Technology

From the incredible water-works of past civilizations, history has dictated that the power authority of any community or country is directly associated with that authority’s control over water. The Chinese established immense irrigation, and flood control engineering to exert centralized control over the populations they wanted to rule. The governments of India, which was essentially under British control, needed to engineer complex, labor intensive works of irrigation in order to help supply sufficient food stocks to keep the worlds highest density of people alive. The resulting healthy, and happy population would thereby allow the governmental powers to remain safely in their positions. At Aswan, the complex underlying ideas were essentially the same: Irrigate the land to provide additional crops to support the population, demonstrate the ruling authorities ability to provide for its subjects, thereby solidifying its extended power over those same subjects.

With a significant increase in population and limited agricultural production, the construction of the "high" Aswan Dam was critical to Egypt's survival. The Nile had to be utilized in order to augment higher productivity. Using the force of the river would additionally render the hydroelectric power needed for industry. Proposed in 1948, Soviet-Egypt led construction began on January 9, 1960. Ten years later, the dam was complete and on January 15, 1971 a celebratory inauguration was held with President Anwar Sadat in attendance. It required a work force of fifty thousand people and a final expense of $1 billion but the dam was to serve many purposes: flood control, the holding of a water supply for agriculture, hydroelectric power production, low flow augmentation for water quality control, recreation, and wildlife conservation.

The High Aswan Dam is the world's biggest dam. It is a rock-fill dam, made from several layers of packed sand, gravel, dirt and rubble. The resulting dam is 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). The core of the dam is made up of grouted alluvium descending 240m below the Nile floor. Six large tunnels, each 14m in diameter, transfer water from the front to the rear of the dam, while180 water gates and 12 power generating units provide over 2.1 million kW of electric power.

Of the Nile's total yearly evacuation 74,000,000 cubic meters of water are allocated by treaty between Egypt and The Sudan with Egypt receiving the majority in 55,500,00 cubic meters of water.