Alaa+Yousef

=  W﻿elcome to E﻿gypt Any Time   =

**I** **am Alaa Mohamed****.** **I am in first grade of secondary school for girls. I am from Luxor.** **I like chating,** **making friends and** **watching TV. Ms Azhar helped me to do that page and showed me how to work to tell all people something about our wonderful country.** **I love Egypt as it is so fantastic country. It looks like a big garden with a lot of beautiful things.** **It has a lot of wonderful places.** **Here, I will talk about one of them.**

= The﻿ High Dam﻿ =



Location:
The Aswan High Dam is found at Aswan in Egypt. It is located 4 miles south of the old Aswan Dam.



Located near Aswan, the world famous High Dam was an engineering miracle when it was built in the 1960s. It contains 18 times the material used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The Dam is 11,811 feet long, 3215 feet thick at the base and and 364 feet tall. Today it provides irrigation and electricity for the whole of Egypt and, together with the old Aswan Dam built by the British between 1898 and 1902`, 6km down river, wonderful views for visitors. From the top of the two Mile long High Dam you can gaze across Lake Nassar, the huge reservoir created when it was built, to Kalabsha temple in the south and the huge power station to the north.

The High Dam created a 30% increase in the cultivatable land in Egypt, and raised the water table for the Shara as far away as Algeria. The electricity producing capability of the Dam doubled Egypt's available supply.

**Building of the Aswan Dam:**
In order to build the Aswan Dam both people and artifacts had to be moved. Over 90,000 Nubians had to be relocated. Those who had been living in Egypt were moved about 28 miles (45 km) away but the Sudanese Nubians were relocated 370 miles (600 km) from their homes. The government was also forced to develop one of the largest Abu Simel temple and dig for artifacts before the future lake would drown the land of the Nubians. After years of construction (the material in the dam is the equivalent to 17 of the great pyramid at Giza), the resulting reservoir was named for the former president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who died in 1970. The lake holds 137 million acre-feet of water (169 billion cubic meters). About 17 percent of the lake is in Sudan and the two countries have an agreement for distribution of the water.



Aswan Dam Benefits:
The Aswan Dam benefits Egypt by controlling the annual floods on the Nile River and prevents the damage which used to occur along the floodplain. The Aswan High Dam provides about a half of Egypt's power supply and has improved navigation along the river by keeping the water flow consistent. There are several problems associated with th﻿e dam as well. Seepage and evaporation accounts for a loss of about 12-14% of the annual input into the reservoir. The sediments of the Nile River, as with all river and dam systems, has been filling the reservoir and thus decreasing its storage capacity. This has also resulted in problems downstream. Farmers have been forced to use about a million tons of artificial fertilizer as a substitute for the nutrients which no longer fill the flood plain. Further downstream, the Nile delta is having problems due to the lack of sediment as well since there is no additional agglomeration of sediment to keep erosion of the delta at bay so it slowly shrinks. Even the shrimp catch in the Mediterranean Sea has decreased due to the change in water flow. Poor drainage of the newly irrigated lands has led to saturation and increased salinity. Over one half of Egypt's farmland in now rated medium to poor soils. The parasitic disease schistosomiasis has been associated with the stagnant water of the fields and the reservoir. Some studies indicate that the number of individuals affected has increased since the opening of the Aswan Dam. The Nile River and now the Aswan High Dam are Egypt's lifeline. About 95% of Egypt's population live within twelve miles from the river. Were it not for the river and its sediment, the grand civilization of ancient Egypt probably would have never existed.

Facts about The High Dam:
media type="youtube" key="LcoZ100AMqg" height="417" width="509" align="center"
 * 1) ====The Aswan High Dam is 3600 metres long and 111 metres high. ====
 * 2) ====The Soviet Union helped the Egyptian government to build the dam. ====
 * 3) ====The Aswan High Dam has 12 turbines which generate over 10 billion kilowatts of electricity every year. ====
 * 4) ====Construction started on the dam in 1960 and it was completed in 1971. ====
 * 5) ====The Aswan High Dam took 11 years to build. ====
 * 6) ====30 000 Egyptian people worked day and night to build the Aswan High Dam. ====
 * 7) ====Lake Nasser was created behind the Aswan High Dam. It is the largest artificial lake in the World (310 miles in length). It is named after Gamal Abdul Nasser, the former President of Egypt. ====

** Finally: ** **﻿** I want to say that the High Dam is very useful for Egypt and very amazing. I hope you visit it and have fun. Egypt is very beautiful country. I want to tell you that it is still very safe and has nice places. I hope you come to see them.

Resources:

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