Introducing the Final Project: Dam Management in Cape Verde

Project: Soil Erosion Surrounding the Poilao Dam in Santiago, Cape Verde

Welcome to the team engineering blog of Kalyani, Fiona, Zehra and Mackenzie! As a final project in Professor Amy Banzaert's Extra-departmental 120 class at Wellesley College, we are researching the Poilão Dam, located in Santiago, Cape Verde. We are excited to be collaborating with Parliament member and engineer Eva Verona Cortet to develop a report on soil erosion surrounding the dam. We hope that our research on this project will be able to be applied to other dams that Cape Verde builds in the future.

Context:

The island of Santiago in Cape Verde suffers from severe drought, which makes agriculture on the island challenging and unproductive. With the goal of storing and controlling water to improve crop irrigation, Cape Verde's first concrete dam, the Poilão Dam (Barragem de Poilão), was built by the Chinese government in 2006. This 26 m tall x 25 m wide dam collects rainwater that moves down from the surrounding mountains. This water is then distributed to local farms through drip irrigation systems. The use of drip irrigation has replaced earlier practices such as flooding, and has increased water efficiency and resulted in higher quality agricultural produce.The dam irrigates an area of about 65 hectares, and currently benefits about 300 farm families. It appears that the Poilão Dam is contributing to the development of agriculture and tourism on Santiago, and should increase the island's resilience to desertification due to climate change.

The Cape Verdean government has plans to build numerous other dams. However, there is a distinctly limited understanding of best management and maintenance practices for the Poilão Dam by the local authorities. Before additional dams are constructed in Cape Verde, it is critical that a dam management plan be created for the Poilão Dam. 

Goal:

Our team's goal is to consult with the Ministry of Agriculture in Cape Verde to help officials understand and implement best practices for maintaining soil erosion on the banks of the impoundment of the Poilão Dam.