Desalination is the only way that the countries around the Arabian Gulf will have enough water for their needs since they have neither rain nor rivers, and their aquifers are being sucked dry.
However, desalination brings serious dangers for the marine environment, which have been overlooked for decades as the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran have gone ahead and built 120 desalination plants to date.
The process of desalination involves boiling sea water so that fresh water steams off, leaving highly salty brine behind, which is pumped back into the sea. There are three problems with this brine, as Gulf News reports today on page 8.
First, it is very salty, so that year after year the salinity of the Gulf is rising. Second, it is hot, so that the temperature of the Gulf is being raised. Third, the brine contains an alarming volume of chlorine, antiscalants and copper, which are being dumped into the sea.
What makes it worse is that the Gulf is an almost completely closed sea, since the Strait of Hormuz is so narrow, and the only river coming into the Gulf is the Euphrates far to the north. This means that any pollutants from desalination (or any other industry) simply accumulate.
The countries bordering the Gulf need to take action to avoid destroying the Gulf. If they have the option, they should have the desalination plants outside the Gulf, such as on the Red Sea or Arabian Sea coasts.
But they all have to take action to clean up the brine before it is pumped back into the Gulf, otherwise they will both destroy the Gulf as a marine environment, and also make desalination more and more difficult as the increasingly salty water goes round and round in hundreds of desalination plants.
