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Oil-for-Food Background Information
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Emergency Repairs to Derbendikan Dam completed A United Nations project under the oil for food programme in northern Iraq has completed emergency repairs to a major hydroelectric dam removing a potential danger to people living in the region downstream. The three spillway gates on the Derbendikan Dam on the Diyala river, an upper tributary of the Tigris, had been removed early in the conflict between Iran and Iraq in order to prevent deliberate flooding. Repair work after that conflict was left unfinished due to the Gulf War and the sanctions which followed. The partially-repaired spillway gates leaked badly and did not function properly - posing a risk to the hydroelectric power station and, potentially, to a downstream dam and population. The $3.28 million project saw the same Slovenian company which had been forced to flee in 1990 return to complete the job. As well, a British engineering company surveyed the site and replaced 38 of the 264 bolts holding the spillway gates in place which were found to have failed. The British company had been responsible for maintenance to the dam from its construction in the late 1950s through to 1990. The repairs have removed the danger of major flooding and will enable the dam to function as designed - controlling the quantity of water delivered downstream for irrigation and generating electricity at its rated 249 megawatts once further repair work on the intake gates and draft tubes is completed over the coming months. Work to rehabilitate hydroelectric facilities in the north of Iraq is carried out by the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme as part of the oil for food programme. * *** * |
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