∙ Provides a more reliable source of water for increasing population.
∙ Enabled fish to breed in the reservoir so more fish can be caught and used at food.
∙ The scheme was necessary because the Nile over flowed and flooded the land around it for 2-3 months of the year which made farming hard as the farmers never knew when the Nile was going to flood and how long the floods will last, meaning that they get less food for them to survive on. The dam created a huge reservoir, which was to, controlled the flooding.
∙ Millions of tons of sediment that was used to fertilise the farms now gets trapped in the dam. The farmers now have to use chemical fertilisers, which costs them a lot money and causes pollution.
∙ The silt used to keep the big Nile delta fertile and safe from erosion by the sea, but the delta is now being eroded.
∙ Water snails spread a disease called bilharzia. The dam causes these snails to grow in numbers so the disease is spread more
∙ The evaporation of irrigation water has caused a build up of salt in the soil, reducing yield of farmland.
∙ 10000 people in Nubia had to be moved because they had to flood it to create the reservoir. Many of the people did not want to leave and homes, religious buildings and cemeteries were lost.
∙ The Nile delta is becoming smaller. This is because the Nile no longer carries any sediment and pebbles downstream from the dam. The pebbles and sediment get stuck behind the dam. Wildlife is losing its home because the delta is shrinking in size.
The scheme was successful on the fact that it stopped the flooding when they didn’t want or need it to flood (to fertilize the farmland) but it did cause many problems in the fact that the Nile Delta is getting smaller and that wildlife are losing there homes because of it, farmers now have to use chemical fertilizers to fertilize the soil which causes pollution, disease is still spread through the water through water snails. So basically the scheme was successful of its goal but does have a few flaws with it.
Other useful facts
∙ The second dam was built 5km upstream from the original dam as the original dam kept overflowing, causing floods, they decided against rising the original dam for a third time.
∙ The Soviet Union helped build the dam
∙ It took 11 years to build; workers worked all day and night to get it finished.
∙ Egypt asked to borrow money from the World Bank to help build the dam, which was accepted, but later was rejected again for unknown reasons.
∙ Lake Nasser was created behind the Aswan Dam. It is the largest artificial lake in the World (310 miles in length). It is named after Gamal Abdul Nasser, who a former President of Egypt.
