Eighth Wonder of the World
By Garda Ghista
Land of Libya
Libya, in northern Africa, is an unknown land to the rest of
the world. The Libyan Sub-Saharan desert covers nearly the entire country, with
just a narrow coastal strip of land that receives enough rainfall for the
people to engage in agriculture. Just as 90 percent of Egyptians live along the
bountiful Nile River, so also in Libya 90 percent of the Libyans live along the northern coastal areas,
close to the ocean and to rainfall. This region has a moderate Mediterranean
climate and allows for grain farming. However, due to burgeoning population
over the past decade, there is not enough water for the people. Libya’s water came hitherto from
underground aquifers or desalination plants along the coast. It was water of
poor quality and often undrinkable. Hardly any water was left over for
irrigating cropland.
Libya is the fourth largest state in Africa and lies between latitudes 33’N and 20’N with longitudes 20’E and 25’E. It borders the Mediterranean Sea for about 1820 kilometers on its northern border. To the east is Egypt with Sudan on the southeastern border. Niger lies south of Libya and Algeria to the west, with Tunisia on its northwestern border. The country has a land area of about 1.775 million square kilometers, which is three times the surface area of France. Tarabulus (or Tripoli meaning ‘queen of the seas’) is the capital of Libya. As in ancient times, Tripoli remains a lush garden filled with olive trees, date palms, grape vineyards, and orange and lemon groves. Annual temperatures in Tripoli are 86’F in summer and 45’F in winter. The mountains of the Jabal Al-Akhdar attract regular rainfall both in winter and in early spring. In the Al Marj and Jaffara plains semi-arid conditions predominate, while in the country’s southern regions droughts frequently occur. A scorchingly hot, dry, sand-laden wind called the ‘Ghibli’ sometimes blows into the coastal towns causing temperatures to rise up to more than 100’ F.
Libyan Sub-Saharan desert
The country has an ancient history that includes the Phoenician, Roman and Byzantine ports of Tripoli, Sabratah, Libdah, Shah’hat, Tukrah and Talmitha. Similarly old Islamic cities such as Sirt, Darnah and Ajdabiya can be found in the heart of the desert. It is a land of mostly undiscovered, unparalleled beauty with ancient relics telling stories of great happenings in history, and with the deep mysticism of its desert calling all to run to those lonely sands in search of God. The desert, watered by magnificent oases with luscious date palms, extends far into the African subcontinent. Closer to the coastline are high mountain chains adjacent to lush green fields and glistening Mediterranean beaches.
The Great Man-Made River
In 1953 when people came to search for new oilfields in Libya’s deserts, they found not only oil but also vast quantities of fresh water trapped in underlying strata of the earth’s crust. Most of this water had collected there some 38,000-14,000 years ago, although some pockets are calculated to be 7,000 years old. The water is contained in aquifers – water-bearing rock strata laid down during that geological era when the Mediterranean Sea flowed southward to the foot of the Tibesti mountains, which are today situated on Libya’s border with Chad. During that era the Mediterranean sea level varied constantly, and hence various sedimentary deposits were formed. Geological activity over the millenniums caused the mountain formations of Jabal Nefussa and Jabal Al Akhdar as well as the downward movement of earth which formed the natural underground basins. Also during this era the climate was temperate which meant ample rainfall, the excess of which filtered down into the porous sandstone to be trapped in between the sedimentary strata, eventually forming gigantic reservoirs of underground fresh-water. This water was of high quality and very sweet to drink.
There are four huge underground basins. The Kufra basin aquifer lies in southeastern Libya near the Egyptian border and covers an area of 350,000 square kilometers, forming an aquifer layer over 2,000 meters deep with an estimated capacity of 20,000 cubic kilometers in Libya. Most of the water collected in porous sandstone deposits, with some sources saying up to 75,000 years ago. The aquifer in the Sirt basin is 600 meters deep and holds an estimated 10,000 cubic meters of water. South of Jabal Fezzan is the 450,000 square kilometer Murzuk basin, holding 4,800 cubic kilometers of water. More water lies in aquifers of the Hamadah and Jufrah basins, which lie from the Qargaf Arch and Jabal Sawda to the coastline. All together, these basins offer unlimited amounts of water to the people of Libya, with ample left over for Libya’s thirsty neighbours!
