Ghab Plain

The Orontes River, flowing north, enters the Plain near Muhradah, around 25 km north-west of Hama.

[3][4] The "Ghab project", beginning in the 1950s, drained the valley to make it habitable, arable land,[5] providing an extra 41,000 hectares (160 sq mi) of irrigated farmland.

[3] Before its drainage, the Ghab was the center of the catfish (Silurus glanis) (sallōr or samak aswad) fisheries of the Orontes valley.

[5] The Zeyzoun Dam, built in 1996, was 32 metres (105 ft) high and held a maximum of 71,000,000 cubic metres (93,000,000 cu yd) of water; it failed in June 2002, leading to the deaths of 22 people and the displacement of over 2,000 as a large hole opened in the embankment and flooded 80 square kilometres (31 sq mi) of the countryside downstream.

Other advantages of the Ghab project were the improvements in the systems of communication through the building of road and rail networks, previously not possible due to the swamps.