Each year on Jan. 9, Egyptians celebrate the anniversary of the 1960 construction of the Aswan Dam, during the reign of late President Gamal Abdel Nasser. But this year’s 54th anniversary was quite different, tinged with fear about the dangerous effects that the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — intended to be built on the Blue Nile — would have on the operations of the Aswan. The latter might be put out of commission for up to two years.

The Egyptian press substituted its hosting of surviving Aswan Dam builders and broadcasts of patriotic songs about its construction with discussions of the Renaissance Dam crisis and its deleterious effects on Egypt’s water supply, as well as its repercussions for the electricity output of the Aswan Dam. An emergency meeting of the Egyptian National Defense Council was convened under the leadership of interim President Adly Mansour to discuss the implications of the crisis and ways to minimize the Ethiopian dam’s negative effects on Egypt.

The various warnings by experts about the dangers of the new Ethiopian dam have begun to cause panic among Egyptians, to the point of belief that the Aswan Dam will collapse once the Renaissance is completed. Alaa al-Zawahiri, a member of the Egyptian National Panel of Experts studying the effects of the Renaissance Dam, believes as much. In many press and television interviews, Zawahiri has said that Ethiopia’s construction of a dam able to hold 74 billion cubic meters of water was a catastrophe for Egypt, which would wind up losing 60% of its agricultural land. He added that a possible collapse of the Renaissance Dam could lead to the collapse of the Aswan Dam, in effect devastating all of Egypt.

Operating the Ethiopian dam in fact would lead to extremely dangerous and devastating effects on the Aswan Dam, according to Mohamed Nassereddine, Egypt’s former minister of water resources and irrigation. Nassereddine told Al-Monitor, “The Aswan Dam will completely cease to operate for two years after the Renaissance Dam reservoir begins to be filled up. Once that reservoir is filled to its 74 billion cubic meter capacity, the water depth at the Aswan Dam will continue to decrease and will not surpass 160 meters during the flood seasons, in the best of cases. In turn, this will reduce its electricity-generating capacity by 30-40%.”