dam
dam, structure built across a stream, a river, or an estuary to retain water. Dams are built to provide water for human consumption, for irrigating arid and semiarid lands, or for use in industrial processes. They are used to increase the amount of water available for generating hydroelectric power, to reduce peak discharge of floodwater created by large storms or heavy snowmelt, or to increase the depth of water in a river in order to improve navigation and allow barges and ships to travel more easily. Dams can also provide a lake for recreational activities such as swimming, boating, and fishing. Many dams are built for more than one purpose; for example, water in a single reservoir can be used for fishing, to generate hydroelectric power, and to support an irrigation system. Water-control structures of this type are often designated multipurpose dams.
Auxiliary works that can help a dam function properly include spillways, movable gates, and valves that control the release of surplus water downstream from the dam. Dams can also include intake structures that deliver water to a power station or to canals, tunnels, or pipelines designed to convey the water stored by the dam to far-distant places. Other auxiliary works are systems for evacuating or flushing out silt that accumulates in the reservoir, locks for permitting the passage of ships through or around the dam site, and fish ladders (graduated steps) and other devices to assist fish seeking to swim past or around a dam.
A dam can be a central structure in a multipurpose scheme designed to conserve water resources on a regional basis. Multipurpose dams can hold special importance in developing countries, where a single dam may bring significant benefits related to hydroelectric power production, agricultural development, and industrial growth. However, dams have become a focus of environmental concern because of their impact on migrating fish and riparian ecosystems. In addition, large reservoirs can inundate vast tracts of land that are home to many people, and this has fostered opposition to dam projects by groups who question whether the benefits of proposed projects are worth the costs.
In terms of engineering, dams fall into several distinct classes defined by structural type and by building material. The decision as to which type of dam to build largely depends on the foundation conditions in the valley, the construction materials available, the accessibility of the site to transportation networks, and the experiences of the engineers, financiers, and promoters responsible for the project. In modern dam engineering, the choice of materials is usually between concrete, earthfill, and rockfill. Although in the past a number of dams were built of jointed masonry, this practice is now largely obsolete and has been supplanted by concrete. Concrete is used to build massive gravity dams, thin arch dams, and buttress dams. The development of roller-compacted concrete allowed high-quality concrete to be placed with the type of equipment originally developed to move, distribute, and consolidate earthfill. Earthfill and rockfill dams are usually grouped together as embankment dams because they constitute huge mounds of earth and rock that are assembled into imposing man-made embankments.
| By height | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| name | type1 | date of completion | river | country | height (metres) |
| 1Key: A, arch; B, buttress; E, earth fill; G, gravity; M, multi-arch; R, rock fill. | |||||
| 2Vaiont Dam was the scene of a massive landslide and flood in 1963 and no longer operates. | |||||
| 3Diversion tunnels closed and reservoir filling begun December 2002. | |||||
| 4Impounds settling reservoir for fine tailings in oil sands operation near Fort McMurray, Alberta. | |||||
| 5Most of this reservoir is a natural lake. | |||||
| Source: International Water Power and Dam Construction Yearbook (1996). | |||||
| Nurek | E | 1980 | Vakhsh | Tajikistan | 300 |
| Grande Dixence | G | 1961 | Dixence | Switzerland | 285 |
| Inguri | A | 1980 | Inguri | Georgia | 272 |
| Vaiont2 | A | 1961 | Vaiont | Italy | 262 |
