Big Dams

The history of the Nile in Africa offers useful lessons for civil engineers seeking to build a sustainable future in which climate change is an existential challenge. For thousands of years, communities along the river have sought greater water security at the interface of technical possibility, politics and unpredictable nature. Large projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam and Jonglei canal in South Sudan continue to be controversial, but both show how civil engineers might help to address climate-change challenges. Once again, Nile communities need civil engineers to find and implement innovative, politically acceptable and sustainable development initiatives.

Dispersal and migration are critical to the persistence of natural populations (Ruckelshaus et al., 1997). Specifically, information about migratory patterns of fishes is important when managing for viable populations (Hill & Hill, 1994). Without information about migratory patterns, threats such as habitat degradation, the

Egyptian official discourse warned that the GERD could impact the country stressing that Egypt is largely dependent on the Nile for its freshwater resources. The Nile represents 72.7% of the annual water resource (55.5 bcm). In this contribution to the Debating Ideas – African Arguments GERD series, I argue that Egypt’s water crises extend beyond the potential impact of the new dam. The water, spatial and social injustice issues resulting from it need to be considered to understand the actual water challenges of the country.

The Mekong River, well known for its aquatic biodiversity, is important to the social, physical, and economic health of millions living in China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. This paper explores the social and environmental impacts of several Mekong basin hydropower dams and groupings of dams and the geographies of their impacts. Specifically, we examined the 3S (Sesan, Sekong Srepok) river system in northeastern Cambodia, the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and southern Laos; the Khone Falls area in southern Laos; the lower Mun River Basin in northeastern Thailand; and the upper Mekong River in Yunnan Province, China, northeastern Myanmar, northern Laos, and northern Thailand. Evidence shows that these dams and groupings
of dams are affecting fish migrations, river hydrology, and sediment transfers. Such changes are negatively impacting riparian communities up to 1000 km away. Because many communities depend on the river and its resources for their food and livelihood, changes to the river have impacted, and will continue to negatively impact, food and economic security. While social and environmental impact assessments have been carried out for these projects, greater consideration of the scale and cumulative impacts of dams is necessary.

First published on 19th January 2021 here:
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2021/01/19/egyptians-deaf-to-the-oromo-insurrection-against-abyssinia-fake-ethiopia-and-blind-to-abyssinian-prophecies-about-egypts-annihilation-part-iv/

With the present article, I continue the publication of my long response to a US-based Oromo scholar, intellectual and activist, who asked my opinion about the possibility of the Oromo liberation movements to cooperate systematically with the government of Egypt on the basis of a plan providing for the liberation of Biyya Oromo and for the cancellation of the disastrous dam built on the Blue Nile in Benishangul province (Abyssinia, Fake Ethiopia). The first three articles are here:

Oromos, Egypt, the Nile, Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia), and the True Essence of Colonialism – Part I
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2021/01/05/oromos-egypt-the-nile-abyssinia-fake-ethiopia-and-the-true-essence-of-colonialism-part-i/

The Enemies of Oromos & their Deeds: First & Second Colonization, Jesuit Reductions, Renaissance, and the Historical Revisionism of Racist Colonials – Part II
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/the-enemies-of-oromos-their-deeds-first-second-colonization-jesuit-reductions-renaissance-and-the-historical-revisionism-of-racist-colonials-part-ii/

Intellectual Colonialism in Egypt: How Egyptian Fake Universities & Obsolete Education destroy Cairo's Chances to ally with Oromos & Sudan's Arabic-speaking Cushites – Part III
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/intellectual-colonialism-in-egypt-how-egyptian-fake-universities-obsolete-education-destroy-cairos-chances-to-ally-with-oromos-sudans-arabic-speaking-cushites-part-iii/

