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Agricultural Planning and Engineering in Egypt 
The Louis Berger Group (Berger) has a long and distinguished record in assisting the government of Egypt in many of agricultural planning and engineering programs beginning with the Ismailia Regional Master Development Plan in the early 1970s, which included an irrigation and drainage master plan of the entire Suez Canal Zone; the modernization of irrigation delivery systems for 400,000 hectares in middle and lower Egypt; and development of the Suez Canal Siphons delivering potable and irrigation water from the west bank of the Canal to the Sinai Peninsula. In the early- to mid-1980s, Berger carried out the Agricultural Mechanization Project for the Ministry of Agriculture encouraging improved irrigation practices, farm mechanization and increased farm output. Subsequently, Berger experts assisted the Ministry of Irrigation with the procurement of equipment for 37 pumping stations serving 62,500 hectares along the Nile. From 1989 through 1996, The Louis Berger Group assisted the Ministry of Public Works and Water Resources (MPWWR) in rehabilitating and modernizing irrigation facilities throughout Egypt as part of the ambitious USAID-financed Irrigation Improvement Project (IIP). In addition to the planning, design and construction of new facilities (including improved distribution canals, pumping stations, automatic hydraulic control structures and new concrete-lined canals), the Berger experts, in a joint-venture with Morrison-Knudsen Engineers, organized water user associations, introduced the concept of cost recovery for the new facilities and assisted the Ministry in the development of a new national water law. The Team also strengthened the MPWWR's institutional capacity, established a program management unit and supervised the renovation of irrigation systems in seven governates significantly reducing water losses. Additionally, the IIP instituted policies and procedures for recovery of an appropriate portion of the operation and maintenance costs of the irrigation system improvements and 100 percent of the costs of on-farm improvements; established an Irrigation Advisory Service (IAS) to provide technical assistance to farmers and water user groups in water management; and renovated and improved existing main irrigation delivery systems serving 160,000 hectares. Based on its continuing commitment to assist Egypt in developing its irrigation network, The Louis Berger Group, in association with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Pacer Consultants, was selected to develop criteria for the chemical properties of marginal quality water used for irrigation under sustainable conditions and to formulate efficient drainage water irrigation management techniques. The three-year research project provided quantitative data on the effects of sustained irrigation with water of differing qualities in various areas of the Nile Delta. Most recently, The Louis Berger Group, in association with Pacer Consultants and JM Lord, Inc., was awarded the Dallah Farm Development Project involving the planning, design and preparation of tender documents for a 2,025-hectare mechanized irrigation project to produce forage crops for a modern dairy near Nubarieya, Egypt. The study also included an analysis of the opportunity to reuse the dairy's wastes as fertilizer and recycle water to augment the farm's allocation by blending it with water delivered from the nearby El Nasr Canal. |
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