The Canal Project
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Skilled operators clean the canals with old Russian cranes.
Cleaned area next to a section that has not yet been dredged.
IFHope president James Ritchie with canal cleaning crew.
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Partner - USAID Kabul
Project Dates - November 2002 to February 2005
Location - Nangarhar Province
Nearly 20% of farmland in Nangarhar relies on the Nangarhar Valley Development Authority (NVDA)’s canal system. Annual dredging and repair could not be done during the 25 years of conflict so the canals had filled with silt and brush restricting water flow and leaving many farmers without water.
IFHope has completed cleaning and infrastructure repair on 61 km of the main canal system. This included dredging the entire usable length (58 Km) of the 70 Km-long main NVDA canal; cleaning 18 of the system's secondary irrigation ditches, a total of 90 Km; reconstructing or replacing all damaged and destroyed structures along the rehabilitated portions of the system, including one main intake gate, 47 major gates, 8 large gates, 31 medium gates, 416 small gates, and 8 siphons, along with associated hardware and masonry.
Although only funded for the western half of the canal system, through efficient cost management and a productive labor force IFHope was able to clean a majority of the eastern zone as well. The result has been to double the water flow to 50 cubic meters per second – the equivalent of adding 536,347 acre feet of water per year!
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