Seminar

on
Dam and its role
Dam and its role
 Introduction
 A dam is a structure built across a stream, river or
estuary to retain water
 There is no unique way to retain water, which is why
we see many different shapes for dams. Some dams
are tall and thin, while others are short and thick.
 Dams are made from a variety of materials such as
rock, steel and wood. These day mainly concrete is
used to built the dam
Types of dams
 Gravity Dams
 Gravity Dams use their triangular shape and the sheer
weight of their rock and concrete structure to hold back
the water in the reservoir.
 Gravity Dams
Gravity dams are the most common type of large dam
in the world because they are easy and cheap to build.
They can also be built across long distances over
relatively flat terrain. This makes them very
applicable in non-mountainous regions. The largest
gravity dam in the world is the Aswan Dam in Egypt.
Bhakhra Dam is the
highest Concrete
Gravity dam in Asia and
Second Highest in the
world
Bhakhra Dam is
across river Sutlej in
Himachal Pradesh
The construction of
this project was started
in the year 1948 and was
completed in 1963 .
 Arch Dams
 Arch Dams utilize the strength of an arch to displace
the load of water behind it onto the rock walls that it is
built into.
 Arch Dams
 Arch dams can only be built where the walls of a
canyon are of unquestionable stability. They must
also be impervious to seepage around the dam, as this
could be a source of dam failure in the future.
 Because of these factors, Arch dams can only be built

in very limited locations.

 Arch dams use less materials than gravity dams, but

are more expensive to construct due to the extensive

amount of expertise required to build one.
 Buttress Dams
 Buttress Dams use multiple reinforced columns to
support a dam that has a relatively thin structure.
Because of this, these dams often use half as much
concrete as gravity dams
 Composite Dams
Composite dams are combinations of one or more
dam types. Most often a large section of a dam will
be either an embankment or gravity dam, with the
section responsible for power generation being a
buttress or arch.
The Bloemh Dam on the Orange River of
South Africa is an excellent example of a
gravity/buttress dam.

Buttress Dam

Gravity Dam
 Materials
 Large amounts of soil, sand, stone and aggregate and
concrete are need for dam construction.
 If available, these materials will be collected as near
to the site of the dam as possible.
 The extraction of these materials requires large
amounts of fossil fuels to operate the machinery.
 Air and water pollution result from the dust and mud
that is created from this process
 Dam Uses
Direct Water Usage:
 Private / Domestic - Household purposes, Drinking water and
landscape irrigation.
 Commercial - Restaurants, hotels, golf courses, etc.
 Irrigation – Crop use. Water needs at the scale that large dams
provide most often feed industrial farming practices.
 Industrial – Cooling water (power generation, refineries,
chemical plants), processing water (manufacturing; pulp and
paper, food, high tech, etc.)
 Mining – hydraulic mining, various processes, settling ponds.
 General public supply – Firefighting, public parks, municipal
office buildings.
 Dam Uses
Indirect Uses:
 Hydroelectric Power – Power generation is one of the most

common purposes for the construction of large dams. It is

promoted as a totally “clean” form of electricity.
 Flood Control –
Flood effect the lives of
65 million people, more
than any other type of
disaster such as war,
drought etc. Dams even
out the peaks and lows of
a rivers natural flow cycle
by calming seasonal
flooding, then storing that
water for gradual release
year round.
 Impacts of Large Dams
 The impacts of large scale dams fall into several
categories
• Upstream
• On-site
• Displacement
• Financial issue
 Physical Impacts: Upstream
Stagnant Water Table:
 Water from unnatural reservoirs seeps down into the water table. This excess

water can overload the natural water table, slowing down its flow, so that it
ultimately may go stale. This can be damaging to surrounding flora, and has the
potential to harm the well water of surrounding peoples.
Habitat Destruction :

 The area that is covered by the reservoir is destroyed, killing whatever habitat

existed there beforehand.

 Habitat destruction also happens far upstream from a dam. Migratory fish can

no longer travel upstream past large dams in order to reach their spawning
grounds.
Loss of Land

 Destruction of peoples property in the reservoir zone. Loss of possible

agricultural, range or forest lands.