| Chicoasen | ER | 1980 | Grijalva | Mexico | 261 |
| Tehri | ER | 20023 | Bhagirathi | India | 261 |
| Mauvoisin | A | 1957 | Drance de Bagnes | Switzerland | 250 |
| Guavio | ER | 1989 | Guavio | Colombia | 246 |
| Sayano-Shushenskoye | AG | 1989 | Yenisey | Russia | 245 |
| Mica | ER | 1973 | Columbia | Canada | 242 |
| Ertan | A | 1999 | Yalong (Ya-lung) | China | 240 |
| Chivor | ER | 1957 | Batá | Colombia | 237 |
| By volume | |||||
| name | type1 | date of completion | river | country | volume (000 cubic metres) |
| Syncrude Tailings | E | N/A | 4 | Canada | 750,000 |
| New Cornelia Tailings | E | 1973 | Ten Mile Wash | U.S. | 209,500 |
| Tarbela | ER | 1977 | Indus | Pakistan | 106,000 |
| Fort Peck | E | 1937 | Missouri | U.S. | 96,050 |
| Lower Usuma | E | 1990 | Usuma | Nigeria | 93,000 |
| Tucurui | EGR | 1984 | Tocantins | Brazil | 85,200 |
| Ataturk | ER | 1990 | Euphrates | Turkey | 84,500 |
| Guri (Raúl Leoni) | EGR | 1986 | Caroní | Venezuela | 77,971 |
| Oahe | E | 1958 | Missouri | U.S. | 66,517 |
| Gardiner | E | 1968 | Saskatchewan | Canada | 65,400 |
| Mangla | E | 1967 | Jhelum | Pakistan | 65,379 |
| Afsluitdijk | E | 1932 | IJsselmeer | Netherlands | 63,430 |
| By size of reservoir | |||||
| name | type1 | date of completion | river | country | reservoir capacity (000 cubic metres) |
| Owen Falls | G | 1954 | Victoria Nile | Uganda | 2,700,000,0005 |
| Kakhovka | EG | 1955 | Dnieper | Ukraine | 182,000,000 |
| Kariba | A | 1959 | Zambezi | Zimbabwe-Zambia | 180,600,000 |
| Bratsk | EG | 1964 | Angara | Russia | 169,270,000 |
| Aswan High | ER | 1970 | Nile | Egypt | 168,900,000 |
| Akosombo | ER | 1965 | Volta | Ghana | 153,000,000 |
| Daniel Johnson | M | 1968 | Manicouagan | Canada | 141,852,000 |
| Guri (Raúl Leoni) | EGR | 1986 | Caroní | Venezuela | 138,000,000 |
| Krasnoyarsk | G | 1967 | Yenisey | Russia | 73,300,000 |
| W.A.C. Bennett | E | 1967 | Peace | Canada | 70,309,000 |
| Zeya | B | 1978 | Zeya | Russia | 68,400,000 |
| Cahora Bassa | A | 1974 | Zambezi | Mozambique | 63,000,000 |
| By power capacity | |||||
| name | type1 | date of completion | river | country | installed capacity(megawatts) |
| Itaipú | EGR | 1982 | Paraná | Brazil-Paraguay | 12,600 |
| Guri (Raúl Leoni) | EGR | 1986 | Caroní | Venezuela | 10,300 |
| Grand Coulee | G | 1941 | Columbia | U.S. | 6,480 |
| Sayano-Shushenskoye | AG | 1989 | Yenisey | Russia | 6,400 |
| Krasnoyarsk | G | 1967 | Yenisey | Russia | 6,000 |
| Churchill Falls | E | 1971 | Churchill | Canada | 5,428 |
| La Grande 2 | R | 1978 | La Grande | Canada | 5,328 |
| Bratsk | EG | 1964 | Angara | Russia | 4,500 |
| Ust-Ilim | R | 1977 | Angara | Russia | 4,320 |
| Tucurui | EGR | 1984 | Tocantins | Brazil | 4,200 |
| Ilha Solteira | 1973 | Paraná | Brazil | 3,200 | |
| Tarbela | ER | 1977 | Indus | Pakistan | 3,478 |
History
Ancient dams
The Middle East
The oldest known dam in the world is a masonry and earthen embankment at Jawa in the Black Desert of modern Jordan. The Jawa Dam was built in the 4th millennium bce to hold back the waters of a small stream and allow increased irrigation production on arable land downstream. Evidence exists of another masonry-faced earthen dam built about 2700 bce at Sadd el-Kafara, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt. The Sadd el-Kafara failed shortly after completion when, in the absence of a spillway that could resist erosion, it was overtopped by a flood and washed away. The oldest dam still in use is a rockfill embankment about 6 metres (20 feet) high on the Orontes River in Syria, built about 1300 bce for local irrigation use.
The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians built dams between 700 and 250 bce for water supply and irrigation. Contemporary with these was the earthen Maʾrib Dam in the southern Arabian Peninsula, which was more than 15 metres (50 feet) high and nearly 600 metres (1,970 feet) long. Flanked by spillways, this dam delivered water to a system of irrigation canals for more than 1,000 years. Remains of the Maʾrib Dam are still evident in present-day Maʾrib, Yemen. Other dams were built in this period in Sri Lanka, India, and China.
