that? https://www.dw.com/en/ethiopias-gerd-dam-a-potential-boon-fo...
> it was scheduled to finish within ten years, but President Abdel Fatah al Sisi directed that it should be completed within two years
From the submitted article, written today:
> 35% of the pipe works and 65% of the open track have been completed
Any bets on when it really finishes?