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Desalination plants pose ecological problem in Gulf
 A worker prunes plants at the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai. The Centre also provides potable water for member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. (Reuters) |
ABU DHABI—Water desalination plants in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf region, have proven to be both a blessing and a curse. While desalination plants are considered a vital component in providing the region's cities with drinking water, they are also responsible for increased levels of salt in the surrounding sea.
Environmental experts say that there is serious cause for concern. Shawki Al-Barghouti, the director of the International Centre for Local Agriculture in Dubai, said that the countries of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE “all have desalination plants along the Gulf shore. The brine produced by these desalination plants is being dumped back into the ocean, adding more salt to a decreased amount of water, thereby increasing the effort required in subsequent desalination cycles.”
Environmentalists and health researchers are now questioning whether desalination plants are truly beneficial. Some experts believe that the sea may reach the point of "peak salinity," at which point further desalination is no longer economically or environmentally feasible.
The Gulf States are not the only countries in the region concerned with obtaining potable water. Experts say that water levels in all parts of the Middle East are decreasing at an alarming rate. While desalination plants may temporarily solve the problem of drinking water shortages, the levels of saline contaminants poured back into the region's water sources will ultimately contribute to their depletion.
Jordan, in particular, faces a drastic reduction in water levels, as both the Dead Sea and the Jordan River are slowly drying up. Its Ministry of Irrigation and the Environment recently completed work on a new kind of filter to purify water from Jordanian desert aquifers with the hope of preventing the further pollution of water sources.
Sources: Al-Rai / The National
Reader Comments
The expansion in the building of desalination plants without assessing their environmental impacts in the long run may cause a decline in the dissolved oxygen in the water, because of the high temperatures, which would kill the aquatic creatures, and it would change the physical characteristics of the water, and fill up the sea with earth. All these factors will affect the aquatic systems and change their course of life completely causing them to gradually become extinct. In addition, this causes the land to sink down in the long run.
In addition to what was mentioned in the article, there is another danger represented in the rise in the temperature of the Gulf water as a result of evaporation. The deepest point in the Gulf is only 30 meters, as mentioned by Dr. Ali Ishq, professor of environmental science. Hence, the influence on the marine environment is very clear. There is another serious issue, and it is more dangerous than the desalination plants. I mean the operations of filling in the sea to expand the area. This affects the mangrove plants, which play an extremely important role in the marine food chain. The real threat is that the damages that result from the work of filling in the sea are irreparable.
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