The High Dam is considered the most significant and largest engineering project of the twentieth century from an architectural and engineering point of view, superior to other giant global projects.
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Where is the Aswan high dam located?
The High Dam, or as it is called the Aswan Dam, is located in Egypt, specifically in the Aswan Governorate.
What is the function of the Aswan Dam?
A water dam on the Nile River in southern Egypt is known as the Aswan High Dam or the High Dam. It was built when Gamal Abdel Nasser was in power, with assistance from the Soviet Union. The dam has significantly contributed to streamlining water movement and lessening the consequences of the Nile flood and has been used in Egypt to produce power. The dam is 3600 meters in length, 980 meters in width at its base, 40 meters in width at its summit, and 111 meters in height.
The importance of building the high dam:
The Egyptians realized the importance of the Nile in ancient times. Annual storage projects such as the Aswan Reservoir and the Jabal Al-Awliya Reservoir were established on the Nile to control the river’s changing revenue. Barrages were also built on the Nile to organize irrigation on the various rivers.
However, annual storage was only a partial remedy for controlling and controlling the Nile, as the river’s revenue varies significantly from year to year, reaching about 151 billion cubic meters or falling to 42 billion cubic meters annually.
This significant discrepancy from year to year makes dependence on annual storage very dangerous, as it can expose agricultural lands to extinction in low-revenue years.
Therefore, thinking turned to construct a massive dam on the Nile to store water in high-revenue years for use in low-revenue years. The construction of the High Dam was the first continuous storage project at the level of the basin countries to be implemented within the Egyptian borders.
A general description of the project:
The High Dam is a dam with a length of 3,830 meters at the summit, 520 meters between the two banks of the Nile, and the rest extends in the form of two wings on both sides of the river. The Nile crosses the diversion channel from which water flows to the turbines through six tunnels equipped with water control gates and weed barriers.
The power station produces electrical energy of up to 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually.
The reserved water in front of the dam will be a vast artificial lake, 500 km in length and 12 km in average width, covering the entire Egyptian Nuba and part of the Sudanese Nuba.
The role of the High Dam in protecting Egypt:
The High Dam protected Egypt from disasters of drought and famine due to successive floods of scarce resources from 1979 to 1987 when nearly 70 billion cubic meters were withdrawn from the reservoir in the High Dam Lake to compensate for the annual deficit in the natural revenue of the Nile River.
The High Dam protected Egypt from the dangers of high floods from 1998 to 2002. Plowing and breeding would have perished without the High Dam, and the state would have incurred considerable expenses in resisting these floods and removing their devastating effects.
Who built The Aswan Dam?
On January 9, 1960, the Egyptians, led by their leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, were able to lay the foundation stone for the High Dam project, the largest infrastructure project in Egypt after the Suez Canal, after seeking the assistance of the Soviet Union after the World Bank refused to finance the construction of the dam.
What is the difference between the hoover dam and the High Dam?
Aswan Reservoir is a water dam located in the city of Aswan in southern Egypt. Its construction began in 1899, and work was completed in 1902. It was raised twice, the last of which was in 1926 to retain excess water in the flood season for later use, but it had not been impounding water for more than one year. Therefore, the High Dam, or the so-called Aswan High Dam, was later built outside the city limits.
Summary
The High Dam was built to contain the Nile’s flow, store its water, and use it to produce electricity. The High Dam was rated at the top of all projects in a report by the International Commission on Dams and Major Companies. The International Commission selected it as the most acceptable engineering project constructed in the twentieth century.
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