Keban Dam - Project History

Project History

Construction of the Keban Dam was first proposed in 1936 by the newly established Electric Affairs Survey Administration, but not started before 1966. Construction was carried out by the French-Italian consortium SCI-Impreglio and completed in 1974. Estimates of the total construction cost vary between US$85 million and US$300 million. At that time, archaeological rescue missions had also been carried out at important sites that were to be flooded. Flooding of the reservoir started in 1974 and led to the displacement of 25,000 people. During the flooding of the Keban Reservoir, Turkey maintained the discharge of the Euphrates at 450 cubic metres (16,000 cu ft) per second, as agreed with the downstream countries of Syria and Iraq. However, as a result of the fact that Syria was at that time filling the reservoir of its newly constructed Tabqa Dam as well, in 1975 a dispute broke out between Syria and Iraq over the amount of water that flowed into Iraq. This dispute, exacerbated by drought which reduced the amount of available water even further, was solved by mediation of Saudi Arabia. After the initial filling of the lake, geological weaknesses in the bedrock on which the dam was built necessitated a temporary lowering of the lake level in order to carry out extensive reinforcement works. Reportedly, Keban Dam was the world's eighteenth-tallest dam at completion, creating Turkey's largest man-made reservoir and third-largest lake until the filling of the reservoir of the Atatürk Dam.