Michael Spero Papers (Mss. Gr. 156)

Biographical note

Michael Spero was born June 17, 1910, in Newport, Rhode Island. He graduated from Rhode Island State College in 1934 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. During his extensive career as a civil engineer, he was involved in the planning and construction of more than five hundred dams in the United States.

From 1973 to 1975, Spero was employed by the United Nations as Expert, Planning Engineer, and Advisor to the Government of Afghanistan Irrigation and Water Resources Development Authority to draft a plan of development for Afghanistan water resources. The project aimed to raise the economic and agricultural subsistence level of the country through improving its water resources apparatus including the evaluation and restoration of dams, hydroelectric powerplants, and irrigation infrastructures.

The work Spero performed in Afghanistan is unique and vital to researchers because it represents the only internationally sanctioned project that was allowed to take place before the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the consequent rise of the Taliban regime that suspended all foreign activity and banished the Western media from its borders.