Word: dammed
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...1960s, this timeless cycle was broken. With construction of the Aswan High Dam, the largest and most ambitious barrier ever built across the river, the Nile's annual floods were brought under complete control. A 2,000-sq.-mi. reservoir was created, and, through the dam's turbines, enough hydroelectric power was produced to meet half of Egypt's electrical needs. Irrigating canals created a million acres of new farm land...
...Soviet-aided project also generated megawatts of controversy. Environmentalists charged that the dam would rob the Nile Valley of the silt that had made it fertile. They predicted increased salinity of the land, and warned of a sharp rise in water-borne diseases like schistosomiasis. They also anticipated erosion of the Nile Delta. The great dam became a symbol of Third World development gone awry...
...surprising reassessment, a team of American and Egyptian scientists sharply disputes this view. Speaking at an environmental conference in Israel, Chief Scientist Khalil Mancy, 52, conceded that the dam has caused severe dislocations...
...rich new fishery in the Aswan reservoir. The Nile's increased salinity turns out to have been exaggerated; the salt level, the scientists found, is up only 10% to 15%, not yet enough to damage most crops. In fact, the greatest threat to water quality is not the dam but the growing pollution from thriving towns and farms along the now peaceable river's shore. As for schistosomiasis, it is on the wane...
...difficult to get the 100,000 Nubians displaced by the big lake to adapt to the unfamiliar life of settled farmers on newly arable lands. But even with these problems, Mancy, who first gazed lovingly on the Nile as a youth in Cairo, remains enthusiastic. "Would I build the dam again?" he asks rhetorically. "I would...