Minister: Sudanese Dams could be Erased

Agencies – Sudan Events

Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hani Sweilem expressed his country’s concern about the level of safety in the Renaissance Dam.
The Egyptian minister has underlined in a statement to a national TV on Monday that “We have no information about the final design details regarding the Renaissance Dam, and we cannot estimate the safety of the dam, and this remains a legitimate concern.”, warning against the collapse of the Renaissance Dam which will wipe out the Sudanese dams from the ground, and will impact 150 million citizens in Egypt and Sudan.
Last week, the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation announced failure of the last round held in Addis Ababa on the “Renaissance Dam,” stressing that “the negotiating paths have ended” at the present time, due to what it considered “the continued Ethiopian positions refusing to adopt any of the compromise technical and legal solutions, Which would secure the interests of the three countries, and prevent Ethiopia against defaulting on the understandings reached.”
The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry responded at the time, saying in a statement that it “made efforts and actively cooperated with the two downstream countries to resolve the main points of disagreement and reach an amicable agreement.”
In addition to Egypt considering the impact of the dam on its share of the Nile waters, the former Advisor to the Egyptian Minister of Irrigation and water resources expert, Dr. Diaa El-Din Al-Qusi, believes that “the possibilities of the Renaissance Dam collapsing remains,” explaining to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that “the dam is built in a vulnerable area in terms of seismic and volcanic activities, it is an area called a fault (meaning a crack in the ground that separates two parts of the earth’s crust), and any earthquake will result in the collapse of the dam. The soil of the area is also called (semi-collapsed) soil because of its geological nature. It is soil that is eroded by the passage of water through it, and is swallowed up. Large amounts of water, which may cause collapse and cracks in the area.
Despite the recent stumble, Al-Qusi did not rule out returning to the negotiating track, stressing that “Egypt needs to return to negotiations before it takes difficult decisions,” as he stated.