With its ability to better control flooding, provide increased water storage for irrigation and generate hydroelectricity, the dam was seen as pivotal to Egypt's planned industrialization.

These floods brought high water with natural nutrients and minerals that annually enriched the fertile soil along its floodplain and delta; this predictability had made the Nile valley ideal for farming since ancient times.

As Egypt's population grew and technology increased, both a desire and the ability developed to completely control the flooding, and thus both protect and support farmland and its economically important cotton crop.

With the greatly increased reservoir storage provided by the High Aswan Dam, the floods could be controlled and the water could be stored for later release over multiple years.

[3][4] Designed for both irrigation and power generation, the dam incorporates a number of relatively new features, including a very deep grout curtain below its base.

Instead the Nile Valley Plan by the British hydrologist Harold Edwin Hurst was favored, which proposed to store water in Sudan and Ethiopia, where evaporation is much lower.

The Egyptian position changed completely after the overthrow of the monarchy, led by the Free Officers Movement including Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Free Officers were convinced that the Nile Waters had to be stored in Egypt for political reasons, and within two months, the plan of Daninos was accepted.

In 1955, Nasser was claiming to be the leader of Arab nationalism, in opposition to the traditional monarchies, especially the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq following its signing of the 1955 Baghdad Pact.

At that time the U.S. feared that communism would spread to the Middle East, and it saw Nasser as a natural leader of an anticommunist procapitalist Arab League.

America and the United Kingdom offered to help finance construction of the High Dam, with a loan of $270 million, in return for Nasser's leadership in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

While opposed to communism, capitalism, and imperialism, Nasser identified as a tactical neutralist, and sought to work with both the U.S. and the USSR for Egyptian and Arab benefit.

At the time, other Western allies in the Middle East, including Turkey and Iraq, were resentful that Egypt, a persistently neutral country, was being offered so much aid.

"[13] On 26 July 1956, with wide Egyptian acclaim, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal that included fair compensation for the former owners.

In the 1950s, archaeologists began raising concerns that several major historical sites, including the famous temple of Abu Simbel were about to be submerged by waters collected behind the dam.

Repayments to the USSR constituted only a small net drain during the first half of the 1960s, and increased export earnings derived from crops grown on newly reclaimed land have largely offset the modest debt service payments in recent years.

The enormous rock and clay dam was designed by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Malyshev of the Moscow-based Hydroproject Institute,[3][4] along with some Egyptian engineers.

The average salt concentration of the drainage water evacuated into the sea and the coastal lakes is 2.7 kilograms per cubic metre (4.6 lb/cu yd).

Part of this could be due to the large number of subsurface drainage projects executed in the last decades to control the water table and soil salinity.

At the time of its construction, total cost, including unspecified "subsidiary projects" and the extension of electric power lines, amounted to E£450 million.

Tearing it down would cost only a fraction of the funds required for "continually combating the dam's consequential damage" and 500,000 hectares (1,900 sq mi) of fertile land could be reclaimed from the layers of mud on the bed of the drained reservoir.

[31] According to a 1971 CIA declassified report, although the High Dam has not created ecological problems as serious as some observers have charged, its construction has brought economic losses as well as gains.

Also, the damage inflicted on a main transformer station in 1968 by Israeli commandos has been repaired, and the Aswan plant is fully integrated with the power network in Lower Egypt.

Heavy summer irrigation use, however, will leave insufficient water under Egyptian control to permit hydroelectric power production at full capacity in the winter.

Some were moved to a newly created settlement on the shore of Lake Nasser called New Wadi Halfa, and some were resettled approximately 700 kilometres (430 mi) south to the semi-arid Butana plain near the town of Khashm el-Girba up the Atbara River.

Before the construction of the High Dam, the Nile deposited sediments of various particle size – consisting of fine sand, silt and clay – on fields in Upper Egypt through its annual flood, contributing to soil fertility.

During summer when evaporation was highest, the groundwater level was too deep to allow salts dissolved in the water to be pulled to the surface through capillary action.

[46] Contrary to many predictions made prior to the Aswan High Dam construction and publications that followed, that the prevalence of schistosomiasis (bilharzia) would increase, it did not.

Large-scale treatment programmes in the 1990s using single-dose oral medication contributed greatly to reducing the prevalence and severity of S. mansoni in the Delta.

[44] Before the construction of the High Dam, the 50,000 km (31,000 mi) of irrigation and drainage canals in Egypt had to be dredged regularly to remove sediments.