[Music] this is a dam this is also a dam dams are amazing but sometimes they fail and when they do
a wall of water leaves a path of destruction in its wake this is exactly what happened to
two dams in Libya recently killing over 10,000 people so when I heard that Ethiopia was damning
the Nile the longest river in the world it got me thinking are dams still worth the risk we set out
to figure out if there are any dams in danger of claps right here in the US and around the world
you're not going to believe what I found let's figure this out together I'm Ricky and this is
Two Bit da Vinci [Music] this video is sponsored by Lark let's start with the disastrous Dam collapses in
Libya there were two dams that collapsed in derai Libya last September the flood that followed the
collapse killed over 13,000 people making it the second deadliest damn failure in human history
4,000 are already confirmed dead and 9,000 are still missing according to the UN in a city of
990,000 people that's almost 15% of the entire population which means nearly one and six for
seven people passed away the dams were built by a Yugoslav construction company in the 1970s above
the W DNA River a stational river that flows to the middle of the city of DNA the first Dam Abu
mansur was 8.6 Mi Upstream from the city it was 243 ft high and could hold up to 22.5 million
cubic met of water the DNA dam is much smaller and was closer to the city and could hold only 1.5
million cubic M of water the collapse was due to a damag and badly maintained structure combined with
the Mediterranean storm Daniel which increased the water levels beyond what the dam could hold the
dams weren't like the Hoover Dam which was made out of concrete these were built from clay Rock
and Earth I'll explain why this is important in just a minute with extreme weather events
becoming stronger and more frequent this was a very foreseeable disaster both dams were damaged
in 1986 because of a strong storm and were never properly repaired an inspection done more than a
decade later showed cracks in the structure the Turkish arsal construction company was hired in
2007 to do maintenance on the dams and build a third Dam in between the two this never happened
in 2012 and 2013 $2 million of State funds were allocated to the maintenance of the two dams but
arsel fled the country like dozens of other large companies did because of instability caused by the
2011 Uprising an audit in 2021 revealed that no work was ever done on the dams either in terms
of Maintenance or construction of a third Dam even though arel States on their website that
it finished the work in 2012 the consequence was the total damn failure and the devastation that we
all saw in the news while the DNA Dam's failure was devastating these dams are nothing compared
to what Ethiopia is planning on building on the River Nile the grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam or
ger for short which will hold almost 2 200 times more water than the larger of the two dams at DNA
construction started in 2011 and has so far cost $5 billion it is completely self-funded through
government bonds and private donations which is a part of Pride for Ethiopians the dam is being
built by the Italian company the webuild group webuild was also the primary contractor for other
Ethiopian dams like the gilgal Geb 2 and the Gil galge 3 dams interestingly the2 billion companies
also in charge of building the 57 km high-speed connector Railway project in Saudi Arabia as
part of the neon project the railway will connect Neo's planned Advanced industry center oxyon with
the futuristic linear city of the line we talked about in previous videos you got to check out that
if you haven't already the reservoir's maximum flood capacity once finished will be 74 billion
cubic M and the lake will stretch 155 M Upstream the dam is already 90% completed and should be
completely finished in 2024 towering 145 m above the riverbed I've been doing a lot more travel
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the show the Gir Dam has been a cause of high tension between Egypt and Sudan and Ethiopia
ever since construction began Egypt gets over 70% of its fresh water from the Nile and they worry
that Ethiopia filling the dam too quickly will disrupt water supply for millions of Egyptians in
2015 Ethiopia Egypt and Sudan signed a declaration of principles agreeing to discussed plans to fill
reservoirs so as not to affect the other two countries down river Ethiopia's plan is to fill
the dam in 5 years while Egypt would rather it stretch it out to 10 or 12 years to avoid
affecting their water supply however on July 15th 2020 Ethiopia unilaterally started filling the G
Reservoir without any form of agreement with Egypt or Sudan this led to outrage and tensions between
the three countries the US backed up Egypt on this one and cut a to Ethiopia and things calmed
down but on July 2021 the dam started filling again once completely full and operational it'll
generate a peak power of 5,000 megawatts or 5.15 gaw that's a massive amount for a country the size
of Ethiopia for context here are the largest dams in the world ordered by generation capacity and
as you can see gird will be the fourth largest in the world based on power output but also the
seventh largest in terms of total Reservoir capacity which tops even Egypt's High Aswan
Dam which is also on the Nile and you can see why Egypt is so worried Ethiopia could literally cut
Egypt and sadon off in the blue Nile's water for weeks and even months although Egypt and sadon
accuse Ethiopia of intentionally filling the dam some experts believe this wasn't actually
intentional it may Simply Be filling up naturally because of a very heavy rainy season according to
Manchester University's Muhammad Basher more water is entering the dam site than the volume of water
that will physically pass through the two open outlets in the dam wall but thanks to the rising
water levels the dam started generating power in February 2022 furthermore Ethiopia media outlets
and Ethiopians in general support filling the dam and some even encourage it so what do you
