Dams
21. Spillway:
A spillway is a structure used to provide the controlled release of flows from a dam or levee into a downstream area, typically the riverbed of the dammed river itself. In the United Kingdom, they may be known as overflow channels. Spillways ensure that the water does not overflow and damage or destroy the dam. Floodgates and fuse plugs may be designed into spillways to regulate water flow and reservoir level. Such a spillway can be used to regulate downstream flows – by releasing water in small amounts before the reservoir is full, operators can prevent sudden large releases that would happen if the dam were overtopped. More details
22. Donnells Dam:
Donnells Dam is a concrete arch dam located on the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River in Tuolumne County, California. The water impounded by the 291-foot (89 m) high dam forms Donnell Lake in Stanislaus National Forest. The dam and reservoir are co-owned by the Oakdale Irrigation District and South San Joaquin Irrigation District, and the dam is one of three in the Tri-Dam Project. The other two dams in the project are Beardsley Dam and Tulloch Dam. The dam has a length of 750 feet (230 m) at its crest and a storage capacity of 56,893 acre feet (70,176,000 m3). More details
23. Akosombo Dam:
The Akosombo Dam (Volta Dam) is a hydroelectric dam on the Volta River in southeastern Ghana in the Akosombo gorge and part of the Volta River Authority. The construction of the dam flooded part of the Volta River Basin, and led to the subsequent creation of Lake Volta. The flooding that created the Lake Volta reservoir displaced many people and had a significant impact on the local environment. Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake in the world by surface area. It covers 8,502 square kilometres (3,283 sq mi), which is 3.6% of Ghana's land area. With a volume of 148 cubic kilometers, Lake Volta is the world's third largest man-made lake by volume. More details
24. Beardsley Dam:
Beardsley Dam is a dam on the Middle Fork Stanislaus River in Tuolumne County, California. The site is surrounded by the Stanislaus National Forest. The earthen dam was completed in 1957 with a height of 284 feet (87 m), and a length of 1,000 feet (300 m) at its crest. It impounds the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River for hydroelectric power and irrigation water storage, part of the Stanislaus River Tri-Dam project cooperatively owned by the Oakdale Irrigation District and South San Joaquin Irrigation District. The reservoir it creates, Beardsley Lake, has a water surface of 1.1 square miles, a maximum capacity of 97,800 acre feet, and a normal capacity of 97,500 acre feet. More details
25. Warragamba Dam:
Warragamba Dam is a heritage-listed dam in Warragamba, Wollondilly Shire, New South Wales, Australia. It is a concrete gravity dam, which creates Lake Burragorang, the primary reservoir for water supply for the Australian city of Sydney, New South Wales. The dam impounds the Coxs, Kowmung, Nattai, Wingecarribee, Wollondilly, and Warragamba rivers, within the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment; and the dam wall is located approximately 65 kilometres to the southwest of Sydney central business district, near the town of Wallacia. Constructed between 1948 and 1960, the dam created capacity for a reservoir of 2,031 gigalitres and is fed by a catchment area of 9,051 square kilometres. More details
26. Tulloch Dam:
Tulloch Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Stanislaus River in central California. The dam is part of the Stanislaus River Tri-Dam project cooperatively owned by the Oakdale and South San Joaquin Irrigation Districts, and was completed in 1958. It serves mainly for irrigation purposes but also has a power station with a capacity of 18 megawatts. The dam is located just downstream of the New Melones Dam and upstream of the Goodwin Dam. The Donnells dam, Beardsley dam and Tulloch dam projects are located in Tuolumne County, California on the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River. More details
27. Geehi Dam:
Geehi Dam is a major ungated rockfill embankment dam across the Geehi River in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. The reservoir impounded by the dam is known as Geehi Reservoir. The structure was completed by Thiess Brothers in 1966, and is one of the sixteen major dams that comprise the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a vast hydroelectricity and irrigation complex constructed in south-east Australia between 1949 and 1974 that is now run by Snowy Hydro. The dam is located within what is now the Snowy Valleys local government area. It was constructed by Thiess Bros based on engineering plans developed under contract by the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority. More details
28. Opuha Dam:
The Opuha Dam, which is situated at the confluence of the North and South Opuha Rivers 17 kms north-east of Fairlie, is an infrastructure project undertaken by the community of South Canterbury. The actual project itself consists of a 50 metre high earth dam, with a single hydro turbine and a lake covering up to 710 hectares and storing over 74 million cubic metres of water. The lake provides water to maintain environmental flows in the downstream catchment and for irrigation as well as urban and industrial supplies. Renewable hydro electricity is generated with all the water released from the dam. More details
29. O'Shaughnessy Dam:
O'Shaughnessy Dam is a 430-foot (131 m) high concrete arch-gravity dam in Tuolumne County, California, in the United States. It impounds the Tuolumne River, forming the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir at the lower end of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, about 160 miles (260 km) east of San Francisco. The dam and reservoir are the source for the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, which provides water for over two million people in San Francisco and other municipalities of the west Bay Area. The dam is named for engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy, who oversaw its construction. More details
