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Concept
Tucuruí Dam
Summary
The Tucuruí Dam (Tucuruí means "grasshopper's water", translated from Tupí language; Tucuruí) is a concrete gravity dam on the Tocantins River located on the Tucuruí County in the State of Pará, Brazil. The main purpose of the dam is hydroelectric power production and navigation. It is the first large-scale hydroelectric project in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. The installed capacity of the 25-unit plant is . Phase I construction began in 1980 and ended in 1984 while Phase II began in 1998 and ended in 2010. The dam was featured in the 1985 film The Emerald Forest.
The initial reconnaissance of the Tocantins River was carried out by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and USAID in 1964. The Amazon Energy Studies Coordination Committee was formed in 1968 and begin hydroelectric project studies in 1969. Before the committee closed, Eletrobrás commissioned further studies, called the "Tocantins Studies", on the entire Tocantins River Basin. In 1973, Brazilian President Emílio Médici was asked to assign funding for a dam on the Tocantins. Two options were available: the Tucuruí Dam and Santo Antonio Dam (unrelated to the current Santo Antonio Dam project on the Madeira river). In 1973, the Engevix-Ecotec consortium carried out feasibility studies and the Santo Antonio Dam was ruled out in 1974. Later in 1974, the Tucuruí Dam was approved during the President Ernesto Geisel administration.
The dam was built primarily as a source of hydroelectricity and second for navigation between the upper and lower Tocantins River. The electricity was and is primarily supplied to industrial interests from the aluminum industry like Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce. Communities in Northeast Brazil would also benefit as well, such as Belém, São Luiz, Marabá, and later Eastern Amazonia. The World Bank refused to fund the dam and most of the funding was procured by Eletronorte and Brazilian institutions such as Eletrobrás, BNH, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Econômica Federal and FINAME. A smaller portion of funding came from Canadian, European and American institutions.
Official source
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