ASWAN HIGH DAM

Arabic As-Sadd al-'Ali, rock-fill dam across the Nile River, at Aswan, Egypt, completed in 1970 (and formally inaugurated in January 1971) at a cost of about $1 billion. The dam, 364 feet (111 m) high, with a crest length of 12,562 feet (3,830 m) and a volume of 57,940,000 cubic yards (44,300,000 cubic m), impounds a reservoir, Lake Nasser, that has a gross capacity of 5.97 trillion cubic feet (169 billion cubic m). Of the Nile's total annual discharge, some 2.6 trillion cubic feet (74 billion cubic m) of water have been allocated by treaty between Egypt and The Sudan, with about 1.96 trillion cubic feet (55.5 billion cubic m) apportioned to Egypt and the remainder to The Sudan. Lake Nasser backs up the Nile about 200 miles (320 km) in Egypt and almost 100 miles (160 km) farther upstream (south) in The Sudan; creation of the reservoir necessitated the costly relocation of the ancient Egyptian temple complex of Abu Simbel, which would otherwise have been submerged. Ninety thousand Egyptian fellahin (peasants) and Sudanese Nubian nomads had to be relocated. Fifty thousand Egyptians were transported to the Kawm Umbu valley, 30 miles (50 km) north of Aswan, to form a new agricultural zone called Nubaria; most of the Sudanese were resettled around Khashm al-Qirbah, The Sudan. The Aswan High Dam yields enormous benefits to the economy of Egypt. For the first time in history, the annual Nile flood can be controlled by man. The dam impounds the floodwaters, releasing them when needed to maximize their utility on irrigated land, to water hundreds of thousands of new acres, to improve navigation both above and below Aswan, and to generate enormous amounts of electric power (the dam's 12 turbines can generate 10 billion kilowatt-hours annually). The reservoir, which has a depth of 300 feet (90 m) and averages 14 miles (22 km) in width, supports a fishing industry. The Aswan High Dam has produced several negative side effects, however, chief of which is a gradual decrease in the fertility and hence the productivity of Egypt's riverside agricultural lands. This is because of the dam's complete control of the Nile's annual flooding. Much of the flood and its load of rich fertilizing silt is now impounded in reservoirs and canals; the silt is thus no longer deposited by the Nile's rising waters on farmlands. Egypt's annual application of about 1 million tons of artificial fertilizers is an inadequate substitute for the 40 million tons of silt formerly deposited annually by the Nile flood. Completed in 1902, with its crest raised in 1912 and 1933, an earlier dam 4 miles (6 km) downstream from the Aswan High Dam holds back about 174.2 billion cubic feet (4.9 billion cubic m) of water from the tail of the Nile flood in the late autumn. Once one of the largest dams in the world, it is 7,027 feet (2,142 m) long and is pierced by 180 sluices that formerly passed the whole Nile flood, with its heavy load of silt.