Great Man-Made River

The Great Man-Made River (GMMR, Arabic: النهر الصناعي العظيم, romanized: an-nahr aṣ-ṣināʿiyy al-ʿaẓīm, Italian: Grande fiume artificiale) is a network of pipes that supplies fresh water obtained from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System fossil aquifer across Libya.

It consists of more than 1,300 wells, most more than 500 m deep, and supplies 6,500,000 m3 of fresh water per day to the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and elsewhere in Libya.

[4] In 1953, efforts to find oil in southern Libya led to the discovery of large quantities of potable fossil water underground.

Imported goods which were destined for use in the construction of the GMR were made in Korea and Europe (mainly in Italy) and arrived by sea via the entry port of Brega (Gulf of Sidra).

[18] At a press conference on 26 July, NATO claimed that rockets had been fired from within the plant area, and that military materiel, including multiple rocket launchers, was stored there according to intelligence findings, presenting two photos of an BM-21 MRL as sole evidence for the destruction of the factory.

[20] On 10 April 2020, a station controlling water flow to Tripoli and neighboring towns was seized by an unknown armed group.

The flow of water was cut to over two million people as a result, and as such the attack was condemned by the United Nations on humanitarian grounds.

Schematic drawing of the project. Note that different routes have been proposed for the not-yet-implemented phases (dashed). Tobruk may for instance end up connected to Ajdabiya instead of to the Jaghboub well field.
Transport of pipe segments in the 1980s.
Trench digging in the 1980s.
False-color image of the Grand Omar Mukhtar reservoir project south of Benghazi. Water (dark blue) residing in reservoirs appears twice in this image, in the upper right and at the bottom. Vegetation appears red, cityscape structures such as pavement and buildings appear in gray, bare ground appears tan or beige.