Racing against time to fortify Mosul dam's decaying structure

The Mosul Dam is being renovated and restored by an Italian company and paid for, $450 million, by the Iraqi government. Iraq’s agriculture and water resources minister recently visited the site of the dam to see the progress of the renovation.

The dam briefly fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014 but was quickly taken back by Peshmerga forces with help from the coalition forces. It was soon revealed that the dam was in a deteriorating situation which needed urgent work to avoid a disaster that could affect millions of people across Iraq.

Now with reconstruction underway, Mohammed Amin Faris – Head of Kurdistan Water Resources Department says: “The dam has been of benefit to the center and south of Iraq. It has great importance for the Kurdistan Region as well. There is a plan to move water from the Mosul Dam to Duhok Dam. It is a very important and strategic plan.”

UN’s Lise Grande in Iraq said at a press briefing earlier this month that the dam has the potential to impact some 20 million people. The dam, she explained, has a strong potential for a catastrophic outburst and would be disastrous for both its capacity for damage as well as the unpredictability with which it would happen.

“Anyone who says a catastrophic outburst would be ‘Biblical’ – they are correct,” asserted the Humanitarian Coordinator, who is a trained hydrologist with a specialization in the particular dam that is in Mosul.

In response to the risking surrounding the Mosul dam, UN agencies have created an early warning system with the Iraqi Government and the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is developing an international response to assist the Government in the event of the dam’s collapse.