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EAST GHOR CANAL
One of the most difficult tasks I have ever been assigned, was to design an irrigation project in the metric system. Any irrigation engineer, trained in America, is handicapped when working in other countries. I don't know why we in America have been so slow in adopting the metric system, not only is it simpler than the British System, it creates problems in world trade. Most countries use the metric system [sic]
The countries that I have worked in, used the metric system. Turkey, Jordan, Nepal, Colombia. To design an irrigation project requires extensive surveys, this involves calculations that require measurements in distance, elevation, volume, rates of flow, pressure and temperature.
The Jordan Government, with the assistance of the U.S. Marshal Plan, later USAID (U S Agency for International Development) built an irrigation system in the Jordan Valley, between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. This was all east of the Jordan river and was known as the EAST GHOR CANAL. From 1960 to 1967, I was assigned as irrigation Advisor to the Jordanian Government on this project.
Most of the people of Jordan are Muslims. At the death of the land owner, the property is divided equally between the heirs, and this division was made with the idea that the heirs would receive land of equal value, which often meant that the good land was the low land at the bottom of eroded hills, the poor land at the top. I have seen farms 200 feet wide. and a quarter of a mile long running up and down hill. A parcel of land of this shape did not make an easy field to irrigate. The Jordan Government bought all the land in the Jordan Valley and when the project was completed, it was redistributed into units that could be irrigated.
To best illustrate my confusion in surveying for these projects, I will describe the process I had to follow just to survey a simple irrigation ditch. My irrigation hand books were those I had used in the United States, and the design must be made in the metric system. Not only did we have to design in the metric system: we were below sea level and all bench marks would have minus signs. We were below sea-level and we were using sea elevations as we do in the U.S.
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Metzger Memories
