33 Who’s Minding the Planet? INTERNATIONAL WATERS CAIRO NILE RIVER RED SEA MEDITERRANEAN SEA NILE RIVER DELTA Western Desert The Nile River is 6,853 km (4,258 miles) long, spans eleven countries, and is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan. Iteru, meaning "great river", was the name of the Nile River in the ancient Egyptian language. Eastern Desert Its 6,853-kilometer (4,258-mile) path traces from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Since the days of the Pharaohs, it has been at the center of Egyptian life and lore. The Nile began nourishing cities along its banks 8,000 years ago and continues to supply 95 percent of Egypt's water, irrigating the nation's crops, powering its industry and supplying nearly all of the nation's 99 million people. Just before branching into its rich delta, the Nile passes through the Cairo metropolitan area, where 20 million residents are packed into one of the densest population centers on earth.And every step of the way along its path through deserts, farms and cities, the Nile delivers precious water, but it also picks up massive loads of pollutants. "Running through a heavily populated city like Cairo has its own challenges on this important body of water: illegal discharge of untreated waste from factories, pollution caused by boats and ships, and human behavior," says Hassan Al Salem,YSI's Bahrain-based analytics expert for the Middle East and Africa. Upstream, the system is polluted by discharges from sugar and paper mills, runoff from mining and fish farming, trash and sewage from villages and cities on the river's banks, and nutrients and pesticides from farms in the fertile Nile River Valley.Along the river's path, infestations of canal- choking aquatic weeds slow the movement of water. High temperatures, abnormal pH values, high levels of dissolved organic matter (DOM), chemicals from poorly treated industrial wastewater, and sewage add to the challenge, adds Mohamed Abd Elnasser, after-sales and technical support engineer for Giga Systems, a YSI partner based in Cairo. In fact, a 2012 report by professors at Egypt's Ain Shams University noted that although 100 percent of the country's cities had sewage treatment facilities at the time, just 40 percent of its rural villages had that capacity. Egypt's goal is to provide all villages with sewage treatment by 2022, but in the meantime, raw sewage will remain a problem. There's nothing small about the Nile River.