Great Man-made River Project

When construction began on the Great Man-Made River (GMR), it was described as the largest irrigation project in the world and involves the transfer of water from aquifers deep in the Sahara for water supply and irrigation covering some 155,000 hectares.
Under this project water was provided to large industrial farms employing centre pivot irrigators and smallholder farms with mixed irrigation techniques.
The 250,000 sections of pipes laid in Phase One were at the time said to be the largest in the world, each having a diameter of 4 metres and a length of 7 metres. This covered a total distance of 1600km, with flows of up to 2.5Mm3 per day delivered.
CARES was responsible for completing a reservoir safety inspection of the Sirt B Agricultural Reservoir – the second largest agricultural reservoir on the project. The reservoir is a 15.2 million cubic metre reservoir constructed of locally available soils with a geomembrane lining. The geomembrane lining was an ECB lining manufactured in country