This book shares essential insights on evaporites and their effects on dams and reservoirs. The
intensity of the solution and suffusion process in evaporites (gypsum and salt) is much greater
than the solution of carbonates and evaporites are particularly vulnerable at dam and
reservoir sites. Moreover the presence of evaporites in the vicinity of dams or reservoirs
often leads to serious problems: numerous dams in countries around the world (e.g. China
Germany Iran Iraq Peru Russia Spain the Unites States and Venezuela) have been affected
by evaporite dissolution problems. Several of these dams were seriously endangered or
ultimately abandoned even though the best available engineering prevention and remediation
practices were applied. Conventional geotechnical methods based on treating the underground
(e.g. grout curtains) or surface (e.g. protective blankets) were not successful. This book
presents and analyzes revealing case studies in this regard. To improve geotechnical
remediation in connection with preventing seepage from reservoirs situated in evaporites
particularly in gypsum it puts forward a new chemical solution that after painstaking
laboratory testing was successfully applied in the field.
