"The eight wonder of the world"

BBC News, 18 March 2006
Libyans like to call it "the eighth wonder of the world". It is the biggest achievement in water supply.
Libya is a desert country, and finding fresh water has always been a problem.
Following the Great Al-Fatah Revolution in 1969, industrialization put even more strain on water supplies. Coastal aquifers became contaminated with sea water, to such an extent that the water in Benghazi (Libya's second city) was undrinkable. Finding a supply of fresh, clean water became a government priority. Oil exploration in the 1950s had revealed vast aquifers beneath Libya's southern desert.
"The quality of life is better now, and it's impacting on the whole country." Adam Kuwairi, GMRA
After weighing up the relative costs of desalination or transporting water from Europe, Libyan economists decided that the cheapest option was to construct a network of pipelines to transport water from the desert to the coastal cities, where most Libyans live.

In August 1984, Muammar Al Qadhafi laid the foundation stone for the pipe production plant at Brega. The Great Man-Made River Project had begun.
Libya had oil money to pay for the project, but it did not have the technical or engineering expertise for such a massive undertaking. Foreign companies from South Korea, Turkey, Germany, Japan, the Philippines and the UK were invited to help. In September 1993, Phase I water from eastern well-fields at Sarir and Tazerbo reached Benghazi. Three years later, Phase II, bringing water to Tripoli from western well-fields at Jebel Hassouna, was completed. Phase III which links the first two Phases is still under construction.
Adam Kuwairi, a senior figure in the Great Man-Made River Authority (GMRA), vividly remembers the impact the fresh water had on him and his family.
"The water changed lives. For the first time in our history, there was water in the tap for washing, shaving and showering," he told the BBC World Service's Discovery programme.
When it's finished, the Grand Omar Mukhtar will be Libya's largest man-made reservoir.
Standing on the floor of such a huge, empty space is an awesome experience. Concrete walls rise steeply to the sky; tarring machines descend on wires to lay a waterproof coating over the concrete. Further west along the coast is the Pre-Stressed Concrete Cylinder Pipe factory at Brega. This is where they make the 4m-diameter pipes that transport water from the desert to the coast. It's a modern, well-equipped factory, built specially for the Great Man-Made River Project. So far, the factory has made more than half a million pipes. The pipes are designed to last 50 years, and each pipe has a unique identification mark, so if anything goes wrong, engineers can quickly establish when the pipe was made.  

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