Turkey’s tallest dam on the way

ARTVİN - Anatolia News Agency

The Deriner dam on the Çoruh River will be inaugurated tomorrow.

Deriner, soon to be the world’s sixth tallest arch dam and the tallest currently in Turkey, will go into service tomorrow with a ceremony, attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Deriner, which sits on the Çoruh River and looks to the Black Sea, will meet 6 percent of Turkey’s hydroelectric needs, according to officials. The construction of the 249-meter high dam began in 1998. Its annual electrical generating capacity is nearly 2.12 million kWh, which equates to the annual needs of 685,000 people. The $1.4 billion investment has a seven-year payback period.

Artvin Gov. Necmettin Kalkan told Anatolia news agency that the electricity produced at the dam refers to some 1.1 percent of the country’s total energy. A sum of 17 dams will be built in Artvin, Kalkan said, explaining that the province would become a region of dams and tunnels. The dam construction work in the area has affected the locations of residential areas and will submerge valuable land under water, he said. He suggested fisheries be built to replace land-bounded agriculture.