The idea of “bringing the water to the people” in the north was conceived in the late 1960s. Studies were undertaken in 1974, and work began in earnest with the creation in 1983 of the Man-Made River Authority, who was invested with the responsibility to bring the water from the southern aquifers to the Libyan people. The work began with Phase I of this 25-year project in 1984. It is designed in five phases, two of which have been completed and the third phase is on-going. While each phase is separate, when completed they will become part of an integrated water supply system. Water is moved through four-meter-diameter pipes buried deep underground so as to eliminate evaporation.
All materials required for construction of the river, i.e., the pipes, reservoirs and pumps, are locally engineered and manufactured. Presently water is pumped from 270 wells, which are hundreds of meters deep, into reservoirs that feed the pipeline network. Each pipe of the river project is buried in a trench about seven meters deep. Excavation for one piece of pipe requires removing 100,000 cubic meters of material each day. This is accomplished by large hydraulic excavators fitted with 7.6 cubic meter buckets. Once the trench has been made, the pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipes 7.5 meters long and weighing around 80 tons are lowered down into the trench by large cranes which are capable of lifting up to 450 tons. The pipe piece is joined to the previously laid pipe by pushing it into place with a bulldozer. The joint between the two pipe pieces is sealed using a rubber ring seal installed in a special groove at the end of the pipe. This joint is then itself sealed both inside and outside with cement grout. The trench is then backfilled with a minimum of two meters of material, thus restoring the desert surface. Some 10,000 people and 4,500 pieces of equipment are used at any one time on the Great Man-Made River project. Two thousand five hundred tons of cement are supplied daily by the Libyan Cement Company, and hauled in a fleet of 127 cement tankers to the work site.
The Great Manmade River (GMR) project required the drilling of 960 shafts, with depths varying from 1,500 to 2,100 feet. Two factories were built in Brega and Sarerr to manufacture the huge number of concrete pipes required for the river. Each section of pipe is 24 feet long and 13 feet in diameter. The prime contractor for the GMR project has been Halliburton, either directly or through foreign subsidiaries.
The cost of one cubic meter of this water is 35 cents. The cost of one cubic meter of desalinized water is $3.75. Scientists calculate the amount of water from the southern aquifers to be equivalent to the flow of 200 years of water in the Nile River.
The first and largest phase provides two million cubic meters a day of water that moves along a 1,200 kilometer pipeline from As-Sarir and Tazerbo to Benghazi and Sirt, via the Ajdabiya reservoir. In its construction, a quarter of a million sections of concrete pipe were used, 2.5 million tons of cement, 13 million tons of aggregate, 2 million kilometers of pre-stressed wire. Eighty-five million cubic meters of land were excavated. The total cost for Phase One was US $14 billion.
Construction of Phase One was not without its problems. The first pipeline blowout happened in August 1999, with repeated disasters over the next several years, until hydrologic engineers determined how to reduce the corrosion that weakened the pipe and caused it to buckle under the water’s enormous force. Each disaster began as a rumble, then an eruption, followed by a geyser shooting 100 feet up into the air. When this happened, repair crews rushed to the scene like attacking armies with bulldozers and 450-ton cranes, to begin digging out the damaged pipe sections and hoisting down new ones – all in the midst of serious flooding. They needed to create a lasting seamless conveyor belt for this river.
The Tazerbo wellfield comprises both production and piezometric observation wells and yields about one million cubic meters/day at a rate of 120 liters per well. Only 98 of the 108 production wells are used with the remaining wells on stand-by. A collection network moves the water to a 170,000 cubic meter off-line steel header tank, from where the main conveyance system is routed 256 km to the north, to two similar header tanks at Sarir – the site of the second Phase One wellfield. Another one million cubic meters of water is produced at Sarir, using 114 of 126 production wells and with an average flow rate of 102 liters per well. The wells at both Tazerbo and Sarir are about 450 meters deep and are equipped with submersible pumps which are 145 meters deep.
Transport of pipes
Starting from Sarir, two parallel, four-meter-diameter pipelines carry the now chlorine-treated water to the four million cubic meter holding reservoir in Ajdabiya, about 380 km to the north of Sarir. Water flows from this 900-meter-diameter reservoir through two pipelines. One heads west to Sirt and the other travels north to Benghazi. Each pipeline discharges into a circular earth embankment end reservoir, with storage capacity of 6.8 million cubic meters at Sirt and 4.7 million cubic meters at Menghazi. The reservoirs have been designed to balance fluctuations in supply and demand. Additional large reservoirs – 37 million cubic meters in Sirt and 76 million cubic meters in Benghazi – have been constructed and serve as storage facilities for summer as well as drought conditions.