In this -fourth- part, I give examples of what can be expected from Egypt's corrupt journalistic, academic and political establishments, even in the case a comprehensive and enormous preparatory work is undertaken by Cairo-based Oromos and their Egyptian friends in order to popularize topics that would make the average Egyptians and their academic, intellectual, journalistic, political and military elites conscious of
a) Abyssinia's colonial, tribal and dangerous nature,
b) the invasions of numerous, Muslim or not, African kingdoms that the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians carried out over a period of 100 years (1850-1950) with the ostensible help of the English, the French and the Americans,
c) the genocides perpetrated for more than 170 years by the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians against the subjugated nations of the aforementioned destroyed African kingdoms,
d) the ongoing, terrible oppression and persecution of these subjugated nations in Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia),
e) Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians' hereditary anti-Egyptian hatred and anti-Islamic odium, and
f) the existing apocalyptic prophecies pertaining to the destruction of the present states of Egypt and Sudan and to the establishment of common borders between a state based in Jerusalem (at the time these Abyssinian prophecies were formulated there was no state of Israel in Palestine) and another headquartered in Abyssinia.

The ignorance and the obscurantism prevailing across Egypt's universities and educational system in general prevents the Egyptians (average people, elites and governments) to even know about real threats against their own existence. This is the disastrous level of colonial dependence and utilization that the colonial powers implemented in Egypt over the past two centuries.

Plans are underway to construct twelve large hydropower projects on the
un-dammed lower and middle mainstream Mekong River in Laos, Thailand, and
Cambodia. One of the planned projects is a 30–32 meter–high hydroelectric dam
with an expected 240 MW installed generating capacity to be built on the Hou
Sahong Channel, less than one kilometer north of the Laos–Cambodia border, in
the Khone Falls area of Khong District, Champasak Province, southern Laos. The
project’s objective is to generate revenue by exporting electricity to Thailand or
Cambodia. Concerns have been raised about the Don SahongDam(DSD), however.
The main ones relate to potential repercussions on aquatic resources, and especially
wild-capture fisheries dependent on migratory fish. This article examines the
regional implications of the DSD, including possible impacts on food security, nutrition, and poverty alleviation. Fisheries losses in the Mekong Region from the DSD
would negatively affect the nutrition of hundreds of thousands or even millions of
people, especially in parts of Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand where nutritional standards are already low. Mekong fisheries are integral to food security in the region,
and the DSD would make it difficult for governments, especially in Laos and Cambodia, to reach their health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals
and their objectives for reducing poverty.

Dams represent a controversial tool for economic development. Less contested is their impact on archaeological and heritage resources. It is widely agreed that in addition to water reserves, massive hydraulic infrastructures provide different types of benefits, such as the production of electricity, increased farmland brought by irrigation as well as developments of fishery and water-related industries. However, in addition to their maintenance costs, the construction and up-filling of dams entail potential political international issues when built on rivers flowing through different countries, the dislocation of thousands of people, the permanent loss of the best soils and the widespread destruction of both cultural and natural heritage.

Hace 22 años, en la estela del huracán Mitch se planteó la importancia de ponderar los cambios que los hondureños hemos inducido en nuestro territorio, su cobertura y sus ecosistemas, como las consecuencias de dichos cambios. Si la desgracia que vivimos entonces habría de tener significado, debíamos hacernos preguntas fundamentales, las de por qué y cómo pasaron las cosas que pasaron durante el huracán. Estas cosas, ahora, tras Eta e Iota, se repiten en pérdida de vidas humanas, en la destrucción de la infraestructura productiva, de servicios, vial y habitacional y en la pérdida de mucho de la cosecha anual e inversión de los productores agropecuarios.  Las preguntas que debemos hacernos son incómodas porque nos llevan a concluir que seguimos un "desarrollo" degradante de tres recursos naturales clave a nuestra economía, el bosque, el suelo y el agua poniendo en jaque la sustentabilidad de nuestras vidas por el trágico aumento de la vulnerabilidad de nuestro territorio, sus ecosistemas y su gente ante fenómenos naturales de recurrencia cíclica que se recrudecen en energía, impacto y frecuencia por el Cambio Climático. Tras las recientes desgracias derivadas de las dos catastróficas (letras) griegas errantes, se reanuda un interés por potenciar la reforestación nacional de las zonas mas afectadas, pero tal cual se argumenta en este ensayo, dicho intento será una quimera si el país no logra modificar el socio-tecno-sistema que está en la base de las formas de producción agrícola, ganadera y forestal, especialmente en sus áreas de ladera. Se exploran las principales limitantes técnicas, políticas e institucionales de dichas formas de producción  y se sugieren modelos alternativos.

