Work to stabilize Iraq’s endangered 113-m-tall Mosul dam on the Tigris River will require unprecedented engineering effort, warns a Swedish-based soil-mechanic professor with extensive knowledge of the troubled site.

Faced with warnings of an imminent, catastrophic collapse of the earthfill structure causing widespread devastation, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources on March 2 signed up Italy’s Trevi Group to stem leaks under the dam and repair a bottom outlet floodgate.