Talk:List of largest dams

Why no Itaipu Dam?
I'm surprised this dam doesn't get even a mention. It is the third largest hydroelectric dam in the world, and produced the second-most electricity of any in the world as of 2020, only surpassed by the Three Gorges Dam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ianbrettcooper (talk • contribs) 15:11, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Volume issue again, also W.A.C. Bennett Dam
I was surprised to not see this here, as it's one of the world's largest for sure. According to the World's Largest Dam website in the references, it's 43.7 million cubic metres, higher than Aswan's 43....but on the World Lakes Database its stats are:
 * Surface area [km2] 	1,779
 * Volume [km3] 	70.3
 * Maximum depth [m] 	166
 * Mean depth [m] 	43.3
 * Water level 	Regulated
 * Normal range of annual water
 * level fluctuation [m] 	16.8*
 * Length of shoreline [km] 	1,770
 * Residence time [yr] 	2.2
 * Catchment area [km2] 	72,000
 * With 32 m the maximum, allowable (1972-1987)

And on www.economy-point.org/w/wac-bennett-dam.html's listing it's 70; the rest of their stats are garbled for some code-conversion reason but the page includes the cryptic comment:
 * ''The W.A.C. Bennett dam with Hudson's Hope in Canada is one of the largest dams of the earth. It is after the size of the memory space on place 9.

By which I mean it's ranked ninth... (??). Not sure of how to add it, although I know the tables; I'm just uncertain of the units; the volume of Lake Williston, if added in, would make it one hell of a lot larger.....Skookum1 (talk) 06:12, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Tailings Dams
A tailings dam is just a pile of mine waste, which can be arbitrarily large, with a little water trapped behind it. It does not impound a reservoir and should not be included in this list. HowardMorland (talk) 18:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, it should be removed and maybe something should be included in the intro about the types of dams. Like, those serving some sort of civil purpose. Also, I plan on adding a few/fixing this list up.--NortyNort (talk) 14:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

About to implement radical total overhaul of wikipedia page
Mollwollfumble (talk) 02:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC) Having serious concerns about accuracy, I decided to start checking everything on this list. It looks as if the Reference [2] is a total disaster, the best reference is the ICOLD register of world dams. I will add extra columns for dam height, reservoir volume and dam type (eg earth vs rock vs concrete). Apart from issues mentioned above: Aswan dam duplication, misuse of reservoir rather than structure volume, results out of order, I decided to check out the entries one at a time starting from the top:
 * Syncrude tailings dam. WHICH Syncrude tailings dam? The Syncrude leases are north of Fort McMurray and contain more than eight tailings dams. Let's suppose it's the SWSS (south west sand storage) pond from the Mildred lake operation. The dyke there was extended in 2010 to allow fluid storage as well. The total height of the dyke has been estimated at 40 to 50 metres. Say 45 metres high. From Google Earth the length is 10.1 km and maximum width 1.57 km. Triangular cross section gives a total structure volume of about 120 million cubic metres, not 540 million cubic metres. Other tailings dams at Syncrude are about the same size or smaller.
 * Oh darn, my question about which Syncrude Dam was prophetic. I've now got a 1994 reference (18th International Congress on Large Dams) to a DIFFERENT Syncrude tailings dam, the MLSB dam, which on completion (1995) was meant to have a maximum height of 88 metres, and is more of a water storage dam than a tailings dam. It could easily be bigger than the SWSS Dam, the reference gives a projected structural size of 720 million cubic metres, which includes "beach and shell".Mollwollfumble (talk) 04:57, 14 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Chapetón dam and Pati dam don't seem to exist under construction. I found a mention of a proposal for a both of these dams in an environmental study of the Paraña River among many other proposals, but there seems to be nothing there under construction. There is a mention of a Chapetón-Pati Dam completed in 1977 on a different river, River Plate elsewhere in wikipedia, so how a dam can not exist, be under construction and be completed at the same time boggles me. I'll dig some more into this later.
 * New Cornelia Tailings is much smaller than the claimed size, by a factor of about ten, and contains no water because it is full of mine tailings.
 * Verkhne-Svirskaya is supposed to be at a saddle point of Lake Onega. It doesn't appear on Google Earth despite its supposed 1952 construction date, so if it exists at all then it must be extremely small.
 * Samara Dam, if that is its real name. I was able to estimate from the technical information a structure volume of about 54 million cubic metres, not 169 million cubic metres.
 * Tarbella Dam has a volume given in the technical literature of 150 million cubic metres rather than 122 million cubic metres, a minor error. Another source gives 106 million cubic metres.
 * Technical information on Kambaritinsk Dam can be found all over the web, but in every single case the original source is a document written in 1974. As it has still not been completed at present, that 1974 technical information is next to useless, more than likely construction has permanently stopped, if it ever started at all in the first place.
 * Fort Peck Dam - still investigating, seems to be correct.
 * Lower Usuma Dam - must be very small. I didn't find a height, but even allowing maximum possible height must still be smaller than 15 million cubic metres.
 * etc.
 * Just a note on the Chapeton Dam article which I was just researching for a possible creation. It seems to be part of the Parana Medio Project and I found no evidence construction starting (Pretty sure the .de article is wrong). Locations for both the Chapeton and Parana Medio are consistent, about 25-30 km north of the Parana/Santa Fe border. It is designed to cross the island here: -31.55944°N, -60.31167°W. It appears the dam was killed in 1999 after being reintroduced in 1996. No idea on the River Plate or Rio Plato dam as well.--NortyNort (Holla) 04:22, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Phantom Dams
Mollwollfumble (talk) 10:12, 11 December 2010 (UTC) Of the 32 largest dams on the list in the previous revision, a full 16 have been removed in this revision, with 2 (so far) new dams added. The main reference that had been used to initially build the list proved to be totally unreliable. The first to be removed were 4 "phantom dams", dams that do not exist and, so far as I can tell, are not under construction. In at least three of these cases, Chapetón Dam, Pati Dam and Kambaritinsk Dam there were proposals for evaluating the possibility of dam construction but no construction occurred. The Verkhne-Svirskaya Dam on Lake Onega simply doesn't exist, for unknown reasons. Aswan Dam was duplicated on the old list, and the wrong entry has now been removed. That accounts for 5 of the 16 removed.

