Assessing the Socio-economic Effects of Reservoir Dam Construction, Case Study; Siahzakh in Divandareh, Iran

The socio-economic and environmental consequences of dam construction can be irreversible. The ecosystem of reservoir dams is only examined prior to the construction and the effects of post-construction are not investigated. The main purpose of this qualitative-quantitative research is to estimate the economical-social effects of siazakh dam on the people living in the surrounding area. The research’s statistical society in quantitative part includes the rural house supervisors (households). In this research, the whole population of 1659, including 350 family, was considered as the case study. By the Cochran formula, 183 of the households were determined, for including the error probability, 200 questionnaires were considered. Factor analysis and SPSS software packages were applied to analyze the data. The statistical society in qualitative part includes the councils (up and down streams), regional water office and village office (n=41). The mind map diagram technique, content analyzing and GIS software are used in order to analyze data. According to the results of a multi-criteria analysis, the most important positive effects of this project were improving the region's agriculture, providing drinking water, increasing the irrigated area, controlling the flood, increasing land value, improving tourism and the income level. The most significant negative impacts were forced displacement of upstream, the demolition of the main occupations of the upstream (livestock, agriculture), the creation of false occupations among residents, the destruction of mosques and schools, environmental damage and the cutting of trees and land ownership in upstream of the dam. The research shows the positive effects of the design on the bottom of the dam outweigh its negative effects, while the negative effects of the dam are more than its positive effects in the upstream of the dam. Irrigational cultivation in upstream of dam is decreased to half, while the area under cultivation got to 3.5 fold in downstream of dam.