Megaprojects of the US & World

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Afghanistan is building a massive irrigation canal called the Qosh Tepa canal.

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“For more than 50 years, Afghanistan has contemplated building an enormous canal that will divert the waters of the Amu Darya River and irrigate the country’s dry northern plains.

In January this year, it became suddenly apparent that the project is well underway, with the release of a video by the Taliban. Since then, the Qosh Tepa canal, which may divert up to a third of the Amu Darya, has been the subject of international interest and concern.

Wider than the length of three Olympic swimming pools, already more than a third complete, and with 8.2 billion Afghan Afghanis (about USD 94 million) of public money spent on its first phase, the canal is intended to “turn 550,000 hectares of barren land into much-needed farmlands” for growing wheat and vegetable oil

The canal is being built at a desperate time for the people of Afghanistan. Fazlullah Akhtar, an expert on water management from Kabul, pointed out that the country is totally dependent on foreign aid, with local food production unable to feed the population. “The current policies of the ruling regime have had disastrous impacts, with 20 million people acutely food-insecure, including six million on the brink of famine,” said Akhtar, who is now a senior researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany.

“On completion, [the canal] will provide jobs for around 250,000 Afghans in Jawzjan, Balkh and Faryab provinces,” added Haji Mukhtar, an ethnic Uzbek from Jawzjan province who was part of the team that worked on the Qosh Tepa canal under the former government…”

https://www.thethirdpole.net/en/reg...plomats-as-taliban-build-qosh-tepa-canal/?amp

- - I know that the Amu Daria river is one of the rivers that leads to the Aral Sea. The reason that has dried up so extensively is due to irrigation canals build during the soviet period leading to cotton fields. I cant imagine that another massive canal is going to be good for what’s left of the Aral Sea.
 
Another massive canal being built is the Pinglu Canal in China.

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Pinglu Canal: Construction Of China's First Man-made Waterways In 1400 Years Begins, $10 Billion Project Set To Boost BRI Maritime Connectivity
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“China has commenced the construction of a new canal linking Nanning, capital of Guangxi autonomous region, with the Beibu Gulf, Nikkei Asia reported.

Estimated to cost $10.3 billion, 134 km Pinglu Canal extends from the Xijin Reservoir, near Guangxi's capital city of Nanning, to the port of Qinzhou in the south.

The Pinglu Canal is the first man-made waterway in China after the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was constructed more than one thousand years ago.

The project involves construction of waterways, shipping hubs, water conservancy facilities and supports cross-river projects along the canal. The main channel size will be of 6.3 meters × 80 meters × 360 meters.

Designed to accommodate a one-way annual capacity of 89 million tons, it will serve as the shortest access of the Xijiang River to the sea. The proposed waterway will be able to accommodate vessels of up to 5,000 tonnes.

The Pinglu Canal will begin at the mouth of the Pingtang River in Hengzhou City, Nanning City, the main stream of the Xijiang River. It will cross the watershed between the Shaping River and the Jiuzhou River, a tributary of the Qin River, and goes south along the main stream of the Qin River to Qinzhou in the Beibu Gulf.

An estimated 340 million cubic meters of dirt and rocks -- three times what was excavated to build China's Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant, will be cleared away as part of the project.

The construction of the canal is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.”

https://swarajyamag.com/amp/story/i...roject-set-to-boost-bri-maritime-connectivity

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Europe is building its own canal megaproject to better integrate France and the Seine river into the network of navigable rivers that criss cross across the continent.

The Seine is disconnected from the rest of the water ways as seen here.
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The project would connect it via canal.
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“The Seine–Nord Europe Canal is a planned high-capacity (grand gabarit) canal in France that would link the Oise River at Compiègne with the Dunkirk-Scheldt Canal, east of Arleux. It is the French part of a proposed Seine-Scheldt canal that would ultimately connect the Rhine and Seine basins inland. The stated objective is to expand trade flows in a fuel-efficient and ecologically friendly manner between the Seine basin and Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, while reducing saturation on the A1 motorway in France and reducing the CO2 emissions in the transport sector within this corridor.” Link


This is one part of a much larger system called the Seine Scheldt network project. Canal in green.

