Egypt’s mega-project of the 1960s: Es-Sadd el-Ali, the High
Dam of Aswan
With the Aswan High Dam, inaugurated in 1971 after eleven years of
construction, control of the Nile water discharge reached a new level. The
event marked the beginning of the era of long-term water storage in which
near-total control of Nile water was achieved: 32 billion m3
 of precious Nile
water, which until then had flowed into the Mediterranean without being of
any practical value to Egypt’s economy, were now to be made good use of.
While the old Aswan Dam merely stored the Nile water seasonally, the High
Dam of Aswan, 3,600 m long and 111 m high, allows storage for more than
one year so that the extremes of the Nile discharge between wet and dry
years can be levelled out. The reservoir created south of Aswan has at present
reached a length of 500–600 km across the Egyptian–Sudanese border, with a
water surface of about 5,500 km2
. It was at first called Lake Nasser in Egypt,
although it is known as Es-Sadd el-Ali Lake there now, while it is called the
Nubian Lake in the Sudan. Its storage capacity is about 160 billion m3
, of
which 30 billion m3
 were intended for the expected sedimentation of Nile
silt in the next 300 years.