I blogged last week about a few of the largest water diversion projects in the world. The blog post was motivated by the in-depth article Circle of Blue published about the South-to-North project in China. Among the projects I included was the Los Angeles Aqueduct (LAA) which was quite a technical achievement in 1913. Nowadays the amount of water flowing to Los Angeles through the LAA is being seriously curtailed because of the environmental impact of diverting this amount of water from the Owens Lake and Mono Lake regions.
Circle of Blue has published another fascinating article about ten cities' efforts to provide water to their residents. These are some of the largest water diversion projects in the world. One of these cities, Sirt in Libya, gets its water from aquifers 745 km away through a massive water system called the Great Manmade River (GMMR). This is just the latest sophisticated water project in North Africa, which has had sophisticated irrigation systems predating the Romans. During Roman times North Africa was the bread basket of the empire due to its irrigation systems. Several installations dated to around 300 AD have been found which are thought to be the world's first water turbines (vertical-axle water wheels with angled blades at the bottom of a water-filled, circular shaft).
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