| Finished in 1902, Sir William Willcocks built what then was the largest reservoir dam in the world. Standing at 40 meters high and over 2,000 meters long, the First (Low) Aswan Dam was essential to the agricultural production for the growing population of the Nile Region. |
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Being an environmental revolutionary during a time when this was uncommon, Sir William Willcocks was a water engineer concerned more with silt than water.
Willcocks knew that a conventional dam would prevent the river's rich silt flowing onto Egypt's fields during the annual flood. It would wreck the fertility of the country's soils even as it irrigated them. So he devised a dam that would allow the silt-laden waters that came in the early weeks of the annual flood to pass through, and only capture for storage the clear water that flowed later in the season. (Pearce, 2002) |
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