The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation on Friday 6 November 2026 denied reports circulating on social media about the collapse of flood protection dams in the city of Nuweiba in South Sinai Governorate, or water levels rising more than three meters, and said in its statement that all dams are in good condition.
The ministry admitted damage to three barriers: a concrete barrier about 300 meters from the road, the first gabion barrier about 600 meters away, which is the most affected and needs maintenance work, and a third barrier about 1,600 meters away that overlaps with the embankment protecting the Arab Hamdan area. It said the circulated photos show scouring around the piers of a bridge on the coastal road between Sharm El-Sheikh and Taba at the mouth of Wadi Watir, and that the bridge does not fall under its authority.
According to the ministry, Wadi Watir has 14 dams, 6 lakes and 20 barriers with a storage capacity of 32.9 million cubic meters, at a cost of about 660 million pounds (12.2 million dollars), and four of these facilities captured about 13 million cubic meters of the flood that hit the area on Tuesday 27 October 2026. The ministry plans new works to capture about 76.37 million cubic meters at a cost of nearly 10 billion pounds (185 million dollars).
The ministry said committees of its experts and from Cairo and Ain Shams universities and the National Water Research Center are inspecting the facilities.
Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
