Geology -- Egypt; Nile River; Water-supply -- Egypt
In April the Sobat river is discharging practically nothing, and the
whole supply available in the Albert Nile can pass down the White Nile
past the Sobat mouth. In September the Sobat river may be discharging
750 to 1,000 cubic metres per second, and as the White Nile cannot
discharge the combined waters of the two rivers, the water of the Albert
Nile is headed up and accumulated in the lowlands between Lake No and
the Sobat mouth. This is greatly to the advantage of Egypt, for it is
the discharge at the head of the White Nile between January 15 and May
15 which decides the White Nile contingent to the summer supply of the
Nile in Egypt, and the greater the quantity of water above the head of
the White Nile, in the absence of a regulator or barrage at Wadelai or
Dufilé, the better the summer supply of Egypt. After the abnormally high
flood of 1878, when Gordon was up the Nile, so great was the
accumulation that the discharge at Assuân never fell below 1500 cubic
metres per second in the summer of 1879. The Barrage was not regulated
upon and yet all the Lower Egypt canals were full of water, and the
cotton crop of Egypt for that year was quite abnormal for the seventies
of the last century.
Now an expenditure of between £400,000 and £1,000,000, say £800,000,
could secure a regulator for Lake Albert at any point between the outlet
and Dufilé. Such a regulator would insure 1200 cubic metres per second
every year to the Albert Nile at Gondokoro between the 15th January and
the 15th May. With this supply insured, the training works in the Sudd
region would soon begin to affect the discharge at the north end of this
region where the White Nile begins.
The way in which this work of training should be carried out has been
admirably laid down in page 174 of Sir William Garstin’s Report. “Alter
the flood conditions of the Albert Nile (Bahr-el-Gebel) as little as
possible, let the excess flood water escape on both sides, but keep the
summer supply in its channel.” This is, to my view, the soundest
statement from an engineering point of view in the whole report.
Hitherto we have always assumed a vast expenditure for keeping the flood
supply in one channel; but with our attention devoted to the summer
channel, we should have before us all the advantages of summer training
works without any fear of inundations. The very wildness of the regions
would be in our favour. To be able to train a river in summer without
any nervousness about floods, is given to few engineers. I had never
thought that any good thing could come out of the sudd region, but
looked at from this point of view, we can, even in this inhospitable
waste of waters, confirm Shakespeare’s saying that “there is some soul
of goodness in things evil.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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