S.O.S. LIBYA  - NATO attack GREAT MAN MADE RIVER, THE ONLY SOURCE OF DRINKING WATER and irrigation for  4.5 MILLION the people of Libya

July 22 2011. A date for humanity to remember. NATO hit the Libyan water supply pipeline. It will take months to repair. Then on Saturday they hit the pipeline factory producing pipes to repair it. The Libyan  leader  Moammar Al Gaddafi informed members of the Security Council in his message that the alliance decided to carry out mass murder against the Libyan people by targeting their only drinking water source, where billions were invested and without it life stops in Libya. He wondered what's the relation between this factory and the protection of civilians that NATO claims it is carrying out?

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The Role of the UN Security Council in Unleashing an Illegal War against Libya

Sooner or later, the legal case against NATO will have to be made. This article presents the absolutely shocking details of the clear illegalities of specific acts that lead to the implementation of Resolution 1973, and that the United Nations "Security" Council callously ignored. This may be the first time that these details have appeared in the open.  This is an important document that should be used by Libyan lawyers, as well as any lawyer that believes in justice, to make the case for the cecessation of NATO's aggression, as well as the recovery to the Libyan Jamahiriya of the Libyan wealth that was stolen by the criminal governments of the north........ read all
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GREAT MAN MADE RIVER

We still wonder how on earth did Gaddafi manage to stay in power for forty years? Did no one notice his madness until now? Did no one notice that he built a HUGE FRESH WATER PIPELINE to the Benghazi region, that lunatic? Were they waiting for him to finish?
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The 1st of September marks the anniversary of the opening of the major stage of Libya's Great Man-Made River Project. This incredibly huge and successful water scheme is virtually unknown in the West, yet it rivals and even surpasses all our greatest development projects. The leader of the so-called advanced countries, the United States of America cannot bring itself to acknowledge Libya's Great Man-Made River. The West refuses to recognize that a small country, with a population no more than four million, can construct anything so large without borrowing a single cent from the international banks.

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...In the 1960s during oil exploration deep in the southern Libyan desert, vast reservoirs of high quality water were discovered in the form of aquifers. ...

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...In Libya there are four major underground basins, these being the Kufra basin, the Sirt basin, the Morzuk basin and the Hamada basin, the first three of which contain combined reserves of 35,000 cubic kilometres of water. These vast reserves offer almost unlimited amounts of water for the Libyan people.

The people of Libya under the guidance of their leader, Colonel Muammar Al Qadhafi, initiated a series of scientific studies on the possibility of accessing this vast ocean of fresh water. Early consideration was given to developing new agricultural projects close to the sources of the water, in the desert. However, it was realized that on the scale required to provide products for self sufficiency, a very large infrastructure organization would be required. In addition to this, a major redistribution of the population from the coastal belt would be necessary. The alternative was to 'bring the water to the people'.

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In October 1983, the Great Man-made River Authority was created and invested with the responsibility of taking water from the aquifers in the south, and conveying it by the most economical and practical means for use, predominantly for irrigation, in the Libyan coastal belt.
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By 1996 the Great Man-Made River Project had reached one of its final stages, the gushing forth of sweet unpolluted water to the homes and gardens of the citizens of Libya's capital Tripoli. Louis Farrakhan, who took part in the opening ceremony of this important stage of the project, described the Great Man-Made River as "another miracle in the desert." Speaking at the inauguration ceremony to an audience that included Libyans and many foreign guests, Col. Qadhafi said the project "was the biggest answer to America... who accuse us of being concerned with terrorism."
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The Great Man-Made River, as the largest water transport project ever undertaken, has been described as the "eighth wonder of the world". It carries more than five million cubic metres of water per day across the desert to coastal areas, vastly increasing the amount of arable land. The total cost of the huge project is expected to exceed $25 billion (US).
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Consisting of a network of pipes buried underground to eliminate evaporation, four meters in diameter, the project extends for four thousand kilometres far deep into the desert. All material is locally engineered and manufactured. Underground water is pumped from 270 wells hundreds of meters deep into reservoirs that feed the network. The cost of one cubic meter of water equals 35 cents. The cubic meter of desalinized water is $3.75. Scientists estimate the amount of water to be equivalent to the flow of 200 years of water in the Nile River.
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The goal of the Libyan Arab people, embodied in the Great Man-Made River project, is to make Libya a source of agricultural abundance, capable of producing adequate food and water to supply its own needs and to share with neighboring countries. In short, the River is literallyLibya's 'meal ticket' to self-sufficiency.
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Self-sufficiency?!? Absolutely Not Allowed. Banksters don't like that sort of thing one bit.

