Al Wahda Dam (Morocco)
Biggest dam in Morocco
The al - Wahda Dam (Arabic: al - Wahda سد الوحدة Sadd, dam of unity ' ) is located in the southern foothills of the Rif mountain range and north of the river plain of the Sebou in Morocco.
The dam is about 88 m high and 2600 m long, applied to its base from the drain side to the wall side of the reservoir about 300 m wide and attaches to the flattened dam crest, which is provided with a road and terminates on the dam side with a wall, about 50 m. The overflow channel to the spillway leads with a width of 100 m on top of the wall, the length of the channel is 650 m. Thus, the al - Wahda Dam is the largest in the Kingdom of Morocco.
The dam is used for irrigation and power generation and is operated by the Ministry of Water Resources and Climate Research in Rabat. The reservoir is fed by the river Ouerrha and allows its ideal natural location and nature of the almost complete control over the waters of the river.
In 1988 was started on the recommendation of the Supreme Council for Water and Climate Research in May 1988 with the construction in 1996 the building was put into operation. Thus, the irrigation of large agricultural areas was possible to have hardly been used: About 100,000 ha fallow land could be transformed into productive farmland so in the plane of Gharb, and 15,000 ha in the downstream valley of the lower Ouerrha River. Agricultural production in Morocco could be significantly increased through this project: The yield of industrially grown agricultural products such as cereals or crops increased during the commissioning of the dam from 1996 to 2006 to 1,130,000 tons per year. The fruit and vegetable production increased by 465,000 tons and the annual rice harvest took at least 27,000 tons. At the same time dairy farmers increased their income by 173 million liters per year. With the increase in yields in turn led to a considerable improvement of the income situation of farmers - the net profit per unit of production quadrupled in average.
In addition to the production and storage of water for agriculture, the dam also serves the energy: The al - Wahda power plant controls with its three 80 MW Francis turbines nominally 22 % of the total installed hydro-electric power plant capacity in Morocco on and feeds the annual average since 1996 approximately 400 million kWh per year in the national grid, which corresponds to 16% of the total power of all Moroccan hydropower plants. Here, the power plant is mainly used to intercept peak demand, distributed throughout the year comes as a term of 2000-3000 hours together.
A positive side effect of the dam is to reduce the damages that have been caused by floods in the plane of Gharb by the Oued Ouerrha. The reservoir has large flood reserves, may be retained by the sudden rains. In the course of a winter up to 1000 million cubic meters of water pass through the overflow channel of the reservoir - through skillful management level and controlled discharge of the floods but the floods in the plane of Gharb were reduced by 90%.
In addition, the dam provides up to 600 million cubic meters of water per year to the city and region of Casablanca, the place there for drinking and for industrial use, and to the region in the south of Rabat, where it is mainly used for agricultural irrigation.