Sedimentation could be regarded as the gangrene of hydro dams, it slowly but surely remove their water retention capacity and eventually kills investments worth multi-million dollars. That is the reason water and environmental protection activities become top in the list of government priorities, particularly since the inception of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam eight years ago.
0Sustainable protection work will keep the Dam at good health, says Solomon Teka, Project Management Director at the Office of National Council for the Coordination of the Public Participation for the Construction of the GERD, speaking to The Ethiopian Herald. “If we reduce the amount of sediment that at the wouldbe reservoir by 75 percent, the service year of the hydro-plant could be extended to 375 years, lifting the national electric export earning to 246 billion USD,” he says.
According to him, cutting the amount of sedimentation by 50 percent will result in the longevity of the Dam, giving a 275-year service life, earning is estimated to 140 billion dollars from electricity. “Touch job is ahead of us as the protection works so far are very far from being enough. At least the Dam’s life go between 75-100 years.” A billion tonns of soil is eroded annually in the basin within Ethiopia’s territory, Negash Teklu, Executive Director of Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Ethiopia Group says. “Works should not be a onetime campaign.”
The Environment, Forest & Climate Change Commission has developed various legal frameworks, strategic plans to boost protection works along the basin. It has also been conducting various studies to facilitate innovative ways of environmental protection, it was learnt. Soil and water conservational activities so far carried out on 772,975 hectares of land is said to have impacted positively. But the cooperation could go even at wider levels. The Dam offers huge opportunity for cooperation at sub-basin levels like in the Eastern Nile, Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) Director-General, FekeAhmed Negash said.
The Dam have layers of benefits to downstream countries, he noted, listing the benefits as controlling flood, reduction of sedimentation for dams at downstream, regulating the flow of the water, just to mention but a few. The Nile Basin covers 23 percent of the Ethiopia’s total landmass, represents 40 percent of the country’s water resources.
The Ethiopian Herald April 05/2019
BY ABDUREZAK MOHAMMED
