1956-00-00: (The Péligre Dam Completed on the Artibonite River, the Largest Hydroelectric Dam on Hispaniola, Designed by the U.S.

1956-00-00: (The Péligre Dam Completed on the Artibonite River, the Largest Hydroelectric Dam on Hispaniola, Designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Built by Brown and Root, Providing Irrigation and Electricity but Degraded by Deforestation): In 1956, the Péligre Dam was completed on the Artibonite River, the largest hydroelectric dam on the island of Hispaniola. The project was designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, financed by the Export-Import Bank, and built by the Texas firm of Brown and Root. The dam created Lake Péligre, the second-largest lake in Haiti, which provided water for irrigation of the rice fields in the Artibonite region, the nation’s most fertile agricultural land. A hydroelectric generator with three turbines, completed in 1971, initially provided Port-au-Prince with most of its electricity. In subsequent decades, however, mismanagement and deforestation, which increased the rate of silt deposition, reduced the dam’s energy-producing capacity to fifty percent. The Péligre Dam was a monument to mid-century development optimism: American engineering applied to Haitian geography, producing genuine benefits that were then degraded by the environmental destruction that no one had the political will to stop.