The megadam has returned as a favoured response to global water scarcity and energy shortages, reframed as a 'clean' technology. Yet recent years have seen spectacular failures of older dams – Oroville in California, Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire – while new dam projects such as Site C in British Columbia have revived the controversies over displacement and expropriation that had come to define the megadam by the 1990s. This talk examines big dams in contemporary fiction, including works by Sarah Hall, Jon McGregor, Linda Hogan, Eric Gansworth and Namwali Serpell. It discusses how these authors engage with the legacies of twentieth-century hydromodernity in order to reflect on contemporary neocolonialism, social inequality and rural economic decline, and to offer alternative hydrosocial worlds.

It is a truism that development often entails the destruction of historical landscapes, including both natural and cultural heritage. In particular, the construction of large infrastructure, such as dams and similar water-related facilities, repre-Abstract The construction of dams is an ever-growing threat to cultural heritage, particularly in an age of climate change and narrowly focused development policies. In analyzing as a case study three major reservoirs in the Middle Euphrates river valley in southeastern Turkey (Atatürk, Birecik and Karkamış), we developed a Post-Flooding Damage Assessment (PFDA) to evaluate the impact of dams on archaeological sites. Our PFDA, consisting of an analysis of cross-correlations between multi-temporal Landsat imagery, geographical spatial datasets and archaeological data from surveys and excavations, provides an unprecedented detailed overview of the loss of especially significant cultural landscapes, and also highlights the limited accuracy of pre-flooding archaeological surveys and excavations. We conclude with recommendations for improving how rescue archaeological projects targeting endangered cultural landscapes are designed, with an immediately achievable target of better documenting cultural heritage threatened by dams.

 Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has announced his administration’s priorities for
Amazon dams, including the planned Bem Querer dam on the Rio Branco in the farnorthern
state of Roraima.
 Bem Querer is primarily intended to increase the energy supply to industries in
locations outside of Amazonia, rather than for residents of Roraima.
 Probable environmental impacts include blocking fish migrations and flooding a
riparian forest that possesses extraordinary bird diversity. Downstream flow alteration
would impact protected areas, including two Ramsar wetland biodiversity sites.
Riverside dwellers would also be impacted.
 Sediment flow blockage would impact fisheries and the unique Anavilhanas
Archipelago, a spectacular Brazilian national park. These adverse impacts need to be
fully evaluated before a decision to build is made.

 O atual Plano Decenal de Expansão de Energia do Brasil prevê a
construção de mais três grandes usinas hidrelétricas na Amazônia até 2029 e
o Plano Nacional de Energia 2050 inclui várias outras.
 Ambos os planos contêm trechos preocupantes que indicam um aumento na
lista de hidrelétricas se for resolvida a “incerteza” com relação à atual
legislação sobre povos indígenas e áreas protegidas.
 O Congresso Nacional está examinando projetos de lei que eliminam o
licenciamento ambiental: uma proposta apresentada pelo presidente Jair
Bolsonaro permitiria hidrelétricas em terras indígenas.
 Os planos do Brasil para construir usinas que atendam à demanda de
energia de 2050 se estendem às nações amazônicas vizinhas, incluindo Peru
e Bolívia.

Overtopping erosion is one of the main factors responsible for the destruction of earthen structures due to floods. Considering the shortage of existing studies and the need for further research to properly understand the processes leading to breaching failure, this study investigates the effect of compaction level (dry density) on the overtopping erosion response of model compacted silty sand dams using a laboratory flume apparatus. From side-view video recordings of the homogeneous earthen dam cross-section, digital image-processing techniques are employed to track and forensically analyse and interpret the initiation and progression of the erosion edge. The results indicate that the overall pattern of initiation and development of overtopping erosion depends on the compaction level, with greater compactive effort (higher shear strength of soil) reducing its progression speed, thereby increasing the time period for the erosion edge to reach the dam's upstream crest (tB) and breaching failure. Artificial neural network and response surface methodology (RSM) approaches are investigated for estimating the experimental tB values, with the RSM-derived third-order polynomial found to produce good predictions for the three compaction levels investigated. Finally, recommendations are given for further research, including employing the experimental setup presented for investigating other types of dam failure.