Livingstone Falls
Livingstone Falls | |
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Coordinates | 4°19′19″S 15°12′28″E / 4.32194°S 15.20778°E |
Livingstone Falls (
Description
Livingstone Falls consist of a series of rapids dropping 900 feet (270 m) in 220 miles (350 km). They start downstream of Malebo Pool and end in
History
Although he explored the upper Congo, Livingstone never travelled to this part of the river and the Falls were named in his honour by Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley described the falls as "..the wildest stretch of river that I have ever seen. Take a strip of sea blown over by a hurricane, four miles in length and half a mile in breadth, and a pretty accurate conception of its leaping waves may be obtained. Some of the troughs were 100 yards in length, and from one to the other the mad river plunged. There was first a rush down into the bottom of an immense trough, and then, by its sheer force, the enormous volume would lift itself upward steeply until, gathering itself into a ridge, it suddenly hurled itself 20 or 30 feet straight upward, before rolling down into another trough. If I looked up or down along this angry scene, every interval of 50 or 100 yards of it was marked by wave-towers - their collapse into foam and spray, the mad clash of watery hills, bounding mounds and heaving billows, while the base of either bank, consisting of a long line of piled boulders of massive size, was buried in the tempestuous surf. The roar was tremendous and deafening. I can only compare it to the thunder of an express train through a rock tunnel."[1]: 261–262
Since the falls, which start with the
"Grand Inga" proposed hydroelectric project
Inga Falls on Congo River is a group of rapids in the latter portion of the Livingstone Falls, 177 miles (285 km) after the Malebo Pool. The Congo falls about 96 metres within this set of cataracts. The mean annual flow rate at Inga Falls is about 42,000 cubic metres per second. Given this flow rate and the 96 metre fall, it is possible to calculate that the Inga Falls alone has a power potential of approximately 40 GW.[citation needed]
In 2014, Inga Falls was the site of two large hydro-electric power plants and is being considered for a much larger hydro-electric power generating station known as Grand Inga. The Grand Inga project, if completed, would be the
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 0486256685
- ^ a b Weisberger, Mindy (12 January 2020). "Dying Fish Revealed Congo Is World's Deepest River". livescience.com. LiveScience. Retrieved 14 January 2020.