The Romans
Despite their skill as civil engineers, the Romans’ role in the evolution of dams is not particularly remarkable in terms of number of structures built or advances in height. Their skill lay in the comprehensive collection and storage of water and in its transport and distribution by aqueducts. At least two Roman dams in southwestern Spain, Proserpina and Cornalbo, are still in use, while the reservoirs of others have filled with silt. The Proserpina Dam, 12 metres (40 feet) high, features a masonry-faced core wall of concrete backed by earth that is strengthened by buttresses supporting the downstream face. The Cornalbo Dam features masonry walls that form cells; these cells are filled with stones or clay and faced with mortar. The merit of curving a dam upstream was appreciated by at least some Roman engineers, and the forerunner of the modern curved gravity dam was built by Byzantine engineers in 550 ce at a site near the present Turkish-Syrian border.
Early dams of East Asia
In East Asia, dam construction evolved quite independently from practices in the Mediterranean world. In 240 bce a stone crib was built across the Jing River in the Gukou valley in China; this structure was about 30 metres (100 feet) high and about 300 metres (1,000 feet) long. Many earthen dams of moderate height (in some cases of great length) were built by the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka after the 5th century bce to form reservoirs or tanks for extensive irrigation works. The Kalabalala Tank, which was formed by an earthen dam 24 metres (79 feet) high and nearly 6 km (3.75 miles) in length, had a perimeter of 60 km (37 miles) and helped store monsoon rainfall for irrigating the country around the ancient capital of Anuradhapura. Many of these tanks in Sri Lanka are still in use today.
In Japan the Diamonike Dam reached a height of 32 metres (105 feet) in 1128 ce. Numerous dams were also constructed in India and Pakistan. In India a design employing hewn stone to face the steeply sloping sides of earthen dams evolved, reaching a climax in the 16-km- (10-mile-) long Veeranam Dam in Tamil Nadu, built from 1011 to 1037 ce.
In Persia (modern-day Iran) the Kebar Dam and the Kurit Dam represented the world’s first large-scale thin-arch dams. The Kebar and Kurit dams were built early in the 14th century by Il-Khanid Mongols; the Kebar Dam reached a height of 26 metres (85 feet), and the Kurit Dam, after successive heightenings over the centuries, extended 64 metres (210 feet) above its foundation. Remarkably, the Kurit Dam stood as the world’s tallest dam until the beginning of the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century, its reservoir had almost completely silted in, causing floodwaters to regularly overtop the dam and cause serious erosion. A new, larger dam was built just above the old one in order to create a new reservoir and redirect floodwaters away from the ancient structure.
Forerunners of the modern dam
The 15th to the 18th century
In the 15th and 16th centuries, dam construction resumed in Italy and, on a larger scale, in Spain, where Roman and Moorish influence was still felt. In particular, the Tibi Dam across the Monnegre River in Spain, a curved gravity structure 42 metres (138 feet) high, was not surpassed in height in western Europe until the building of the Gouffre d’Enfer Dam in France almost three centuries later. Also in Spain, the 23-metre- (75-foot-) high Elche Dam, which was built in the early 17th century for irrigation use, was an innovative thin-arch masonry structure. In the British Isles and northern Europe, where rainfall is ample and well distributed throughout the year, dam construction before the Industrial Revolution proceeded on only a modest scale in terms of height. Dams were generally limited to forming water reservoirs for towns, powering water mills, and supplying water for navigation canals. Probably the most remarkable of these structures was the 35-metre- (115-foot-) high earthen dam built in 1675 at Saint-Ferréol, near Toulouse, France. This dam provided water for the Midi Canal, and for more than 150 years it was the highest earthen dam in the world.
The 19th century
Up to the middle of the 19th century, dam design and construction were largely based upon experience and empirical knowledge. An understanding of material and structural theory had been accumulating for 250 years, with scientific luminaries such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Robert Hooke, Daniel Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, and Claude-Louis Navier among those who made significant contributions to these advancements. In the 1850s, William John Macquorn Rankine, professor of civil engineering at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, successfully demonstrated how applied science could help the practical engineer. Rankine’s work on the stability of loose earth, for example, provided a better understanding of the principles of dam design and performance of structures. In mid-century France, J. Augustin Tortene de Sazilly led the way in developing the mathematical analysis of vertically faced masonry gravity dams, and François Zola first utilized mathematical analysis in designing a thin-arch masonry dam.
