By John Lee.
Construction is under way on the Bawanur Dam project in the Garmian District of the Kurdistan Region. The project is designed to strengthen water security, support agriculture and environmental protection, and generate electricity.
Overseen by the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, the dam is an embankment structure 880 metres long and 20 metres high, with a storage capacity of 30 million cubic metres, making it the fourth-largest dam in the Kurdistan Region by water-storage capacity.
The dam will include a hydropower station equipped with four vertical Kaplan turbines with a combined capacity of 34 megawatts, fed directly into the national grid. This would make Bawanur the third-largest dam in the Kurdistan Region by power generation capacity, after the Dukan and Darbandikhan dams.
Engineering components include:
- A secant pile wall approximately 45 metres deep to prevent water seepage
- A spillway with nine gates and a discharge capacity of 10,350 cubic metres per second
- A bottom outlet to regulate water releases
- A dedicated fish pass to support aquatic life
Current construction works include diverting the watercourse using four cofferdams, drilling more than 250 deep piles, installing sheet-pile cut-off walls, and constructing access roads and a residential camp capable of accommodating up to 600 people.
Once operational, the dam is expected to support tens of thousands of dunams of agricultural land, mitigate the risk of desertification, increase fish stocks, and raise groundwater levels.
(Source: Kurdistan Regional Government)
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