On August 28, 1991 Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi officially inaugurated the completed first phase of the project, which alone cost $5 billion. It is the Libyan dream to keep the country well watered after the oil fields run dry, and to turn Libya into a land of agricultural abundance with the ability to export food and water to neighboring countries. It is a different kind of green revolution! As Muammar Qadhafi said:
“The agricultural revolution will enable the Libyan people to earn their living, to eat freely the food that was normally imported from overseas – this is freedom, this is independence, and this is the revolution.”
As the Nile is the gift to Egypt, so the Great Man-Made River is the gift to Libya and the entire Third World, with its host Libya being a peace-loving country that uses its own resources to overcome underdevelopment and move into the modern world. While Egyptian water projects have been repeatedly sabotaged by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and affiliated vested interests, the Great Man-Made River of Col. Qadhafi, as an autonomous and indigenous development, is meeting with success. Qadhafi has invited the people of Egypt to come and live in Libya and partake of the new agricultural and residential land, as the man-made river opens up thousands of hectares of new irrigated farmland. They will gradually replace the worn-out coastal regions hitherto used for agriculture, where salt water intrusion is now taking over the land. The Great Man-Made River will provide immediate relief to areas hitherto dependent on desalination plants, which are no longer able to meet the needs of the people. As 20 percent of Libya’s imports have been food, these expanded water supplies and hence agricultural lands will mean greater autonomy and self-sufficiency for the country. This is the prime goal of Col. Qadhafi. At the 1991 celebrations that took place in the town of Sluq, outside of Benghazi, Col. Qadhafi told the hundreds of guests assembled:
“Libya has completed this work in difficult circumstances; it completed this while under an economic blockade imposed by the antiprogress and antipeople imperialism. This work was completed without aid from the major states, without loans from the world’s banks….After this achievement American threats against Libya will double… The United States will make excuses, [but] the real reason is to stop this achievement, to keep the people of Libya oppressed.”
One four-meter-diameter pipe enclosing the Great Man-Made River
At the inauguration of Phase Two of the Great Man-Made River Project, Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi told the audience:
“This is the biggest answer to America and all the evil forces who accuse us of being concerned with terrorism. We are only concerned with peace and progress. America is against life and progress; it pushes the world towards darkness.”
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the US-based Nation of Islam, described the Man-Made River as “another miracle in the desert.” Because a mountainous formation known as “Jabal Nefussa” blocked the natural flow of the piped water from the aquifers to the coastal areas, it became necessary to drill a tunnel through the mountain and install a pumping station. It is this same tunnel at Tarhunah that the US Secretary of Defense in 1996 threatened to attack with nuclear weapons, claiming that it was a chemical weapons factory.
Phase Two brings one million cubic meters of water daily from the Fezzan region to the lush Jeffara plain in the western coastal belt. It also supplies water to Tripoli. The pipelines start at a wellfield at Sarir Qattusah, consisting of 127 wells which are distributed along three east-west pipelines. Ultimately those pipelines feed into a 28 million cubic meter terminal reservoir at Suq El Ahad. At completion of Phase Two, more than half a million pipes had been used.
Trench for pipeline
In 2001-2002 the third phase of Libya’s Great Man-Made River began. It is an enormous undertaking Phase Three has two main parts. First, it will provide expansion of the existing Phase One system by adding an additional 1.68 million cubic meters of water per day along with 700 km of new pipeline and new pumping stations to produce a final total capacity of 3.67 million cubic meters per day. Second, it will supply 138,000 cubic meters per day to Tobruk and the coast from a new wellfield at Al Jaghboub. This will involve construction of a reservoir south of Tobruk and laying down another 500 km of pipeline. All this work will involve detailed conceptual designs by geologists, consideration of pipeline routing and profiling, hydraulics, pumping stations, a control/communication system, reservoirs, corrosion control, power, operational support and maintenance provision. Every 50 miles is a huge underground storage area.
The Great Man-Made River will enable more than 135,000 hectares of fertile land to be utilized for 270,000 tons of crops, 760,000 tons of fodder and an abundance of fresh vegetables for Libyan citizens. National production of milk and diary products have increased so as to reduce costly imports. While airports, planes, hospitals, roads and schools have decayed during Qaddafi’s reign, the waterworks, like the oil sector, have been given top priority. If Libya had not addressed the water problem after the revolution of 1969, the country would not have been habitable today. The orange and olive groves along the coast would have all died due to saltwater intrusion, leaving the Libyan people compelled to migrate in search of fresh water.