Structure Volume
Mollwollfumble (talk) 10:12, 11 December 2010 (UTC) Of the 32 largest dams on the list in the previous revision, a full 13 were found to have been listed with the wrong size. Sometimes the reason is clear, often the size of the reservoir was incorrectly listed instead of the size of the earth, rock or concrete structure. Equally as often, the reason for the inflated size on the old list is a total mystery. Sizes are only changed where there is good reason to, for example when a check on structure volume gives an answer out by more than 30%. The dams downrated in size are: Syncrude tailings, New Cornelia tailings, Samara, Lower Usuma, Cipasang, Tucurui, Guri, Bakun, Seven Oaks, Three Gorges, Kariba, Katse, and Gariep. The newly downrated sizes are not always reliable, particularly for Syncrude tailings and Samara dams. Two values in the literature for Seven Oaks Dam both disagree with the size of the dam as seen in plan view. It is hoped that more reliable values are found when ICOLD data is consulted, but even that isn't always reliable.
 * Thanks for challenging and scrubbing the list, especially adding the dam types. I remember there was a few problem entries a few months ago that were caught...reservoir size was used instead of the structural size. I don't think anyone has overhauled it and this list was in my mid-term scope of things to do. Regarding Syncrude, I am not terribly familiar with the dam and don't like tailings dams on the list but after all, it is a dam. If you are interested in dams, there is WikiProject Dams which is focused on improving these articles. We have a to-do list and your insight would be great.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Numerical Sorting
Numerical Sorting is broken in many of the columns, resulting in text-based sorting, which is inaccurate. I suggest we do not use the dash or slash (both of which break numerical sorting) to indicate uncertainty, but split into two columns if the uncertainty information is important. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrennj9 (talk • contribs) 21:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not enough to enable numerical sorting. I think it will be necessary to add a column for references and move all the references out of the numerical columns. M Carling 21:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Oahe/Guri
Undid the incompetent edit of Jan 2012 that changed "Oahe" to "Guri." Note that Guri needs to be added -- but I don't know the right numbers. Aldenrw (talk) 14:47, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Guri is about 29.8 million m3. I don't think there is a threshold for minimum.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:18, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Benmore
I suspect that the Benmore Dam belongs on this list, though official sources (and therefore our article) are hopelessly confused as to the volumes of earth in the dam and water behind it. If anyone can find out some accurate figures, it's be very helpful! Grutness...wha?  13:08, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * These two sources, state around 11-12 million cubic meters of fill which is considerably less than the smallest on the list, San Roque Dam (35 MCM).--NortyNort  (Holla) 20:18, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Why Netherlands' flood control system isn't listed as world's largest dam?
I don't understand. It's probably world's largest dam by volume, but no one mentions it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.33.81.62 (talk) 06:53, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the Delta and Zuiderzee Works? They are a system of dams, barrages, etc. and this article is on a single largest dam, by volume.--NortyNort (Holla) 13:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

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Hoover Dam?
Why is the Hoover Dam missing from the list? With a height of over 700ft, it sure seems to belong there.-178.199.97.81 (talk) 15:27, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * i agree with this question. Hoover is listed on the "tallest dams" page (but the Oroville Dam is listed on both pages; possibly other dams, too).  and Hoover is listed on the "reservoirs by volume" page (but the Aswan Dam is listed on both pages; possibly other dams, too).Colbey84 (talk) 08:49, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

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Sardar Sarovar??
Here's an article claiming the Sardar Sarovar Dam is the 2nd biggest in the world in terms of "volume of concrete used in it". Is this article just wrong?

'The Sardar Sarovar project is the biggest dam in terms of volume of concrete used in it. "It is the second biggest dam in the world after the Grand Coulee Dam in the United States," a senior official associated with the work of Sardar Sarovar project said.'

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/pm-narendra-modi-to-inaugurate-worlds-second-biggest-sardar-sarovar-dam-on-september-17-4843132/

'Concrete used in Narmada dam can build a road around equator' by Parag Dave in Kevadia, Gujarat | September 29, 2006 15:43 IST says that building the dam used "about 73.20 lakh cubic meters of 'pre-cooled' concrete." = 7,320,000 cubic meters...

104.219.99.187 (talk) 16:20, 4 July 2019 (UTC)R.E.D.