Al-Bilad Dam
Dam (storage and irrigation), Reservoir about 1.15 to 1.5 million m3; dam height about 24 to 40 m; earthen dam with a compacted clay core and rockfill faces in Libya.
Out of service
The record
- Country
- Libya
- Location
- Derna
- Coordinates
- 32.659, 22.577
- Technology
- Dam (storage and irrigation)
- Capacity
- Reservoir about 1.15 to 1.5 million m3; dam height about 24 to 40 m; earthen dam with a compacted clay core and rockfill faces
- Capital cost
- —
- Stage
- Out of service
- Owner or client
- Libyan government
- Contractor
- Yugoslav design and contracting firm
- Operator
- —
- Finance
- —
- Award or start year
- 1973
- Commissioned
- 1977
Record last checked 2026-09-18.
History
- 1973
Construction started under a Yugoslav contractor
- 1977
Dam completed downstream of Abu Mansour
- 2023-09
Dam failed on 11 September 2023 after the Abu Mansour breach wave arrived, destroying much of central Derna
Sources
4 references
Every field in the record above is taken from the references below. A field that none of them confirms prints as a dash.
- Association of State Dam Safety Officials, Case study, Abu Mansour and Al-Bilad Dams (Libya, 2023). damfailures.org.
- Al-Bilad is the lower dam, 80 feet high with 1,200 acre-feet of storage, about 1.48 million m3, at about 165 feet above sea level, built 1973 to 1977 by a Yugoslav firm for water supply, irrigation and flood control and failed on 11 September 2023 together with Abu Mansour.
- FAO AQUASTAT, Geo-referenced database on dams, Africa file. firebasestorage.googleapis.com.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Lists a Derna dam in Darnah on the Derna river, 1978, 40 m high, 1.15 million m3, 0.11 km2, irrigation and flood control, at 32.6589 and 22.5772, which is the Al-Bilad structure. The two sources differ on height and storage and the AQUASTAT figures are used here for the coordinates.