This project has been in the works for many years. Have you ever heard of it? We had not until today.

Libya Turns On The Great Man-Made River

Printed in The Executive Intelligence Review, September, 1991.

by Marcia Merry ...... A gala ceremony was held in Libya at the end of August, at which Libyan leaders ``turned on the tap'' of the Great Man-Made River, the water pipeline/viaduct project designed to bring millions of liters of water from beneath the Sahara Desert, northward to the Benghazi region on the Mediterranean coast. The inauguration marked the end of Phase I of the project, which is slated for completion in 1996.

Under the giant scheme, water is pumped from aquifers under the Sahara in the southern part of the country, where underground water resources extend into Egypt and Sudan. Then the water is transported by reinforced concrete pipeline to northern destinations. Construction on the first phase started in 1984, and cost about $5 billion. The completed project may total $25 billion.

South Korean construction experts built the huge pipes in Libya by some of the most modern techniques. The engineering feat involves collecting water from 270 wells in east central Libya, and transporting it through about 2,000 kilometers of pipeline to Benghazi and Sirte. The new ``river'' brings 2 million cubic meters of water a day. At completion, the system will involve 4,000 kilometers of pipepines, and two aqueducts of some 1,000 kilometers.



Potential of the region is enhanced
Joining in celebrating the inauguration of the artificial river were dozens of Arab and African heads of state and hundreds of other foreign diplomats and delegations. Among them were Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, King Hassan of Morocco, the head of Sudan, Gen. Omar El Beshir, and Djibouti's President Hassan Julied.

Col. Muammar Qaddafi told the celebrants:

After this achievement, American threats against Libya will double.... The United States will make excuses, [but] the real reason is to stop this achievement, to keep the people of Libya oppressed.'' Qaddafi presented the project to the cheering crowd as a gift to the Third World.

NATO war on Libya was long-planned

by Stephen LENDMAN .......... NATO war on Libya was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including:

• – strategy and conflict objectives;
• – enlisting coalition partners;
• – selecting targets;
• – promoting political and public support;
• – deploying troops;
• – in Libya, recruiting, funding, and arming so-called rebels; and
• – post-conflict imperial plans.

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Washington wants one despot replaced with another, a useful puppet to salute and obey orders, not independent-minded ones like Gaddafi who went along most often but not always on all issues, some major enough to want him ousted. An important overlooked one is discussed below.

Other objectives are to colonize Libya, balkanize it like Yugoslavia and Iraq, prevent democracy from emerging, privatize its state enterprises, exploit its people, establish new Pentagon bases, and control its oil, gas and other resources, a key one getting little attention – Libya’s Great Man-Made River (GMMR).

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) lies beneath four North African countries – Chad, Egypt, Sudan and Libya, called the world’s largest fossil water system because it’s ancient and non-renewable. In fact, the Qur’an’s (Koran) Surah 2, Verse 74 says:

“For among rocks there are some from which rivers gush forth; others there are which when split asunder send forth water.”

In fact, three major aquifers lie beneath the Sahara, NSAS the largest, containing an estimated 375,000 cubic km of water.
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Covering two million square km, it’s an ocean of water beneath the desert for irrigation, human consumption, development, and other uses. At 2007 consumption rates, it could last 1,000 years. Gaddafi calls NSAS the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Its web site says it’s the largest global underground network of pipes and aqueducts, consisting of:

• – over 1,300 wells;
• – 7 million miles of pre-stressed steel wire to strengthen 12-foot diameter pipes;
• – 3,500 km of pipeline covering an area equal to Western Europe;
• – four pipelines – two east and two west, connecting with links north; and
• – thousands of miles of roads between and connecting its various lines and infrastructure, supplying 6.5 million cubic meters of fresh water daily to Libyans and others in the region. Extracting water at a depth of from 1,600 – 2,500 feet, the system purifies and supplies it mainly to populated coastal cities.

