Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hani Sewilam had a meeting with a number of the Irrigation Ministry’s leaders to discuss arrangements for making a documentary film on the history of irrigation in Egypt, in cooperation with UNESCO.
The meeting also dealt with cooperation procedures with development partners to finance the maintenance of the ministry’s historical facilities and collections, including the Delta Barrage, which is barrage-type dam whose construction completed in 1862. Its purpose was to improve irrigation and navigation along the main Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile downstream of the point where they divide north of Cairo, Egypt.
The documentary will also include Aswan Low Dam, (1898-1902), and Assiut Barrage that was constructed between 1892 and 1902 to sustain a water level difference of about 4 m in order to feed the Ibrahimia Canal. Since its completing in 1902, Assiut Barrage, along with the old Aswan Dam, remains in service as the oldest Barrage on the Nile in Upper Eg
ypt.
It will also involve the Zefta Barrage, located at about 100 km north of Cairo City, was built in 1902 and remodeled in 1954, in addition to the ministry’s possession of rare books, encyclopedias, and albums, such as Edward William Lane’s “Description of Egypt” or “Description de l’Égypte”, the album of the opening ceremony of the Suez Canal in 1869, the 1928 Atlas Maps of Egypt and others.
The irrigation minister had met with UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences Lidia Arthur Brito on the sidelines of her participation in the organization’s celebration of the “World Water Day” in Paris.
Source: State Information Service Egypt