In late August, the attorney general successfully got the chief justice of an even higher court to overrule federal judges who on the merits of the case against Belo Monte and the environmental impact of river diversion had agreed that the local tribes had the right to a hearing with Congress.

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Simply throwing a new dam onto a river with a diversion would impair some down stream users prior right to use that water.

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River dwelling tribes that number less than a thousand strong worry that when the diversion is through, the river will no longer be navigable and may see some Xingu tributaries dry out for good, impacting their way of life and a key route to the city of Altamira nearby.

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Egypt's Deputy Foreign Minister for African Affairs, Ali Hifni, said that the diversion of the river was not something to worry about, according to the Egyptian state-run news agency Mena.

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The report calls for water diversion controls to ensure that adequate river flows are maintained, restrictions on recreational fishing and aquaculture safeguards.

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The effects of these demented policies have been exacerbated in recent years by Turkey's diversion of Syria's main water source, the Euphrates River, through the construction of dams upstream, and by two years of unrelenting drought.

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The dam calls for diversion of up to 100 kilometers of the Xingu, an Amazon River tributary.

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