The canal inlet starts from a site 8 km to the north of Toshka Bay (Khor) on Lake Nasser. The canal is meant to continue westwards until it reaches the Darb el-Arbe'ien route, then northwards along the Darb el- Arbe'ien to the
Baris Oasis, covering a distance of 310 km. But as of April 2012, the canal is still 60 km short of the Baris Oasis. The
Mubarak Pumping Station in
Toshka is the centerpiece of the project and was inaugurated in March 2005. It pumps water from Lake Nasser to be transported by way of a canal through the valley, with the idea of transforming 2340 km2 (588,000 acres) of desert into agricultural land. The Toshka Project has now been revived by President
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Half of the land will be given to college graduates, 1 acre each, funded by the Long Live Egypt Fund. The essential problem is that the Western Desert's high saline levels and the presence of underground
aquifers in the area act as a major obstacle to any irrigation project. As the land is irrigated, the salt would mix with the aquifers and would reduce access to potable water. There is also the difficulty that the clay minerals found in the soil are posing technical problems to the
big wheeled structures moving around autonomously to irrigate the land. Often their wheels get stuck in a little bowl created by wet clay that dried, and the irrigation machines come to a standstill. The only objective met up to April 2012 is the diversion of water from Lake Nasser into what little of the Sheikh Zayed Canal has been built. The
Toshka Lakes are a by-product of the rising level of
Lake Nasser and lie in the same general region as much of the New Valley Project. ==See also==