Printed papers on the political situation and military policy in Egypt [‎57r] (113/176)

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were exhausted and practically no storage water was left to help in meeting the
heavy demand for irrigation in July.
319. In Upper Egypt, severe summer rotations had to be enforced on the canals
in the perennial area and the supply thus economised was passed on to Lower Egypt
to help towards saving the rice crop.
320. The Hood, whose maximum level at Assouan was R.L. 92-29 on the 2nd
September, and at Roda R.L. 18-88 on the 13th October, was sufficient to meet all the
requirements of Lower Egypt without being dangerously high. In Upper Egypt an
important step taken was the fixing of new dates for the admission of hood water
into the basin canals. By a previous order, dating back to 1897, a common date,
namely, the 10th August, had been fixed for the whole of Upper Egypt. This
arrangement was changed in 1921 by an order issued by the Ministries of Public
Works and Interior, after consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture. New dates
were appointed, varying with different localities, and were successfully enforced.
There were protests, as there are every year, from cultivators who had been late in
sowing summer millet and whose fear was to see the hood water admitted to the
basins before this crop had been harvested, but, as a matter of fact, none of the crop
was lost. Levels at Assouan fell rapidly after the beginning of September, but the
second rise, towards the end of the month, enabled the basins to be filled, and the
area that could not be inundated, including land on foreshores and islands of the
river, amounted to not more than 10,500 feddans.
321. Progress in the Irrigation Department's Egyptian works in Egypt was
restricted by lack of funds. In the Central Delta, the year’s work was mainly
confined to the collection of data and the preparation of designs and estimates.
Among these were the estimates and drawings for a new drainage pumping scheme
at Batra. In the Western Delta, work proceeded upon the project for the improved
drainage and irrigation of an area of valuable land in the neighbourhood of Aboukir.
The project comprises the remodelling of the present system of canals and drains
and the installation of pumps by which the drainage will be lifted direct into the
sea instead of into Lake Mariut. The installation of the pumping machinery is
progressing, but the field work has been delayed by shortage of money. A second
and very important piece of work, which was continued in this section of the delta,
was the preliminary excavation for the enlargement of the Rayah Beheira, which is
one of those developments of the main canals which have become necessary in order
to meet the increasing demands of irrigation. The instalment of work which it
had been intended to carry out amounted to 1,890,000 cubic metres of earthwork,
but this had to be reduced to 700,000 cubic metres. Preliminary work included the
study of a drainage and irrigation scheme known as the Nubaria project. In the
Eastern Delta, various schemes for the prevention of deterioration in cultivated
land and for land reclamation have been worked up to a point at which they stand
almost ready for adjudication. They are grouped under the Mansuriya, Sharkawiya
and Bahr-el-Sagliir systems, affecting 44,700, 17,500 and 14,300 feddans respectively.
Outside the delta, preliminary studies were directed to the improvement of drainage
in Middle Egypt, the conversion of the Assouan basins to perennial irrigation and
the granting of various pumping concessions both in Middle and Upper Egypt.
The Irrigation Department also put into effect a long-standing agreement, dating
from soon after the Assouan dam was heightened, to give Upper Egypt, on the
strength of the increased storage thereby provided, the right to pump water for
the summer irrigation of a considerable area. The scheme was in abeyance during
the war, but pumping rights have now been given over a gross area of 94,000 feddans
in the neighbourhoods of Esna and Dishna.
322. The project for the Nag Hamadi barrage, which, like other capital works,
has been postponed, as will be explained later, continued nevertheless to be a subject
of careful study, which included examination of the question of giving free-fkw
irrigation to the area lying between the site of the barrage and the point at which
the barrage canals will begin to command the land.
323. Another occupation of the Irrigation Projects Department in Egypt
remains to be noticed, namely, the attempt to determine, by actual measurement,
the water required in various classes of soil and under normal working conditions
in different parts of the country. Four areas were selected in which the actual
run-on or run-off could be accurately measured, and whose total area was
530,000 feddans, including two pump-irrigated areas and two served by free-flow
channels. Here the crops were surveyed and the daily water consumption measured
Independently of this particular investigation, an attempt was also made to calculate
canal transmission losses.
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