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FEATURES
POWER
PLAY
ON THE NILE
Ethiopia stunned neighbors with a
colossal dam on the Blue Nile. Could it
spread prosperity, not turmoil?
By Erik Stokstad
Planned in secrecy, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a massive construction project.
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sciencemag.org SCIENCE
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SCIENCE sciencemag.org
Published by AAAS
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NEWS | F E AT U R E S
In all my travels
Ive never seen
anything like it.
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Published by AAAS
500
Km
300
Km
Irrigated croplands
700
1000
SAUDI ARABIA
Se
a
ara
tb
SAUDI ARABIA
MW <300 500
SUDAN
N il e
EGYPT
JORDAN
Red
Cairo
N il e
SYRIA
ISRAEL
Dam location
Approximate hydropower
capacity
YEMEN
ERITREA
Khartoum
eN
Blu
Aswan Dam
il e
Se
W h ite
Red
Ni
le
N il
Roseires Dam
SUDAN
ETHIOPIA
YEMEN
GERD
ERITREA
B lue
Gezira
Scheme
N i le
Addis Ababa
Ethiopian
Hig
B lu
ile
eN
hit
GRAPHIC: P. HUEY/SCIENCE
r Mo
ma
Ah
untains
hlan
ds
Addis Ababa
ETHIOPIA
W
SOUTH
SUDAN
e Nil e
SOMALIA
SOMALIA
ift Valley
ara
tb
Khartoum
DJIBOUTI
G reat R
SOUTH SUDAN
slide under the weight of the water. And because the saddle dam is built on weathered
rock, rather than solid bedrock, water might
seep underneath and weaken the structure.
An expert group convened by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge in 2014 reiterated those concerns.
This is going to be one of the biggest saddle
dams in the world, says Dale Whittington,
a water resources expert at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a
member of the group. It should be looked
at very carefully. In a response to the MIT
report, Ethiopian scientists noted that Salini Impregilo will use concrete to seal both
the saddle dam and fractures in underlying
rock. Its solid, Seleshi says. The Egyptian
view: I cant say Im confident, Yassin says.
AT THE DISPUTES NADIR in June 2013,
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