I have been asked to provide ...

I have been asked to provide some more technical details about the Grand Renaissance Dam. The dam will be a 145 m tall and will have two power houses, each on either side of the spillway. The right power house will contain ten 350 MW Francis turbine-generators while the left will contain five. The dam's reservoir will have a volume of 63,000 MCM. You can read more here: http://bit.ly/W4zFRd and here http://grandmillenniumdam.net/ Thanks for your comment Edwin. It is true that hydro-power production will benefit Ethiopia, on the other side the country will itself suffer from the different flooding pattern induced from the dam. The downstream ecology will change (see the case of the Itezhi-tezhi dam in Zambia, for example), but also the recession agriculture practiced in the low valleys will suffer. Not to forget the need for relocation of plenty of people living in the area to be flooded. The impacts on Sudan and Egypt will also be significant: it is true that the water impounded in the dam is to be released but the timing might not be the one desired by downstream water using needs. Also, it will take quite a lot of water to fill the dam at first... and this water won't flow downstream. Evaporation losses from the reservoir will of course reduce the flow of the Nile. All this will of course impact agricultural and hydro-power water use in Egypt and Sudan. The dam would also have some beneficial effects on the countries downstream in terms of reduced flooding risk and reduced silt flows. I believe that the problem is really complex and that a serious environmental impact assessment study should be undertaken, together with a cost-benefit analysis, before embarking in such project. Such large dam will completely modify the flow of the river and its impacts need to be studies before unforeseen damages occur.