Just a thought that ran through my head last night:
If most of the water that is used here comes from desalinization plants, what happens to all the salt that is extracted? That has to be a lot of salt.
This blog began as a description of our life in Al Ain, UAE (United Arab Emirates). Brn worked at the UAE University Libraries Deanship for three years and Bss homeschooled our four children, D, B, P, and O. After returning to the the USA for five years, we are living in Abu Dhabi now.
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Actually, the main byproduct of the desalination plant isn't salt, it's brine, a brine that's so salty it's almost toxic. (Just reducing it to salt would make moving it through the plant almost impossible.) So what to do with the brine? That's a fairly serious problem.
In fact, there has to be a long-term problem with the UAE's water resources overall. Most of what's used here is essentially "fossil water" - water that's pumped out of the ground from aquifers that would theoretically recharge over time, but which, in fact, won't recharge in our lifetime.
Given the country's amazing proliferacy with water - watering deserts to make grass, for example - I predict that sooner or later there will be a crunch that'll require massive changes in water usage.
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