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FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARRIOR, KIRKUK - Farmers in Riyadh, a small agricultural community in western Kirkuk, need water. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division recently employed 85 people around the town of Riyadh to clean up the canals that distribute water throughout the district. Water released from the Dokan Dam, well across the border between the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraq, flows down stream via the Lower Zab River to the Dibbis reservoir in western Kirkuk province. There it is released periodically based on seasonal agricultural needs and water availability, according...

FOB DELTA — Iraqis are cleaning the 250-kilometer Hahwar canal system to improve the distribution of water from the Tigris river to southwest Wasit province. The canal system provides water to 59,000 acres of crop land, roughly 10 percent of the arable land in Wasit, which is home to over 2,000 farmers. “It’s been almost two years since the canals were cleaned, and it was a government project,” said Ahmed Abed Alwaaly, the contractor in charge of the project. “This project is better.” The $378,000 canal cleaning project is funded by the Iraqi Commanders’ Emergency Response Program (ICERP) and was...

Italy is to reopen medieval and Renaissance inland waterways so that tourists can travel more than 500 kilometres (300 miles) by boat from Lake Maggiore to Venice via Milan. This summer engineers will start clearing eight kilometres of canals from the southern end of Lake Maggiore at Sesto Calende to Somma Lombardo. Alessandro Meinardi, of the Navigli Lombardi (Lombardy Canals) company, which is overseeing the project, said that the aim was to make navigable the whole of the 14th-century 140-kilometre stretch of waterways from Locarno in Switzerland to Milan. The restored canal system would eventually link up with the River...

Investigating canals across time, from spaceUr takes a step back to see ancient networks By Alvin Powell Harvard News Office Jason Ur: 'If you press your nose against a Monet, all you see is a blur. If you take a few steps back, you see lilies, you see bridges. For this reason, remote sensing data is really irreplaceable.' (Staff photos Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office) < The view from space of an ancient canal network is recasting archaeologists' understanding of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and of the farming economy that supported it at its height of power almost 3,000 years...

Photograph courtesy of Tom D. DillehayRUNNING WATER The sites of ancient irrigation canals. People in Peru's Zaña Valley dug the canals as early as 6,700 years ago to divert river water to their crops. In the Andean foothills of Peru, not far from the Pacific coast, archaeologists have found what they say is evidence for the earliest known irrigated agriculture in the Americas. An analysis of four derelict canals, filled with silt and buried deep under sediments, showed that they were used to water cultivated fields 5,400 years ago, in one case possibly as early as 6,700 years ago,...

New Orleans Levee Failure Analysis - Part V Contents Introduction and Basic Levee Construction, Section and Elevation Details Section 1. Pre-Landfall Flooding in Kenner and Western Metairie of East Jefferson Parish Section 2. Analysis of the 17th Street and London Canal Breaches and Post Katrina Flood Sequence in Downtown New Orleans Section 3. Surge Sequence for the Industrial Canal Basin, Analysis of the Five Major Breaches and east Orleans Parish Flooding Section 4. Flood Sequence for St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward, MRGO Reach Failure Analysis Section 5. Contributory Causality, Political and Funding Issues Leading to Levee Failures...

LAFAYETTE, La. (Army News Service, Sept. 26, 2005) – Thousands of Soldiers are providing food and water to stranded residents along the Texas-Louisiana border following flooding from Hurricane Rita. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the Army Corps of Engineers worked throughout the weekend to repair a breach in the Industrial Canal. About 400 huge sandbags and tons of rock, placed primarily with military helicopters, have stopped the inflow of water into the lower 9th Ward, officials reported. They said pumping operations have already begun to remove the floodwaters from the area. Less than 12 hours after Hurricane Rita struck the southwest...

As helping refugees from New Orleans continues, a few people are turning some attention to the long-term future of that City. Begin with this: there must be a new New Orleans. As I write this, New Orleans is flooding again, from the long distance effects of Hurricane Rita. There is a law of hydraulics that great masses of water can be controlled or channeled, but not absolutely stopped. This law is as inexorable as gravity. Thomas Jefferson understood the vital importance of the Mississippi River and the Port of New Orleans to the whole nation. Aaron Burr recognized the same...

This is part four of a five part series examining the Hurricane Katrina levee failures. Part 1 is a timeline sequence of who reported what flood events, to whom, and when it was reported. It can be found here: Part I: Hurricane Katrina Flood Report Sequence Part 2 is a discussion of the levee system's viability, or lack thereof, prior to Hurricane Katrina. It can be found here: Part II: Pre-Katrina Levee Assessment Part 3 is a discussion of the overall storm surge sequence, levee failure modes, and causal limitations relating to the 17th Street Canal and London Canal seawall...

My engineering training kicked in when I saw the NASA photographs from space of New Orleans, and of the whole Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. There is an obvious solution to the New Orleans problem. The Dutch have already demonstrated it. Take New Orleans as the first and worst example. The pumps, levees and canals intended to protect New Orleans have been controlled by local authorities. They left three of the four pumping stations dependent on the local power grid. Hellooo. The precise time those pumps are most needed is during a storm when the local power grid...

In the 7th century BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib constructed an 80-kilometre-long, 20-metre-wide stone-lined canal to bring fresh water to his capital Nineveh. Compared to 20th century standards, one is surprised to learn that the project, which included a 330-metre-long aqueduct, was completed in only one year and three months time.