At the same time, an international effort was made to excavate and document as many archaeological remains as possible in the area of the future lake before they would be flooded by the rising water.

When the flow of the Euphrates was reduced in 1974 to fill the lake behind the dam, a dispute broke out between Syria and Iraq (which is downstream) that was settled by intervention from Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union.

The dam would include a hydroelectric power station with eight turbines capable of producing 880 MW in total, and would irrigate an area of 640,000 hectares (2,500 sq mi) on both sides of the Euphrates.

[1] To facilitate the project, as well as the construction of irrigation works on the Khabur River, the national railway system (Chemins de Fer Syriens) was extended from Aleppo to the dam, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and eventually Qamishli.

Slightly earlier, the Turkish government had started filling the reservoir of the newly constructed Keban Dam, and at the same time the area was hit by significant drought.

[22][23] Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European travellers had already noted the presence of numerous archaeological sites in the area that would be flooded by the new reservoir.

[27] Between 1965 and 1970, foreign archaeological missions carried out systematic excavations at the sites of Mureybet (United States), Tell Qannas (Habuba Kabira) (Belgium), Mumbaqa (Germany), Selenkahiye (Netherlands), and Emar (France).

With help from UNESCO, two minarets at Mureybet and Meskene were photogrammetrically measured, and a protective glacis was built around the castle Qal'at Ja'bar.

In 1971, with support from UNESCO, Syria appealed to the international community to participate in the efforts to salvage as many archaeological remains as possible before the area would disappear under the rising water of Lake Assad.

Syrian archaeologists worked at the sites of Tell al-'Abd, 'Anab al-Safinah, Tell Sheikh Hassan, Qal'at Ja'bar, Dibsi Faraj and Tell Fray.

There were missions from the United States on Tell Hadidi (Azu), Dibsi Faraj, Tell Fray and Shams ed-Din-Tannira; from France on Mureybet and Emar; from Italy on Tell Fray; from the Netherlands on Tell Ta'as, Jebel Aruda and Selenkahiye; from Switzerland on Tell al-Hajj; from Great Britain on Abu Hureyra and Tell es-Sweyhat; and from Japan on Tell Roumeila.

The Tishrin Dam, which functions primarily as a hydroelectric power station, has been constructed 80 kilometres (50 mi) south from the Syria–Turkey border and filling of the reservoir started in 1999.

Dam workers still received pay from the Syrian Government, and fighting in the area temporarily ceased if repairs were needed.

SDF efforts to retake parts of the Al-Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor Governorates, including the area immediately surrounding the dam, began in November 2016.

[36] In January 2017 the Euphrates rose 10 meters due to heavy precipitation and flow mismanagement, disrupting transportation and flooding farmland downstream.

An emergency ceasefire between the Islamic State, US forces, and the Syrian government, otherwise sworn enemies, enabled engineers to make emergency repairs to the dam to prevent it from failing[38] while the Turkish authorities coordinated to close the gates of dams upstream in order to prevent overtopping.

[31] Annual evaporation is 1.3 cubic kilometres (0.31 cu mi) due to the high average summer temperature in northern Syria.

For example, the evaporation at Keban Dam Lake is 0.48 cubic kilometres (0.12 cu mi) per year at roughly the same surface area.

[44] The proposed irrigation scheme suffered from a number of problems, including the high gypsum content in the reclaimed soils around Lake Assad, soil salinization, the collapse of canals that distributed the water from Lake Assad, and the unwillingness of farmers to resettle in the reclaimed areas.