ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general introduction to one of the major issues related to water management: the construction and maintenance of large hydroengineering projects including; dams, reservoirs, canals and power plants. By now the reader is accustomed to the idea that water management has, until recently, been dominated by an “engineering paradigm” much enamoured of large supply-side solutions to water management challenges. Case study material comes from a number of locations around the world, and from the European experience over the past century, including such epochal developments as the Elan Valley developments in mid-Wales, the Canal du Midi in southern France, the Franco-era Spanish National Water Plan and the early 20th century hydroelectric developments in central Norway. The chapter finishes with a consideration of the resurgence of dam-building in postcommunist Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s.