The fourth and fifth – or final two phases of the Great Man-Made River project involve extending the existing distribution of pipeline along with construction of a new pipeline connecting the Ajdabiya reservoir to Tobruk and connecting the eastern and western pipeline systems at Sirt. Once this is completed, irrigation water from the river will enable about 155,000 hectares (ha) of land to be cultivated. When the entire project is completed, the Great Man-Made River Project will carry more than five million cubic meters of water per day across the desert to the coastal areas. The total cost of the project is expected to exceed $32 billion. While today Libya is a dessert, in olden days it was a flourishing agricultural region as witnessed by the many cities scattered across the land, today lying half-buried in sand. These monuments are now silent witnesses to a bygone era of wealth and prosperity.
The Great Man-Made River - completed network of all pipelines
The GMR project - the world's largest ever engineering venture - is providing water up to the country’s coastal belt for the country's 5.6 million inhabitants and to use in irrigation of croplands. For the country’s leader, Colonel Muammar Al Qadhafi, this river is to be the showpiece of the Libyan revolution.
A variety of contractors are involved in the on-going construction of the Great Man-Made River, including Brown & Root and Price Brothers, Dong Ah, with Enka Construction and Al Nah, Nippon Koei/ Halcrow consortium, Frankenthal KSB consortium, SNC-Lavalin, O&M, Libyan Cement, Thane-Coat and Harkmel, Corrintec, Thyssen Krupp Fordertchnik and others.
While the total project is expected to exceed $32 billion, it is still only a fraction of the country’s oil revenues Libyan leader Muhamad Quadafi receives billions annually. He took the decision to use these revenues to construct an underground river from those aquifers back north up to the coastal areas – to the people of Libya. It was a miraculous venture. Beginning in 1980, it has been the largest engineering feat in the world. Qadafi and others refer to this “Great Man-Made River” as the Eight Wonder of the World!
Continuing Research
Since 1990 UNESCO has contributed to the training of hydrologic engineers and technicians for supervising and maintaining this huge river. On April 12, 1999 The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya began to sponsor the establishment of the Great Man-Made River International Prize for Water Resources in Arid and Semi-Arid Areas. The prize recognizes the achievements of either an individual, a group or a research institution that, through research, has made fundamental contributions to the management of water resources in arid and semi-arid areas, in areas subject to droughts, and also for the development of agriculture in the service of humanity and the environment. The prize carries a cash award of US $350,000 and is awarded every two years at the General Conference of UNESCO.
The International Hydrological Programme (IHP) works in the area of sustainable management of water resources in arid and semi-arid areas, with an emphasis on wadi technology and hydrological processes under arid conditions. They give special emphasis to fossil groundwater systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and cooperate with countries sharing aquifer systems such as Libya and Egypt. This development work and research is carried out due to the severe limitation of water in the desert regions of northern Africa which will lead to a serious crisis in a few short years along with regional conflict/fights over the scarce water supplies, unless strategies are undertaken to build up water supplies for the people. Hence the IHP is studying rainfall characteristics, recharge conditions, evaporation and evapo-transpiration. Research also entails the close relationship between surface and ground water, periods of drought, the chance of recharging aquifers from runoff excess during rainy periods, and the possible re-use of wastewater after appropriate treatment. It is all with the goal of making these regions self-sustaining.
Side Effects of the GMR
Possible side effects of the Great Man-Made River are that transfer of water from the southern aquifers may reduce the watertable. Also, since the river has been operational, the Ubari Lakes and other waterholes in the desert have dried up. We need to study the pros and cons of this river to determine whether the benefits outweigh the costs. At present the river is 1600 km long and transfers about 6.5 million cubic meters of water per day. However, Libya’s fossil water is a non-renewable resource. According to current projections, nearly all this aquifer water will be used up in 15 to 50 years. Some hydrologists say that rapid depletion of the Kufra aquifer could lead to seepage from the Nile, which could aggravate war between Egypt and Libya. If it is true that the aquifer water from southern Libya will last a maximum of 50 years, then it becomes critical that, when watering the desert over this coming period, trees are planted. There must be vast afforestation of the land. The trees will attract the rain, and then, when the aquifer water supplies are exhausted, the entire climate can change to one with frequent rainfall. There is no other solution except to immediately begin afforestation, to attract the rainwater, and to then harvest that rainwater for continuing survival of the people. In the meantime, the fossil water buried in the sandstone deposits under the southern desert must be used responsibly and carefully. It must not be wasted. For now, Libya is committed to mining its water resources, whose volume after all pipelines are completed will be 200 million cubic feet per day – about the same as the flow of the Thames River in England.
