Instead of building a great wall across the Xingu to create a massive reservoir, Belo Monte is designed as a run-of-river dam, a technique that harnesses the natural flow of the river to drive the turbines.
Erecting a hydroelectric dam, which tends to put the river goddess into a vile mood, requires more elaborate trickery.
Chandler said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had adjusted a nearby dam to drop the river's water level by 2 feet and was regulating the current to make it easier on the divers, whom Chandler directs.
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On his release he began to campaign for a big dam on the Iato river, which roared down in the winter rains and dried up in the nine arid months.
Simply throwing a new dam onto a river with a diversion would impair some down stream users prior right to use that water.
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Residents downstream from a dam on the Tangipahoa River have been ordered to evacuate Thursday afternoon.
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The construction of the Gezhouba dam in 1981 on the Yangtze river also created a barrier to the migrating fish which further affected fish stocks.
Under the Ghandi style leadership of an extraordinary woman the people who live on the banks of the Narmada river in India have managed to halt the construction of a dam that threatens to destroy their way of life.
This plummeted over 80% when the dam began operation, and a decade later, through extensive government investment to restock the river, the species number is still less than half the original amount.
India's dam will divert some of the river down a 22km (14-mile) mountain tunnel to turbines.
The World Bank claims to have learned the lessons of equally worthy-sounding schemes that went badly awry, including a dam on the Mun river in neighbouring Thailand, which left many fishermen destitute as their catch disappeared.
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