IV.

Nile Dams

The first dam on the Nile, the Aswān Dam, was built in 1902 and heightened in 1936. The Aswān High Dam was dedicated in 1971; it impounds one of the world's largest reservoirs, Lake Nasser. A negative aspect of the damming is to reduce the flow of sediment to the lower Nile, on which that region depends for its fertility. The Makwar Dam, now called the Sannār Dam, was built across the Blue Nile south of Khartoum following World War I to provide storage water for cotton plantations in the Sudan. A dam at Jabal Awliya was constructed on the White Nile south of Khartoum in 1937.