Due to arid conditions, Egypt depends mainly on irrigated agriculture (99.8 percent of the cultivated area) to produce food and fi ber for its large mass of population. Therefore, the agriculture sector poses the highest pressure on the water resources system. Seventy-nine percent of the national water requirements go to agricultural sector, while the industry and domestic annual requirements consume 9.5 and 5.0 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM), (14 percent and 7 percent respectively of the national water demand). Egypt’s annual water requirements are estimated at 70.0 BCM; if compared with available resources, the result would be a signifi cant defi cit. The total annual available water resources are 57.7 BCM; divided into 55.5 BCM of Nile water released from Lake Nasser, 1.3 BCM of effective rainfall and 0.9 BCM of deep groundwater. The per capita share of available water resources in year 2000 was 859 m3 , and this is expected to decrease to 720 m3 per year by the year 2017. To overcome this shortage, part of the agricultural drainage is reused, besides the use of shallow groundwater and other non-conventional resources.