area's potential by the group Syneba (1929–1939), yet the outbreak of World War II and the dissolution of Syneba put a temporary end to progress on the site. Atlantropa, a scheme for integrating Europe and Africa conceived by Herman Soergel in the 1920s, included a proposal to dam the Congo River. In this plan, the water would have been used to irrigate the deserts of North Africa, and to generate 22.5 to 45 gigawatts of power. Belgian plan Despite the lack of progress during and in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the tantalizing possibilities offered by the Inga Falls remained prominent in engineers' minds. The 1954 book Engineers' Dreams listed a host of massive projects that could theoretically be accomplished (among them the future Channel Tunnel), the largest being an Inga Dam that would create a lake stretching into the Sahara Desert. Before Congolese independence, the Belgians still harbored the hope of constructing a massive Inga development project to generate electricity for heavy industry. Among those industries discussed were "aluminum, ferro-alloys, the treatment of ores, paper, and a plant for the separation of isotopes." Their vision, at least publicly, was bold, with one authority comparing the potential industrial development in the Congo to the German Ruhr. There was an important American connection to the project in the form of Clarence E. Blee, one of five foreigners on a 10-person study of the Inga site in 1957 and the chief engineer of the United States' foray into federal electrical and industrial development, the Tennessee Valley Authority. This study would play a central role in convincing the Belgian authorities to set an Inga dam in motion. An Inga scheme, loosely reported as consisting of a "series of power stations and dams", was finally passed by the Belgian Cabinet on 13 November 1957, and a group was slated to be created in order to study the possible uses of the project's electricity and the ways in which to fund it. The Cabinet's plan was estimated at the time to cost US$3.16 billion and was expected to generate 25,000 MW. A report from late April 1958 stated that excavation work would hopefully begin by midyear, with 1964/1965 as the year set to bring the initial stage to completion. Plans called for three stages of construction, beginning with a 1,500 MW plant with a $320 million price tag, then twice that capacity,