Jessica Maliszewski

Iguacu Falls
In April of 1973 Brazil and Paraguay signed a treaty and the Itaipu Dam got the go
ahead. In 1975 they signed a pact to begin construction. Although building it created a surplus
of energy, there are environmental impacts such as flooding.
Itaipu is a series of dams 4.8 miles long and 738 feet high. This permitted the creation of
an enormous lake that allows the Itaipu to produce more hydroelectricity than any other dam in
the world. There are four dams: an earthfill dam, a rockfill dam, a main dam built with concrete
and also a concrete wing dam. All of the dams hold back the water based on their huge size and
sheer weight. The Itaipu dam has a cross section that looked like a huge triangle, wide at the base
where the water pressure is be greatest and narrow at the top.
Many people had to relocate to different homes because of the building of the dam. It
would cause flooding in the areas of their homes. Also, many animals were move before the dam
was built, because their homes would flood as well, and they would have nowhere to go.
Before starting, the first thing the construction crew had to do was to divert the flow of
the river around the construction site so that it was dry enough to start building. This was a
challenge being that the Parana River is such a large river. They had to remove over 50 million
tons of rock and dirt in order to create a bypass channel for water that was 490 feet wide, 300
feet deep and 1.3 miles long. It took three years to complete this river diversion. In October of
1978, they opened the new channel blasting the concrete blocks out of the way and letting the
water through. 149 employees were killed during the construction.
The Three Gorges Dam in China is the biggest dam in the world. But in the course of an
entire year it produces about the same electrical energy. In 2012 Brazil and Paraguay generated
98.2 TWh and in that same year China generated 98.1 TWh. Chinas installed capacity is 22,500
MW and Brazils is 14,000 MW.
The Three Gorges Dam was built to prevent flooding. 1954 was when people realized
that there was a need for the dam, because people were being killed as a result of flooding of the
Yangtze River. Authorities can eliminate the chances of flooding to all those downstream. Just
like the Itaipu Dam, over a hundred thousand people were forced to relocate their homes due to
the construction of The Three Gorges Dam.
Each generator used by the dam costs $50 million, and all 16 generators create electricity
for 60 million people in China. The main generators are made to produce 700 MW of power and
are about 6,000 tons in weight. The generators have a flow rate which varies between 600-950
cubic meters per second depending on the head- a specific measurement of liquid pressureavailable. Less water is needed to reach full power if the hydrologic head is greater.

The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington in the U.S. is the sixth largest in the world. It is
fairly smaller than Itaipu. Its installed capacity is 6,809 MW (Itaipus is 14,000 MW). In a year it
generates 20 TWh (Itaipu generates 98.6 TWh).
The dam was built between 1933 and 1942 with two power plants. In 1974 a third power
plant was made to increase production. It is a gravity dam on the Columbia River. It was built to
produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation. Grand Coulee Dam is the largest
hydroelectric plant in the United States. It is 550 feet tall, measured from its foundation in solid
granite, or approximately 350 feet from the downstream river surface to the top of the dam. It is
5,223 feet long. The Three Gorges Dam in China is roughly three times the size of Grand Coulee.
Grand Coulee is 450-500 feet thick at its base and 30 feet thick at the top.
In the late 1930s they began to prep the reservoir, called Lake Roosevelt. The lake began
to fill in March of 1940, but they did not start clearing the area till later. Eventually the rising
waters behind the dam caught everyone by surprise because the production of the dam proceeded
so quickly. People had short notice of the flood. The dam completely affected Native Americans
way of life. Food that they would usually get was then underwater. Old routes they would take to
harvest food was no longer there. Native America graveyards were submerged, they hired a
funeral home to remove them. Not only did they lose their land, they lost their salmon due to the
dam.
There are many opportunities and challenges in developing hydro power in other
countries. The countries have the opportunity to gain a surplus of an alternate energy power
source. Not only that, but hydropower dams usually become a tourist site (Hoover Dam), so they
will in return gain profit from making it into a tourist attraction.
Some obstacles that a country can go through are things that happened with Three Gorges
Dam and Itaipu Dam, where peoples homes got in the way. They had to relocate thousands of
families to different areas because the dam would cause the area of their home to flood.
Animals homes can also get ruined in the process, and people have to transfer the animals to a
different area where they can live. Without doing so their habitats will go under water, and so
might the animals.
Hydropower plants emit less greenhouse gas emissions than thermal plants do, they are
also less expensive to operate than thermal and nuclear options. The greenhouse gases that are
emitted by hydropower plants are the decay of vegetation in flooded areas and the amount of
cement used to build the dam.
The Grand Coulee Dam was negative for the Native Americans, so for certain countries
situations like that could be a challenge. Like other people, they lost their homes. They also lost
so much more though. They lost their grave yards, their usual way of life, they lost the salmon
that was very precious to them, and they lost the beauty of the river.

Hydropower dams have their pros and cons and for me it is hard to form an opinion on
them. They are beneficial because they generate electricity as a renewable resource. On the other
they ruin the land. I think I would rather have the land.