Development of modern structural theory
Masonry and concrete dam design is based on conventional structural theory. In this relationship, two phases may be recognized. The first, extending from 1853 until about 1910 and represented by the contributions of a number of French and British engineers, was actively concerned with the precise profile of gravity dams in which the horizontal thrust of water in a reservoir is resisted by the weight of the dam itself and the inclined reaction of the dam’s foundation. Starting about 1910, however, engineers began to recognize that concrete dams are monolithic three-dimensional structures in which the distribution of stress and the deflections of individual points depend on stresses and deflections of many other points in the structure. Movements at one point have to be compatible with movements at all others. Because of the complexity of the stress pattern, model techniques were gradually employed. Models were built in plasticine, rubber, plaster, and finely graded concrete. Utilizing virtual models, computers facilitate engineers’ use of finite element analysis, by which a monolithic structure is mathematically conceived as an assembly of separate, discrete blocks. Study of both physical models and computer simulations permits deflections of a dam’s foundations and structure to be analyzed. However, while computers are useful in analyzing designs, they cannot generate (or create) the dam designs proposed for specific sites. This latter process, which is often referred to as form making, remains the responsibility of human engineers.
During the 100 years up to the end of World War II, experience in design and construction of dams advanced in many directions. In the first decade of the 20th century, many large dams were built in the United States and western Europe. In succeeding decades, particularly during the war years, many impressive structures were built in the United States by federal government agencies and private power companies. Hoover Dam, built on the Colorado River at the Arizona-Nevada border between 1931 and 1936, is an outstanding example of a curved gravity dam built in a narrow gorge across a major river and employing advanced design principles. It has a height of 221 metres (726 feet) from its foundations, a crest length of 379 metres (1,244 feet), and a reservoir capacity of 37 billion cubic metres (48 billion cubic yards).
Among earthen dams, Fort Peck Dam, completed in 1940 on the Missouri River in Montana, contained the greatest volume of fill, 96 million cubic metres (126 million cubic yards). This volume was not exceeded until the completion in 1975 of Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, with 145 million cubic metres (190 million cubic yards) of fill.
Construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam in China began in 1994, with most construction completed in 2006. However, interest in the project extended back several decades, and American engineer J.L. Savage, who had played an important role in the building of Hoover Dam, worked on preliminary designs for a large dam on the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) in the mid-1940s before the Communist Party took control of mainland China in 1949. Planning for the existing structure commenced in earnest in the 1980s, and construction began after approval by the National People’s Congress in 1992. Built as a straight-crested concrete gravity structure, Three Gorges Dam was constructed using a trestle-and-crane method of transporting and casting concrete similar to that used in the 1930s for the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in the northwestern United States.
Three Gorges Dam is 2,335 metres (7,660 feet) long with a maximum height of 185 metres (607 feet); it incorporates 28 million cubic metres (37 million cubic yards) of concrete and 463,000 metric tons of steel into its design. When it became fully operational in 2012, the dam’s hydroelectric power plant had the largest generating capacity in the world, 22,500 megawatts. The reservoir impounded by the dam extended back up the Yangtze River for more than 600 km (almost 400 miles).
Rise of environmental and economic concerns
The effect of dams on the natural environment became an issue of public concern at the end of the 20th century. Much of this concern was energized by fears that dams were destroying the populations of migrating (or spawning) fish, which were being blocked or impeded by the construction of dams across rivers and waterways. (See below Fish passes.) In more general terms, dams were often perceived—or portrayed—as not simply transforming the environment to serve human desires but also obliterating the environment and causing the destruction of flora and fauna and picturesque landscapes on a massive scale. Dams were also blamed for inundating the cultural homelands of native peoples, who were forced to relocate out of reservoir “take” areas created by large-scale dams. None of these concerns sprang up without warning, and they all have roots that date back many decades.