Desert sanctuary
Water Democracy Means Economic Democracy
Mohamad Qadhafi has done something great for the people of Libya by his utilization of oil revenues to construct the Great Man-Made River. It is providing unbounded benefit to the people of Libya. Through construction of this humungous river, Qadhafi has brought water democracy to the people of Libya. It is a great achievement. We can say that it is maximum utilization of the country’s oil revenues. It is leading to water democracy, which is then bound to lead to economic democracy for the country. Qadhafi had predicted that one day, after completion of Phase Five, the country of Libya would be as green as the Libyan national flag. The Great Man-Made River Project is bringing water to all the people, and is providing water for municipal, industrial and agricultural use. The strategy of the Libyan government is to increase both crop and livestock production to levels that achieve the highest possible rate of self-sufficiency while reducing dependence on imports from foreign markets to the lowest possible level. It further aims to increase the productive capabilities of the local labor force and of capital investments in the country, along with producing raw materials for food processing industries. According to the writer, Ali Baghdadi:
“The river is a new lesson and an example in the struggle to achieve self-sufficiency, food security and true independence. No nation that depends on a foreign country to feed its people can be free. The Great River is a triumph against thirst and hunger. It is a defeat against ignorance and backwardness. It reflects the determination of Libyans to resist colonial pressure, to acquire technology, to develop, to improve their lives, and to control their own destiny in accordance with their own free will.”
Libyan officials intend for 80 percent of the Man-Made River water to be used for irrigating old farms and reclaiming desert lands to use as agricultural land. This Great Man-Made River river project flies in the face of various water-control schemes imposed on third world countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These two institutions have blocked work on other “great projects” such as the Jonglei Canal on the upper White Nile in southern Sudan. The Canal, which is presently half-finished and abandoned, was to drain swamplands, aid agriculture, transportation, provide power resources and health facilities as well as provide expanded flow of the Nile all the way to Egypt. London and Washington were apoplectic at the opening of the new Libyan water project. The London-based Middle East Economic Digest wrote that the pipeline was “Qaddafi’s pet project. He wants to be seen as something other than the scourge of the West.” The London Financial Times called the project Qaddafi’s “pipedream… But they regard the dream as a monument to vanity that makes little economic sense in a country where the UN Development Program says 94.6% of territory is desert wasteland.” But, as the Intelligence Review reported, “If it is vanity that motivated the project, at least the vitality of Libya’s head of state is being channeled in a production direction in this case – which is more than can be said of the leaders of Britain and the United States.” A prime reason Qadhafi undertook the Man-Made River project is so that his country would not be at the mercy of threats of foreign food embargos, no matter what the cost.
Libya – beautiful land of desert and camels
Famed ecologist Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar has said that all the human beings should study. By studying, we can find solutions to the problems facing humanity. We need to study the management of coastal aquifers, the impact of water resources management on urban, rural and agricultural economic development, the use of non-renewable groundwater resources, and an integrated management of surface and groundwater resources. We need to further study reduction of evaporation and losses in water systems, water harvesting and wadi management, improvement of water use efficiency and water re-cycling and re-use. Shrii Sarkar said specifically that we need to study environmental and ecological issues and work towards creating bioregional, sustainable communities. He also foretold that water scarcity would be the biggest problem facing the earth’s population in the very near future. It therefore becomes essential for all people to study the earth’s ecology and to study the problems of water scarcity, existing water resources, and how to extract those scarce resources while utilizing them for the greatest welfare of the common people. Shrii Prabhat Sarkar has said:
“History is the glowing example of glorious human dignity….Every individual or community will advance by virtue of its own inner vitality and assist in the collective fulfillment of the entire humanity.”
References
http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/gmmrp.shtml
http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/index.shtml
http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/ihp.shtml
http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/libya.shtml
http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/prizes/great_man/criteria.shtml
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/gmr/
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http://www.galenfrysinger.com/man_made_river_libya.htm
http://www.members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/libya.htm
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Patrick E. Tyler, “Libya’s Vast Pipe Dream Taps into Desert’s Ice Age Water, New York Times, March 2, 2004. http://www.waterconserve.info/araticles/reader.asp?linkid-29887
Eric Margolis, “Col. Khadaffi’s Secret Tunnels of Death,” http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/LibyaTunnels.html