| Show 12A The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday September 11 1988 Nile Brings Death to Sudan Then Life to Egypt By Nejla Sammakia Associated Press Writer CAIRO Egypt — Nile River floods that brought death and devastation to neighboring Sudan have flowed into Egypt but in more benign and beneficial ways They have broken a severe drought and removed a threat of power blackouts and water shortages for 54 million Egyptians Egyptian officials who had been considering urgent measures to curb power consumption now talk optimistically of bringing electricity to 20 percent of Egyptian villages that still don t have it Desert development experts look forward to greening more fields and growing more crops Not so fortunate were the Sudanese to the south Floods triggered by more than 8 inches of rain there Aug 4 5 killed at least 96 people displaced 1 5 million in the Khar toum area alone and inundated tens of thousands of acres of some of country s richest farmland Some ex perts have estimated damage at about $200 million But the Egyptians have the Aswan High Dam on its section of the Nile and so far it has done its job of harnessing floodwaters that in past times washed wastefully over the land Before the floods hit Sudan how ever Egyptians were worried They watched with concern as the level of the dam s Lake Nasser steadily dropped In July the water level was just over 495 feet at the dam 46 feet below full operating capacity The generating capacity of its 12 turbines were cut in half A drop of 10 more feet would have shut them down But the waters have risen since the floods upriver and by mid-Augu- st The Colors of Fall- - Maher Abaza the minister of elect tricity and power w as able to repoi "We are well on our wav out of the crisis It would have been a disaster had the level dropped to 147 meters (482 feet) " At the end of August the Lake Nasser level was close to 525 feet at the dam enabling the turbines to operate at 75 percent capacity Full turbine performance is possible at 541 feet and the highest level ever recorded was 5771j2 feet in 1977 Abaza and other officials stress that Egvpts fortunes will not be clear until October after the rainv season upstream by which time the waters would have stabilized along the Nile Under normal conditions the dam 590 miles south of Cairo is supposed 'o supply 30 percent of Egypt s power Since its completion with Soviet help in 1970 the High Dam already was credited with saving Egypt from drought in 1972 and flooding three years later The current drought which began in 1979 parched the entire Nile River Valiev and starved thousands of Ethiopians and Sudanese upriver Thanks to the Lake Nasser however Egypt had enough water stored to irrigate the 6 4 million acres in its Nile Valley agricultural heartland and to supplv an electricity demand increasing b"v See Column 1 A-1- 3 |
