The Toshka region, in the southeastern corner of Egypt’s Western Desert, covers 15,000 km². In the mid-1990s, excess water from Lake Nasser resulted in the formation of short-term lakes in the Toshka Depression. Water in the depression reached its maximum level in 1998 before dropping due to both evaporation and infiltration to almost complete disappearance by 2001. Tapping the water, Egypt began the New Valley Project in 1997 with the construction of canals to irrigate 3,360 km² of land so that pressure on population in the Nile Valley is reduced and to spur economic growth but only 10% of the soil is appropriate for long-term irrigation besides facing problems like wind erosion and intensive costs of infrastructure. Critics maintain that its annual withdrawal of 5 billion cubic meters of water will reduce the resources available to Nile Delta farmers and merely make Egypt more vulnerable to droughts. Most of the infrastructure is already in place, and crops including wheat, grapes, and tomatoes are already being grown (El-Sayed et al., 2023; UNEP, 2013). The Toshka project aims at attaining food self-sufficiency, mainly in grain crops, through a cut down on the import of wheat (El-Sayed et al., 2023). Egypt also has a groundwater reliant development program on desert lands. Most rural communities rely on the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer water to lessen the strain on the Nile Valley (Aly et al., 2023).