The Professor of Geology and Water Resources at the Cairo University Abbas Sharaky said that the US has handed Ethiopia the construction of more than 33 dam projects on the Nile River, one of which is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Sharaky added that Addis Ababa began implementing these projects in 2010, and former President Hosni Mubarak went to Italy to urge Rome not to help Ethiopia build dams, especially since the Nile River is an international waterway, and he called for consultations on the matter.
During his interview with the privately-owned Al-Shams satellite channel on Friday, Sharaky added, that Ethiopia expanded the construction of GERD rapidly, especially with the events of 2011.
The dam in the US study originally had a capacity of no more than 11 billion cubic meters, he noted.
However, the Ethiopian president at that time, Meles Zenawi, wanted to increase the size of the GERD in order to repeat the success of the late Egyptian leader Gamal-Abdel Nasser with the High Dam, and massively increased the capacity of the dam to its current size.
Sharaky said that projects taking place on international rivers must be done in agreement between the Nile countries, noting that Egypt spent billions of pounds to compensate for the water that was reduced from its share due to the construction of GERD, as it largely treated agricultural drainage water.
He added that Egypt has limited rice cultivation due to the GERD, causing losses estimated at billions of dollars, and lining the canals has cost the Egyptian state LE 20 billion – done in order to reduce the negative effects of the dam’s construction.
The idea of building the GERD began simultaneously with the construction of the High Dam, he said, noting that Egypt had previously agreed with the US and the World Bank to build the High Dam, but US withdrew from this agreement, so Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal.
This angered the west, leading the US to study the construction of a dam that would prevent water from reaching the High Dam as payback.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