 Physical Impacts: On-site
 Change in Water Characteristics
• Temperature – Large reservoir of water heat up as more water is exposed
to the sun for longer periods of time. Aquatic life that is sensitive to
temperature cannot adjust to this change in their aquatic climate.

• Salinity – The rise in a rivers salinity due an unnatural reservoir is due to

increased evaporation rates.

• Sediment Load – Sediments that wash down the river settle into large
reservoirs. In rivers that have high sediment loads this usually
determines the life

• O2 content – each of these elements results in a lower oxygen content,

further harming aquatic life.
 Physical Impacts: On-site
 Exotic species introduction
• Aggressive, non-native species of fish are often introduced to
reservoirs for farming and sport fishing.

 Disease
• Vector borne diseases increase in tropical areas due to the
creation of large areas of still water. This encourages
mosquito breeding, the main vector for the transmission of
malaria and dengue.

• Schistostomaiasis is a water borne disease that comes from

snails that breed on the upstream side of dams.
 Physical Impacts: On-site
 Water Pollution
• Industrial and residential pollutants, as well as agricultural
run off (including high nitrate loads, fertilizers and
pesticides). On lake sources such as boats and jet skis add
oil and other chemical pollutants to waste water.
• These chemicals build up to toxic levels in reservoirs,
especially during dry seasons when little water leaves.
 Habitat Destruction
• Loss of local ecosystem covered by the reservoir.
• Damage caused by improved access to humans: roads,
transmission lines, increased migration
 Displacement
 When dams are constructed in populated areas, many people are forced
to relocate.

 Established communities are Distributed and often destroyed. The

communities that are forced to absorb the influx of displaced people
are strained to their maximum capacity.

 The mass majority of people that are displaced by dam construction are
poor.

 The cost of moving is often placed upon the people being uprooted.
This is extremely hard for poor, marginalized people to accomplish,
and often leaves them poorer than before. This is especially true for
small agricultural communities that, now forced into the urban
settlements and its subsequent infrastructure, have no viable job skills
in order to provide a living wage for themselves.
 Displacement
• Because of limits to space and resources, people are often
forced to move long distances from their original homes.
This, coupled with the hard transition into urban areas,
often destroys traditional cultures.
 Narmada Bachao Andolan
 Narmada bachao andolan is a non governmental organization (NGO) that
mobilized tribal people, farmer, environmentalist and human activist against
the Sardar sarovar project on Narmada river in Gujarat,india.

 Their mode of the campaign include hunger strike and the support from the
art personalities such as Aamir khan, booker award winner Arundhati Rao
together with its leading spokesperson Medha Patkar and Baba Amte.

 Medha Patkar and her group realized that all those displaced were only given
compensation for the immediate standing crop and not for displacement and
rehabilitation.

 Medha Patkar led NBA had filled the a written petition in supreme court
against the sadar sarovar project. The supreme court ruled the decision in the
favor of the andolan and stop the construction work of dam and the directing
the concerned state to first complete the rehabilitation and replacement
process
 Financial Issues

 The finance that is needed for the construction of large dams causes many
problems around the world; especially in poor, underdeveloped countries
that are currently trapped in a painfully binding cycle of debt.

 Since large scale dams require massive amounts of capital investment, dam
construction is one of the primary reasons that countries take out loans
from international lending associations.

 Countries often take out loans to build large hydroelectric dams in order to
improve their industrial infrastructure. The hope is that by boosting their
industrial sector, that they will boost their economy into economic
prosperity.
 Debt and International Lending
Associations
 Depending on the site and the scale of the project, prices for
each project varies greatly. Average costs for large projects
are usually in the area of billions of dollars (US).

 For smaller or less developed countries this cost is often

more than their annual GDP, and is absolutely
insurmountable without the help of outside financing.

 The World Bank is the greatest single source of funds for

large dam construction, having provided more than US$50
billion (1992 dollars) for construction of more than 500 large
dams in 92 countries.
 Stop Building Large Dams
 The negative social and ecological effects of large
scale dam building far outweighs the positive
attributes that they bring to society.

 Instead, small dams should be built, where needed, in

the control of those who should have it: the people.
Thanks