think this is tricky because these are common waterways that affect multiple countries what
do you do about a situation like that in the end if Ethiopia decides to do whatever it wants Egypt
is left with only two options put up with it or take military action this means a new war
in Northern Africa one that could end up with a blown up or under maintain dam in the best
of cases another reason for concern from Egypt is that they need more water from the Nile now
than ever Egypt recently started building the world's longest artificial River parallel to
the Nile to bring water to a New River delta they plan to build on the Northwest Bank of the river
the new Delta project is an ambitious initiative that aims to reclaim 4 million Fons of land in
the western desert starting with 1.5 million fedon to create a new Agricultural and urban
community to feed Egypt's exploding population a fedon is a unit of land area commonly used in
Northern Africa equivalent to a rectangle 60x 70 m or about 4200 square m conveniently it's
also about 1 acre about 1.38 to be precise the new Delta project will reclaim a little over 4
million Acres the project is split into three initial phases phase one already underway is
the construction of the world largest man-made River spanning 114 km 90 km will be an open
canal and the rest will consist of pipes they'll also build roads canals and irrigation systems
to supply water to new cultivation areas at a cost of approximately 5. 2 billion the second
phase will involve the construction of dams and reservoirs to keep water for irrigation keep this
in mind we'll come back to that it's important the third phase will be the actual cultivation
of the land to get a far Egyptians have to form companies of at least 10 people and sign up for
a land allocation Lottery they'll be able to use the land for growing non-water intensive
crops as well as raising livestock or poultry and even fish farming the project will increase
Egypt's Farmland by 15% to achieve food security the reason the river matters is that Ethiopia is
using the mega project as an excuse to fill the dam an Ethiopian news agency called ethiop press
published some pictures showing Egypt hoarding water for the new Delta project they say Egypt is
filling up to four massive 420 M deep reservoirs that are 420 M long and 60 M wide and they're
using that to justify and gain public support for filling the gird the argument is that even
though gird is filling up Egypt has enough water to fill up their own reservoirs but when you do
the numbers things don't exactly check out the four l reservoirs could only contain a total of
42.3 million cubic M or 34.3 th000 acre feet of water that's over 84,000 Olympic swimming
pools and is roughly the amount of water in the Bridgeport Reservoir here in California or lake
topaz between California and Nevada while this seems like a lot it's actually not the state of
California uses approximately 42 million acre feet of water every year or about 115,000 acre feet per
day so those 34.3 th000 acre feet of water that Egypt is hoarding would only last for about 7
hours here in California also it's just 0572 per of the water that the ger Dam could hold
so it's nothing compared to the amount of water Ethiopia is currently storing but the worst part
is that the evidence they use as proof are fakes the picture ethiop press published are actually
old photos of the construction of a water pipeline in Libya oh the plot thickens liia holds a record
for the largest irrigation system in the world and it's called the Great man-made River gmmr it was
started by dictator muar Gaddafi and Taps into the Nubian Sandstone AER system aka the Nubian
water layer this aquafer underlies most of Egypt and the western part of Libya Northeast Chad and
Northwest Sudan covering 770,000 square miles and containing thousands of cubic meters of water so
it suffices to say that with all this controversy and potential Conflict at a global scale the gird
Dam seems to be at pretty high risk of future problems either through war or just disrepair
in general but what about elsewhere in the world and what about our dams here in the US are we at
risk as well I think you're going to be surprised so you want to stick around I was surprised to
learn that there are over 575,000 dams in the world half of which are in Asia 16.4% in North
America 9.2% in Africa 7.2 in Europe and the rest in Oceana of those over 57,000 are large dams of
which approximately 6,400 are in North America and over 22,000 are in China but those are just
the big dams in total there are almost 100,000 dams in the US with an average age of 61 years
so so many dams the next question I asked myself is how common are Dam failures and turns out very
they're very common it shocked me to find out that there were more than 200 notable damn failures
worldwide between 2000 and 2009 that's an average of 22 major failures every single year the reason
we don't hear about them in the news is because most of them don't result in death but there have
been many damn failures that have caused death and destruction the following table summarizes some of
the worst damn failures in history these are dams not made of concrete but by compacted Rock soil
and Clay earthville dams are less resistant than concrete dams in terms of durability so they're
more susceptible to excessive amounts of rain pouring in also notice the recent Derma disaster
is the second worst man-made Dam failure in human history second only to the catastrophic bangao Dam
failure in China that killed 71,000 people and affected Millions more I want to point out the
last one on this list which happened right here in California almost 100 years ago the St Francis
Dam failure the St Francis dam disaster in 1928 is the worst man-made disaster in California's
history they built the dam between 1924 and 1928 but the engineers cut all sorts of Corners they
didn't study the terrain well enough and built it on top of unstable geological formation they made
it too thin and light to withstand the intense enormous water pressure they didn't put enough
