Organization


Engineers of the Project
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Aswan High Dam (1970) Timeline:

1902 - Completion of the first Aswan Dam (6,400 ft long, 176.5 feet high). Despite heightening efforts in 1912, 1929, and 1933, the dam was flooded by the construction of the High Dam.

1953 - A group of military officers overthrew the Egyptian monarchy and adopted the idea of a new dam along the Nile at Aswan.

1954 - Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes president of Egypt and begins conversing with British, German and French firms about construction of the dam.

1954 - The United States and Great Britain offer loans of 270 million, but back out after Nasser begins favoring the Soviet Union and other communist states.

1958 - The Soviets agree to finance construction only if Soviet equipment and engineering methods are used on the dam.

1960 - Construction began on the High Dam after a power station had been built upstream at the existing Aswan Dam to provide needed energy for operations at the construction site.

Note: Although the dam would provide millions of acres of newly arable land and a massive amount of hydroelectic power, the reservoir created by the dam threatened archaeological sites which had to be moved out of the flood zone.

1970 - Construction is complete. The second dam is a rock and earthfill dam acting as a ridge built across the river.

1976 - The High Dam Reservoir was first filled.
Nasser

President of Egypt

Khrushchev

President of Russia

Origins of the High Dam project:

The High Dam Project can be viewed as the application of the concept of long term storage to the problem of water control in Egypt. In 1947, a Greek agricultural engineer residing in Egypt, Andre Damino, proposed to the Egyptian authorities the construction of a big dam which could provide long term storage of Nile water. The government did not respond favorably to the idea.

In 1952 after the emergence of Nasser's regime a hydrological committee was formed, chaired by Dr. H.E. Hurst, English expert at the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation, to study the economic and technical feasibility of such a project.

In December 1954 the firsr design of the project was drawn by the German firm. Later in 1956 when the World Bank and the United StatesGovernment withdrew their previous offers of financing partially the project, the U.S.S.R. expressed its desire to to replace the United States and the IBRD and suggested certain modifications of the proposed design to cut down construction expenses.

Political observers have cited several reasons for the U.S. decision to withdraw its financing offer. However, the two main reasons on wich most observers agree are Egypt's new forgien policy of non-alignment and Egypt's decision to recognize Communist China and to exchange diplomatic relations with her.

Site of the Dam: The site of the High Dam which is located 4 miles upstream of the old Aswan Dam and 400 miles south of Cairo was chosen after extensive geological studies and investigations. It has the advantage that both banks of the Nile are rising steeply from the river bed and has a very deep and wide valley on the upstream which provides an excellent storage capacity.