Alqueva Dam

The Alqueva Dam is an arch dam and the center-piece of the Alqueva Mutlipurpose Project. It impounds the River Guadiana, on the border of Beja and Évora Districts in south of Portugal. The dam takes its name from the town of Alqueva to its right bank. It creates a large reservoir with an inter-annual regulation capacity from which water may be distributed throughout the region. The dam was completed in 2002 and its reservoir reached the full level, for the first time, in 2010. The 518.4MW power station was commissioned in two stages, stage I in 2004 and stage II in 2013. The Alqueva Dam constitutes one of the largest dams and artificial lakes in Western Europe.HistoryDuring the 1950s, the Portuguese Prime Minister, António de Oliveira Salazar, ordered a study of the feasibility of the dam project. The potential benefits of the Alqueva dam were discussed for decades. An initial effort was undertaken after the Carnation Revolution of 1974, but it was abandoned in 1978. The Portuguese government eventually made a firm decision to build the dam in the 1990s, during the Cavaco Silva and António Guterres governments.Aldeia da Luz, a small village that lay in the projected flood zone of the dam, was completely rebuilt on a new site.The construction of the new dam was carried out by a joint venture of Bento Pedroso Construções, Cubiertas y MZOV, Dragados and Somague - Sociedade de Construções. On February 8, 2002, the 96m high floodgates of the Alqueva dam were closed. In January 2010 the lake was filled to the planned level, with a surface area of 250 km2.