steel reinforcement in the structure and didn't add enough buttressing at the sides the design
didn't even have adequate spillways for releasing excess water when floods arose just one week after
it was filled for the first time it failed sending 12 billion gallons of water down to San Francis
Keo Canyon ultimately killing 600 people that goes to show what happens when Engineers cut corners
on large Mega projects like these another damn failure that stood out to me but isn't on the list
was the Edenville Dam failure on May 19th 2020 the dam held back wixon Lake in central Michigan
it was a rather small dam holding back just 6 to 6,000 acre feet of water but it was also a clay
embankment Dam the dam had a major design flaw it didn't have a large enough spill weight to let
the water out in case of massive flooding and it wasn't properly maintained by the company that ran
it this didn't cause the failure though what did was a rare phenomenon called Static liquefication
which means the clay walls literally turned to liquid mush because the soil absorbed too
much water as you can see dams are dangerous if they're not properly designed and built and the
most dangerous of all are Earth fill dams I'll be honest with you I actually didn't even know dams
are designed this way until I started research for this video I thought all dams are like the Hoover
Dam made out of concrete and rebar and poured over years to to be strong and resilient but that's
just not the case what's scary is that roughly half of all dams in the world approximately
250,000 are Earth filled dams because they're the cheapest to build in the us alone out of the 92,7
5 dams approximately 50,000 are Earth fill dams of those around 8,000 dams are considered deficient
in design or maintenance and over 400 lacking on both fronts receiving a high Hazard rating by the
Regulatory Agencies the Edenville Dam failure didn't kill anyone because thousands of people
were able to evacuate on time however roughly one in five high Hazard dams in the US don't
have emergency plans on file with local officials making a safe evacuation difficult and death more
likely one example is Lake Hodge's Dam right here in San Diego California lake Hodge's dam
is a 104y old Dam that houses our freshw supply here in San Diego the dam has been found to have
several problems similar to St Francis defective soil foundations design flaws like being too light
and thin and also insufficient buttressing at the sides and inadequate spillways these problems
led to the city lowering the water level of the reservoir by 18 ft closing the reservoir off for
boating and initiating repair works that's going to cost over 14 million the problem here is that
most dams in the US and around the world for that matter are just really old and aging quickly with
the average age around 61 years this means that we don't abide by current safety regulations and
they're aging well beyond repair some of these dams can be repaired but it's really expensive
and not very pable for local governments to want to spend kind of that money on according to the
American Society of civil engineering the cost of repairing life-threatening dams across the
country could top $20 billion which is 2,000 times more than the amount currently budgeted
for such repairs the other solution is to remove dams altogether but this is even more expensive
for example the largest dam removal in US history just got underway last year to remove the clath
river dam and it's expected to cost 450 million infrastructure is vital for our way of life but
bad infrastructure like old and damaged dams pose a huge risk the more I make these videos a couple
of patterns are starting to emerge one is that we have terribly inadequate and aging infrastructure
just generally around the world the reason is it's one thing to get a lot of excitement and tell
people we're going to produce all this energy and build the dam what's really hard is to maintain it
you buy a new car it's amazing you love it you're washing it the first couple of days 2 3 4 years
later it's covered in bird poop and sitting outside in the baking sun it's hard to keep
that level of interest but unlike a car in your driveway dams and overhead power lines and other
infrastructure is critical we've seen what happens when aging infrastructure with old telephone lines
that can fall in heavy storms can start fires and now we've seen what can happen with damn failures
this is one I hadn't even considered there was an era of just Grand Mega projects back 50 60 years
ago and it was amazing we've kind of changed the world and diverted in fact we have so many
dams around the world now that we've changed the rotation of the Earth itself do you know that it's
true but now we have to maintain them or deal with them and that is going to be increasingly
tricky and if you're thinking that the more hard hardcore concrete poured dams are all impervious
to damage you're wrong water is a huge force of Nature and holding back water even statically
takes a toll so even dams like the Hoover Dam need maintenance they need to be checked for cracks and
they need to have a repair plan in place should we still be building dams I'd love to know what you
think what's your take on dams I mean they have an ecological impact generally right you ever heard
of like the the salmon migrating upstream and how they're completely cut off when we build Dam but
there's so much more to than just the ecology it's also how we share water as a resource in
other countries like we're talking about with Northern Africa right now this is complicated
as an engineer I I love dams they're amazing feats of engineering but we as a society have
to start taking maintenance into consideration as much as we do building cuz otherwise we're
just 50 years kicking the can down the road from tragedy and failure and disaster and this keeps on
happening what can we do I'd love to hear what you think s in the comments below but that is
a look at the new dam projects around the world and dams in general and if you thought that was
cool check out this video next until next week I'm Rick D Vinci thank you so much for watching