The Esch-sur-Sûre Dam is an arch dam on the River Sauer just upstream of Esch-sur-Sûre in the Wiltz canton of Luxembourg . The primary purpose of the dam and its reservoir, Upper Sûre Lake , is to provide municipal water supply and hydroelectric power generation. The dam is operated jointly by the Administration of Roads and Bridges and the Syndicate des Eaux du Barrage d'Esch-sur-Sûre (SEBES) while the power station is operated by Société Electrique de l'Our (SEO).
9-445: It was first conceived in the 1950s to help replace nature groundwater resources for the town of Esch-sur-Sûre. Using an André Coyne design, the dam was constructed between 1956 and 1957 and the power station was commissioned in 1963. The reservoir has been drained twice during the dam's life; once in 1969 to install a new fixed water intake and again in 1991 to install and adjustable-arm intake which mitigate issues with algae growth in
18-420: A 50-meter-high (160 ft) wall of water that reached the nearby town of Fréjus , killing 423 people. It was said that Coyne was deeply affected by the dam's failure, and immediately blamed himself, claiming he was solely responsible. Indeed, Coyne did not implement the advice of Georges Corroy, a geologist, to build the dam 650 ft upstream, nor did he adapt the spillway gate to the flood flow. He died half
27-402: A surface area of 3.5 km (1.4 sq mi) and is 19 km (12 mi) long. It is 43 m (141 ft) at it deepest point and the normal elevation is 322 m (1,056 ft). The power station at the base of the dam contains two 5.5 MW Francis turbine -generators for a total installed capacity of 11 MW. The power station generates an average of 16 GWh annually. Downstream of
36-428: A year later. A study later found that the design of the dam was probably not the reason for its failure. Other factors were blamed instead, including the location of the dam, the stability of the rock material, the fact that a geological fault was found on the site, and heavy rain that had raised the water level by 15 feet that year. Also, intense mining for a new highway nearby downstream is suspected to have weakened
45-966: The Grandval and Roselend Dams . Abroad he designed the Kariba Dam on the Zimbabwe - Zambia border, the Daniel-Johnson Dam in Quebec and the Santa Luzia Dam in Portugal. Coyne also designed the Malpasset Dam in Southern France. Nearly immediately after construction was completed on the dam, cracks were noticed at the base. A few years later, on 2 December 1959, the dam abruptly broke and collapsed, releasing
54-801: The chief engineer of dams in the Upper Dordogne River. While in that position, he designed the Marèges Dam which incorporated several innovative advancements in dam design (a.o., a spillway of the ski jumping ramp type). In 1935 he became the head of France's Large Dam Engineering Department and between 1945 and 1953 he served as President of the International Commission on Large Dams . In 1947 he departed civil service and started his own consulting firm, Coyne et Bellier . Other dams he later designed in France include
63-408: The dam there are three weirs fitted with Kaplan turbines with a total installed capacity of 550 kW. The dam also provides for flood control but has no spillway . Currently, two bottom outlets with a 450 m/s (16,000 cu ft/s) discharge capacity pass floods through the reservoir. Floods in the 1990s highlighted the need for a spillway at the dam. A design for a chute spillway on
72-476: The left abutment of the dam have been drafted but not implemented. Andr%C3%A9 Coyne André Coyne (10 February 1891, Paris – 21 July 1960, Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a French civil engineer who designed 70 dams in 14 countries. He received his education at École Polytechnique and its School of Civil Engineering afterwards. He worked on the Plougastel Bridge and in 1928 was appointed as
81-485: The reservoir. The Esch-sur-Sûre is an arch dam with a height of 50 m (160 ft) and length of 170 m (560 ft). It is 1.5 m (4.9 ft) wide at its crest and 4.5 m (15 ft) wide at its base. The dam sits at the head of a 428 km (165 sq mi) catchment area and creates the Upper Sûre Lake which has a total volume of 59,000,000 m (48,000 acre⋅ft). The lake has
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