Creation of small weirs to store water during dry season a better alternative to big dams?

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The installation of a weir of 20,000litres holding capacity in Kenya http://bit.ly/1DNWOvS

seems to be working well to serve dual purpose of acting as a storage for excess rain water thereby preventing floods and serving as a water source during droughts.Should the new focus on IWRM be on installation of weirs with small capacity over building larger dams with greater evaporation and ecological concerns?

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3 Answers

  1. small weirs instead of big reservoirs? this is to be decided on the geomorphological, geological, geo-hydrological, demographical, and various other engineering and environmental factors relevant in determining short to long duration. such options thrown open to the community will rise into big controversies. However, this could not be even a matter of debate and certainly small weirs are not the alternate to big dams.

  2. Dams and weirs are two different entities in hydrological science. their make, objective, location, suitability etc. are vivid. Opting weirs for dams as alternative for water storage in Indian scenario is a complexity in itself. Well instead awareness can be brought out to harvest surplus runoff and or adopt water harvesting strategies.

  3. I suggest that that the decision is to be taken case by case. No general opinion is justified. There are so many variables, which makes a general conclusion impractical.

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