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Seine-Scheldt, a major network for Europe’s inland waterways

Thanks to the modernisation and regeneration of existing canals and the construction of a new 107 km-long waterway link – the Seine-Nord Europe Canal (CSNE) – between the Seine and Scheldt basins, by 2030, Seine-Scheldt will be Europe’s leading wide-gauge inland waterway transport network, with 1,100 km of navigable waterways suitable for vessels carrying up to 4,400 tonnes of goods (the equivalent of 220 lorries).

A real economic lung and a factor of cohesion between regions, Seine-Scheldt contributes directly to achieving the transport decarbonisation targets set by the European Green Deal. It will link 5 seaports, 60 inland ports, 90 marinas and 360 communities located near the waterway. It will serve an area of 40 million inhabitants, between France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.” Link
 
Oh come on, they could easily just cripple their entire continent-wide rail transit system by structurally favoring freight railways (diesel of course) to haul their goods over long distance.

Seriously though, this is a cool project I knew nothing about. Pretty neat that we're "rediscovering" canal-based transit as an environmentally favorable approach for moving huge amounts of goods deep inland. Bring back the Erie canal!
 
^ Actually Teddy Roosevelt did have the Eire Canal rebuilt (widened and rerouted) to steamship size/standards when he was Governor so it never went away (but like HSR and the interstates it now mostly bypasses the old downtowns)

Obviously ideal during the age of coal, usage now has to contend with the decline of the “resource” economy and the rise of containers.
 
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^ Actually Teddy Roosevelt did have the Eire Canal rebuilt (widened and rerouted) to steamship size/standards when he was Governor so it never went away (but like HSR and the interstates it now mostly bypasses the old downtowns)

Obviously ideal during the age of coal, usage now has to contend with the decline of the “resource” economy and the rise of containers.
A man, a plan, a canal. Pinglu.
 
Oh come on, they could easily just cripple their entire continent-wide rail transit system by structurally favoring freight railways (diesel of course) to haul their goods over long distance.

Seriously though, this is a cool project I knew nothing about. Pretty neat that we're "rediscovering" canal-based transit as an environmentally favorable approach for moving huge amounts of goods deep inland. Bring back the Erie canal!

Surprisingly the erie canal is still used for shipping a small amount of freight, the nyt wrote an article about it a couple years ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/28/nyregion/erie-canal-rebound-commercial-shipping.html

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“All told, the state anticipates more than 200,000 tons of shipping on the canal system in 2017, a milestone not reached since 1993, according to state officials. Still, that is a far cry from the millions of tons of cargo the canal regularly trafficked during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Unlike the frontier farm goods that once headed east to market, these new shipments often have a distinctly modern feel. They have included electrical transformers and turbines, Navy sonar equipment, and huge pedestals to support the New York Wheel, a towering Ferris wheel being built on Staten Island.”
 
The most recent completed canal that I’m aware of anywhere in the world is the Vistula canal in Poland. It opened last year. This allows Poland access to the Vistula lagoon, by cutting through the Vistula spit, so they will no longer have to get permission from Russia to enter at Baltiysk in Kaliningrad. Its interesting that theyve added a lock to the canal even though the Vistula lagoon is connected to the sea and at sea level. I couldnt find any definitive answer why this is, but from what Ive been able to reason is that its to stop the flow from the lagoon entering the gulf of Gdansk unimpeded because agricultural runoff flows into the lagoon and causes massive algal blooms that they dont want moving to the other side of the spit.

Vistula Spit between Poland and Kaliningrad Russia
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The old route all Polish ships had to take.
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New canal location.
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The new route to the port of Elblag.
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Finished canal.
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You can even see the algae up against the lock in this picture
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“The Vistula spit canal (Nowy swiat ship canal) allows ships to enter the Vistula Lagoon and the port of Elbląg without having to rely on the Russian Strait of Baltiysk, saving a 100 km journey. Its construction started in February 2019. It is 1305 m in length and allows ships of draft up to 4 m, length up to 100 m, and beam up to 20 m.[2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Spit_canal

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-canal-to-baltic-sea-to-bypass-russian-waters

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/09/15/poland-opens-a-propaganda-heavy-canal
 

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