The environmental problems associated with dams have been exacerbated as dams have increased in height. However, even relatively small dams have prompted opposition by people who believe that their interests are adversely affected by a particular structure. For example, in colonial America, legal action was often taken by upstream landowners who believed that the pond impounded by a small mill dam erected downstream was flooding—and thus rendering unusable—land that could otherwise be used for growing crops or as pasture for livestock. By the late 18th century, when many mill dams were beginning to reach heights that could not easily be jumped or traversed by spawning fish, some people sought to have them removed because of their effect on fishing. In such situations, opposition to dams is not driven by an abstract concern for the environment or the survival of riparian ecosystems; rather, it is driven by an appreciation that a particular dam is transforming the environment in ways that serve only certain special interests.
In the 1870s one of the first wide-scale efforts to block the construction of a dam because of misgivings about its potential effect upon the landscape came in the Lake District of northwestern England. The Lake District is recognized as one of the most picturesque regions of England because of its mountains and rolling hills. However, this same landscape also offered a good location for an artificial reservoir that could feed high-quality water to the growing industrial city of Manchester almost 160 km (100 miles) to the south. The city’s Thirlmere Dam was eventually built and generally accepted as a positive development, but not before it aroused impassioned opposition among citizens throughout the country who feared that part of England’s natural and cultural heritage might be defiled by the creation of a “water tank” in the midst of the Lake District.
In the United States a similar but even more impassioned battle erupted in the early 20th century over plans by the city of San Francisco to build a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley. Located more than 900 metres (3,000 feet) above sea level, the Hetch Hetchy site offered a good storage location in the Sierra Nevada for water that could be delivered without pumping to San Francisco via an aqueduct nearly 270 km (167 miles) long. Hetch Hetchy, however, is also located within the northern boundaries of Yosemite National Park. The renowned naturalist John Muir led the way in fighting the proposed dam and—with assistance from Sierra Club members and other citizens across the United States who were concerned about the loss of natural landscapes to commercial and municipal development—made the fight over the preservation of Hetch Hetchy Valley a national issue. In the end, the benefits to be provided by the dam—including the development of at least 200,000 kilowatts of hydroelectric power—outweighed the costs to be exacted by the inundation of the valley. Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1913, the construction of the dam, known today as O’Shaughnessy Dam in honour of the city engineer who oversaw its construction, was a defeat for the Sierra Club and landscape preservationists, who continued to use it as a symbol and rallying cry for mid-20th-century environmental causes.
After World War II, plans were made by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to build a hydroelectric power dam across the Green River at Echo Park Canyon within the boundaries of Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Many of the same issues raised at Hetch Hetchy were again debated, but in this instance opponents such as the Sierra Club were able to block construction of the dam through a concerted effort to lobby Congress and win support from the American public at large. However, in its effort to save Echo Park, the Sierra Club dropped opposition to the proposed Glen Canyon Dam across the Colorado River near the Arizona-Utah border, and this 216-metre (710-foot) high concrete arch dam, built between 1956 and 1966, eventually came to be seen by environmentalists as being responsible for destroying a beautiful pristine landscape encompassing thousands of square kilometres. Anger over the Glen Canyon Dam energized the Sierra Club to mount a major campaign against additional dams proposed for construction along the Colorado River near the borders of Grand Canyon National Park. By the late 1960s, plans for these proposed Grand Canyon dams were politically dead. Although the reasons for their demise were largely the result of regional water conflicts between states in the Pacific Northwest and states in the American Southwest, the environmental movement took credit for saving America from the desecration of a national treasure.
In developing parts of the world, dams are still perceived as an important source of hydroelectric power and irrigation water. Environmental costs associated with dams have nonetheless attracted attention. In India the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people out of reservoir areas generated intense political opposition to some dam projects.
In China the Three Gorges Dam (constructed from 1994 to 2006) generated significant opposition within China and in the international community. Millions of people were displaced by, and cultural and natural treasures were lost beneath, the reservoir that was created following erection of the 185-metre- (607-foot-) high concrete wall, some 2,300 metres (7,500 feet) long, across the Yangtze River. The dam is capable of producing 22,500 megawatts of electricity (which can reduce coal usage by millions of tons per year), making it one of the largest hydroelectric producers in the world.
Dams still unquestionably have an important role to play within the world’s social, political, and economic framework. But for the foreseeable future, the specific character of that role and the way that dams will interrelate with the environment will likely remain a subject of contentious debate.