The Darunta Dam is located on the Kabul River near the village of Darunta, approximately 7 km west of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan. It is owned and operated by the country's Ministry of Energy and Water. The dam's hydroelectric power station is being rehabilitated at a cost of $10.5 million.

History

Darunta Dam was built in the early 1960s under the supervision of engineers from the Soviet Union. Its power station contains three vertical Kaplan turbines (six-blade propeller) with a rated output of 3.85 MW each. Originally, the dam supplied 40 to 45 MW of electrical power but silting and damage to the system during the decades of war has reduced its actual output to 11.5 MW. In 2011, an American company by the name of ANHAM was contracted by USAID to perform the initial rehabilitation of the Darunta power plant. Later, the USAID abandoned the repair work due to Gul Agha Sherzai not paying 10% of the project's $11 million total cost. Sherzai was Nangarhar's governor at the time.