Conceived in the late 1960s, feasibility studies were conducted in 1974. Construction then began in 1984, divided in five phases, each largely separate, then combined into an integrated system. Funded by Gaddafi without loans from other nations or Western banks, the project cost $25 billion so far.

Inaugurated in August 1991, phase I provides two million daily cubic meters of water along a 1,200 km pipeline from As-Sarir and Tazerbo to Benghazi and Sirt, via the Ajdabiya reservoir. Phase II delivers one million daily cubic meters from the Fezzan region to the fertile Jeffara plain in the Western coastal belt, also supplying Tripoli.

Phase III is in two parts. Its first adds an additional 1.68 million cubic meters daily through another 700 km of pipeline and pumping stations. It also supplies 138,000 more cubic meters daily to Tobruk and the coast from a new Al-Jaghboub wellfield through another 500 km of pipeline.

The final phases involve extending the distribution network by pipelines linking the Ajjabiya reservoir to Tobruk, then connecting Eastern and Western systems at Sirt into a single integrated network. When fully operational, Gaddafi hopes to make the desert as green as Libya’s flag.

The project is owned by the Great Man-Made River (GMMR) Authority, funded by Gaddafi’s government as explained above. However, with war raging, the system is jeopardized as well as Gaddafi’s dream to turn the desert green.

On April 3, AFP headlined, “Libya warns of disaster if ‘Great Man-Made River’ hit,” saying:
If GMMR is bombed, it could cause a “human and environmental disaster.” Libya has three underground pipeline systems, for oil, gas, and water. If one is hit, the others are affected, potentially disastrously.

According to project manager Abdelmajid Gahoud:
“If part of the infrastructure is damaged, the whole thing is affected and the massive escape of water could cause a catastrophe,” depriving millions of Libyans of fresh water, 70% of 6.5 people for human consumption, irrigation, and other purposes.

Moreover, if Gaddafi is ousted, the enterprise will be privatized, making water unaffordable for many, perhaps most Libyans. In other words, neoliberal control will exploit it for maximum profits.

A Final Comment

On April 13, Ellen Brown’s Truthout article headlined, “Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?” raised an important easily overlooked issue, saying:

Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank (the Central Bank of Benghazi),

Libya Touts Great Man-Made River as 8th Wonder of the World

by Larry Luxner,..... Libya invests $20 billion in massive man made river to irrigate the thirsty nation. It took new roads to build, and a vast amount of resources. So far investment interest from the US has been poor.

From the sky, Libya’s Grand Omar Mukhtar Reservoir resembles a shimmering blue circle nestled in the desert sands. At ground level, the artificial lake is so vast that it’s impossible to photograph the whole structure with anything but a fisheye lens.

In fact, it takes a good 10 minutes to drive around the reservoir’s 3.5-kilometer perimeter gravel road. Holding 24 million cubic meters of water, Omar Mukhtar is the second-largest reservoir in the world — and a crucial element in Libya’s ambitious, $20 billion Great Man-Made River (GMMR) project.

“Before the implementation of the GMMR, the Libyan people were desperate for a few drops of water throughout the year,” says a government brochure describing the project. “Now, with a daily flow of over six million cubic meters, there is enough water to supply each citizen in the Great Jamahiriya with over 1,000 liters per day. In addition, 135,000 hectares of land will be freed from drought.”

The GMMR ranks easily as the largest and most expensive irrigation project in world history. Conceived in the late 1960s, its mission is simple: to pump water from Libya’s vast, underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated  coastal areas in the north where most of the country’s six million inhabitants live and work.

Phase I of the GMMR, with a price tag of $5.5 billion, commenced in 1984 and since 1991 brings two million cubic meters of water daily from the immense Sarir and Tazerbo basins 1,200 kilometers north to the coastal strip between Sirte and Benghazi.

Phase II, costing just over $8 billion, carries 2.5 million cubic meters per day from the Murzuq Basin, feeding the cities between Sirte and Tripoli. Libya’s capital received its first supplies of GMMR water in September 1996.
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Following the completion of Phase II, a third phase — estimated to cost $6 billion — was built to connect the two existing networks. Total production of the GMMR comes to 6.43 million cubic meters a day, using 1,149 production wells, most of them more than 500 meters deep.

