A pumping station in Egypt, said to be the world’s largest, will be planned by lahmeyer International, under a contract awarded in late August.
Lahmeyer was awarded the contract by a contractor and supplier consortium working for the Egyptian government.
The Toshka pumping station will be a concrete structure 140m long, 60m high and 45m wide. The station is part of a project intended to provide water to more than 400,000ha in the south of Egypt, which is due to be completed by 2015. The pumping station is due for completion by 2001. It will comprise 24 variable speed pumps which together will transport water at 350m3/sec into the new irrigation system, via a 200km canal system known as El Zayad.
The project site is around 1000km south of Cairo near the rock temples at Abu Simbel.
The New Valley area, which will be irrigated by water from the station, has already been earmarked for development and infrastructure improvement. Included under this initiative are plans for a 300MW power supply from the Aswan power station.
… and Burkina Faso
Lahmeyer International is to act as manager of an engineering consortium with partners from Tunisia, Kuwait and Burkina Faso to manage the first construction phase of a water supply project in Burkina Faso. The project is being carried out under the auspices of the Burkina Faso Ministry of Environment and Water, and is financed by bodies including the Kuwait Fund, the World Bank and Germany’s Kredit-anstalt für Wiederaufbau.
Work on contract one — construction of the dam and pumping stations — began in early 1998 and the entire system is due for commissioning in 2003. The project includes construction of a 2.7km-long earthfill dam, to be located about 50km northeast of the capital Ouagadougou. The dam will impound a 200M m3 capacity reservoir, to be known as Ziga reservoir.
