(1) Hydropower dam project in Adralala (Benin Togo)

Most of China s dams serve multiple functions, including generating electric power and meeting manufacturing, mining, irrigation, and municipal supply water needs. By ramping up the size of its dams, China now not only boasts the world s largest number of mega dams, but is also the biggest global producer of hydropower, with an installed generating capacity of 230 gigawatts.

The dam will bring them the electricity.

Hydropower developments, and large dams and their resulting reservoirs in particular, can have significant impacts on ecosystems.

Habitat fragmentation by large reservoirs is an additional environmental impact of hydropower schemes.

Construction of a second hydroelectric dam on the Zambezi River downstream from Cahora Bassa is proposed as an eventual energy source for the Mozal aluminium smelter in Maputo.

Two planned hydroelectric plants in the Philippines and the Pangue and RALCO hydroelectric dams in Chile were cited in this regard.

We feel however, that the construction of big dams should be opposed.

Asia s Dammed Water Hegemon

We'll change at the reservoir.

At the same time, the navigation scheduling management waters were adjusted from the 180 kilometer waters close to dam to the 541.8 kilometer waters from Yunyang Yangtze River Bridge to Shishou Yangtze River Bridge in the Scheduling Regulation . And the core waters , water close to dam , control waters and scheduling waters were divided.

The dam is finished, and once they close those gates and the water starts to rise...

Hydropower schemes can inundate large areas and their operation can cause erosion along the riverbed both upstream and downstream of the dam site.

See Dams and Development a New Framework for Decision making, ed.

With its industry now dominating the global hydropower equipment market, China has also emerged as the largest dam builder overseas. From Pakistani held Kashmir to Burma s troubled Kachin and Shan states, China has widened its dam building to disputed or insurgency torn areas, despite local backlashes.

After slowing its dam building program in response to the serious environmental consequences of completion in 2006 of the Three Gorges Dam the world s largest China is now rushing to build a new generation of giant dams. At a time when dam building has largely petered out in the West and run into growing grassroots opposition in other democracies like Japan and India China will remain the nucleus of the world s mega dam projects.

In 2000, the World Commission on Dams estimated the global total of persons displaced by dams alone to be between 40 and 80 million.

They must get a lot of power from this dam.

These three international rivers originate on the Tibetan plateau, whose bounteous water resources have become a magnet for Chinese planners. The Salween, which runs from Tibet through Yunnan Province into Burma and Thailand, will cease to be Asia s last largely free flowing river, with work on the first project the giant, 4,200 megawatt Songta Dam in Tibet to begin shortly.

The State Council, seeking to boost the country s already large hydropower capacity by 120 gigawatts, has identified 54 new dams in addition to the ones currently under construction as key construction projects in the revised energy sector plan up to 2015. Most of the new dams are planned for the biodiversity rich southwest, where natural ecosystems and indigenous cultures are increasingly threatened.

Displacements were also caused by major development projects, such as large dams or mines.

In some parts of California and Texas, a portion of the water supply is provided to consumers for almost nothing delivered by a network of dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that were built decades ago. The Hoover Dam, for example, which created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US, was built in 1936 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal.

Dams across the Nile

The crowd flooded in like water into a dam.

Work on dams and barrages has been halted, and the water monitoring and purification system has broken down.

One innovative technique is the use of underground dams to capture water flowing in shallow aquifers.

As China seeks to keep its economic engine running, dams and hyrdopower do represent a cleaner alternative to coal. China plans to double its hydropower capacity to over 120 GW by 2010 and to build more hydropower projects for at least another 20 years.

Those dikes have burst. People wade through law all day long.

Indeed, Chinese scientists blamed the massive 2008 earthquake that struck the Tibetan plateau s eastern rim, killing 87,000 people, on the newly constructed Zipingpu Dam, located next to a seismic fault. The weight of the water impounded in the dam s massive reservoir was said to have triggered severe tectonic stresses, or what scientists call reservoir triggered seismicity.

Examples of non participation, inadequate consultations, or non consent were cited, as in cases of the building of hydroelectric dams.

And it isn't just dam. It's dam after dam after dam.

Experiments in water management focus on the development of water harvesting techniques, the promotion of desalination plants and dam construction.

A Breach in the Eurozone Dike

Closing the gap was both a Millennium goal and an objective of the International Decade. The challenge for governments was to develop comprehensive, intensive and sustained policies, such as were rarely applied.

Rehabilitation of the transmission lines from the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric dam to South Africa and Zimbabwe was completed in late 1997, although exports to South Africa have yet to start owing to a contractual dispute.

So what you see here is the Three Gorges Dam, and this is the largest dam by 50 percent ever attempted by man.

On the first day of enforcing the new regulations, the navigation in Three Gorges Gezhouba waters was in good order.

Beaver dams, yes. Hoover Dam, no.

We've just built this big dam downriver.

I'm agin dams of any kind.

And then they got the Aswan Dam. They got electricity in their homes, they increased education and they got primary health care.

In western Pakistan nearly three weeks of heavy rains resulted in severe flooding, which in turn led to the collapse of a major dam in Sind province.

Oh, that's Hoover Dam.

The construction of the Pangue hydroelectric dam in the Bio Bio region and the RALCO project were said to be threatening the existence of the Mapuche Pehuenche communities.

By modifying the hydrological regime of a river, dams can alter local climatic conditions and disrupt ecosystems.