Over the next 50 years, cumulative investment is expected to hit $33.7 billion, with total production of 120 billion cubic meters of water, said quality control manager Salim al-Hawari.

Without the GMMR, it’s evident that Libya would soon face a crisis of enormous proportions. According to the UN Development Program, available renewable water per person in Libya is expected to drop from the 1955 benchmark of 4,103 cubic meters annually to only 332 cubic meters by 2025.

Al-Hawari bushed off concerns by environmentalists that the water in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System — which accumulated during the last ice age — may actually run out within half a century at present rates of consumption.

“Total volume of fresh groundwater stored in the Nubian Aquifer is about 373 billion cubic meters. Therefore, if annual groundwater extraction of 1.38 billion cubic meters remains constant, recoverable reserves should last for a period of 4,860 years,” said the engineer, interviewed at GMMR’s Phase II headquarters in Qasser Bin Ghashir, just outside Tripoli.

To put things into perspective, the total quantity of cement used to build the GMMR is enough to build a concrete road from Tripoli to Sydney, Australia. If superimposed on a map of the United States, the GMMR — which Col. Muammar Qaddafi has called the “eighth wonder of the world” — would easily stretch from Louisiana to western New Mexico and up into northern Colorado.
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Despite its massive cost, civil engineer Abdulmajid M. Elgaoud said Libya had no other alternative.

“I think it’s quite clear,” said Elgaoud, who as secretary of the People’s Committee has overall responsibility for the GMMR’s management and implementation. He said his country’s options were limited to piping fresh water from Greece across the Mediterranean to Libya; transporting water by ship or building desalination plants.

Based on official studies, the Great Man-Made River Authority concluded that one Libyan dinar would buy 0.74 cubic meters of piped water, 0.79 cubic meters of desalinated water or 1.05 cubic meters of water transported by ship. By comparison, the GMMR provides a whopping nine cubic meters of fresh water for that same Libyan dinar.

“Desalination plants were among the options, but so far, it’s expensive, because we’d have to generate power and then use this power to run the desal plants. So accordingly, if the cost of power is high, so would the cost of desalinated water. That’s one reason the water from our project is much more feasible,” Elgaoud said.

In addition, he explained, “the desalination plants would be on the coast, and the water needed for agriculture is inland, so you’d have to pump the desalinated water again to irrigated areas, and that would be expensive. So in fact, the cost of our tap water today is 28 cents per cubic meter, while desalinated water wouldn’t cost less than 85 cents. And when you add that to the cost of pumping the water inland, it comes to between $2.50 and $3.00 per cubic meter. So in fact, our water is quite economical.”

At present, 70 percent of the water produced by the GMMR goes to agriculture, with another 28 percent for municipal use (drinking water) and the remaining 2 percent for factories and industries.

All pipes used in the project are manufactured in Libya in accordance with American Water Works Association standards. Two factories, in Sarir and Brega, produce a combined 200 four-meter-diameter pipes per day. Since production began in September 1986, the two plants have manufactured around 530,000 pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipes weighing 75 to 83 metric tons apiece. Laid end to end, the pipes would stretch 4,000 kilometers.

“We monitor the pipes 24 hours a day using satellite technology, because if there’s any corrision, the pipes will burst,” said Elgaoud, noting that several thousands of kilometers of special-haul roads had to be built across the desert just to transport the pipes to where they needed to go. The pipes are laid in trenches seven meters deep and must be buried underground, he said, because of the extremely high pressures involved.
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Elgaoud said the GMMR continues to expand, offering enormous potential for joint ventures and investment by American companies. “But this depends on the willingness of American companies to come and establish joint ventures,” he said. “Honestly, we expected more interest than we’ve seen up to now.”
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On the other hand, Elgaoud praised an irrigation venture between his agency and two U.S. equipment manufacturers, Valmont and Case, that aims to grow wheat, corn and other crops on previously unusable land. “We think this project could be an example for other investments if it succeeds,” he said, “and I think it’s going to succeed.”