30. Troy Dam:
The Federal Dam (Troy) is a manmade dam built across the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York from Troy on the east bank to Green Island on the west bank. The major function of the dam is to improve navigability. It is located at mile 153 of the Hudson River, measuring from the beginning of the Hudson as a Federally Navigable Waterway near the Battery in Manhattan. The location of the dam marks the upper end of the Hudson River estuary. In order to allow ships to move freely, the eastern end of the dam contains a lock, commonly called the Federal Lock or (on some charts and publications) the "Troy-US Lock". More details
31. Kárahnjúkar Dam:
Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant (Kárahnjúkavirkjun), officially called Fljótsdalur Power Station (Fljótsdalsstöð) is a hydroelectric power plant in Fljótsdalshérað municipality in eastern Iceland, designed to produce 4,600 gigawatt-hours (17,000 TJ) annually for Alcoa's Fjarðaál aluminum smelter 75 kilometres (47 mi) to the east in Reyðarfjörður. With the installed capacity of 690 megawatts (930,000 hp), the plant is the largest power plant in Iceland. The project, named after the nearby Kárahnjúkar mountains, involves damming the rivers Jökulsá á Dal and Jökulsá í Fljótsdal with five dams, creating three reservoirs. More details
32. Norris Dam:
Norris Dam is a hydroelectric and flood control structure located on the Clinch River in Anderson County and Campbell County, Tennessee, United States. Its construction in the mid-1930s was the first major project for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had been created in 1933 to bring economic development to the region and control the rampant flooding that had long plagued the Tennessee Valley. The dam was named in honor of Nebraska Senator George Norris (1861–1944), a longtime supporter of government-owned power in general, and supporter of TVA in particular. The project infrastructure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016". More details
33. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA):
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter on May 18, 1933, to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. Senator George W. Norris (R-Nebraska) was a strong sponsor of this project. TVA was envisioned not only as a provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and rural electrification to help modernize the rural region's economy and society. More details
34. Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam:
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia that has been under construction since 2011. It is in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia, about 15 km (9 mi) east of the border with Sudan. At 6.45 gigawatts, the dam will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa when completed, as well as the seventh largest in the world. As of October 2019, the work stood at approximately 70% completion. Once completed, the reservoir could take anywhere between 5 and 15 years to fill with water, depending on hydrologic conditions during the filling period and agreements reached between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt. More details
35. Kariba Dam:
The Kariba Dam is a double curvature concrete arch dam in the Kariba Gorge of the Zambezi river basin between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dam stands 128 metres tall and 579 metres long. The dam forms Lake Kariba, which extends for 280 kilometres and holds 185 cubic kilometres of water. The double curvature concrete arch dam was designed by Coyne et Bellier and constructed between 1955 and 1959 by Impressit of Italy at a cost of $135,000,000 for the first stage with only the Kariba South power cavern. Final construction and the addition of the Kariba North Power cavern by Mitchell Construction was not completed until 1977. More details
36. Dams on The Mekong:
The estimated hydropower potential of the lower Mekong Basin (i.e., excluding China) is 30,000 MW, while that of the upper Mekong Basin is 28,930 MW. In the lower Mekong, more than 3,235 MW has been realized via facilities built largely over the past ten years, while projects under construction will represent an additional 3,209 MW. An additional 134 projects are planned for the lower Mekong, which will maximize the river's hydropower generating capacity. A study by the Mekong River Commission (MRC) presented at the Third MRC International Conference in March 2018, concluded that hydropower development on the Mekong River will aggravate food insecurity and poverty in the region. More details
37. Ilisu Dam:
The Ilisu Dam is a concrete-face rock-fill dam on the Tigris near the village of Ilısu and along the border of Mardin and Şırnak Provinces in Turkey. It is one of the 22 dams of the Southeastern Anatolia Project and its purpose is hydroelectric power production, flood control and water storage. When operational, the dam will support a 1,200 MW power station and will form a 10.4 billion m3 reservoir. Construction of the dam began in 2006 and was originally expected to be completed by 2016. As part of the project, the much smaller Cizre Dam is to be constructed downstream for irrigation and power. More details
38. Deriner Dam:
Deriner Dam is a concrete double-curved arch dam on the Çoruh River 5 km (3.1 mi) east of Artvin in Artvin Province, Turkey. The main purpose of the dam is hydroelectric power production and additionally flood control. Construction on the dam began in 1998, the reservoir began to fill in February 2012 and the power station was completed by February 2013. It will have a 670 MW power house and is the tallest dam in Turkey. The dam is being implemented by Turkey's State Hydraulic Works and constructed by a consortium of Turkish, Russian and Swiss companies. The dam is named after İbrahim Deriner, who died while serving as the Chief Engineer of its research team. More details
