Thế giới nước đắt đỏ của Dubai

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For a desert (sa mạc) city, Dubai appears like a water wonderland (xứ sở thần tiên). Visitors can scuba dive (lặn biển) in the world’s deepest pool or ski inside a mega mall where penguins (chim cánh cụt) play in freshly made snow. A fountain (đài phun nước) — billed as the world’s largest — sprays (phun) more than 22,000 gallons of water into the air, synchronized (đồng bộ hóa) to music from surrounding speakers.

But to maintain its opulence (sự giàu có), the city relies on fresh water it doesn’t have. So it turns to the sea, using energy-intensive desalination technologies (công nghệ khử muối tiêu tốn nhiều năng lượng) to help hydrate a rapidly growing metropolis.

All of this comes at a cost. Experts say Dubai’s reliance on desalination is damaging the Persian Gulf, producing a brackish (hơi mặn; lợ) waste (chất thải) known as brine (nước muối) which, along with chemicals used during desalination processing, increases salinity in the Gulf. It also raises coastal water temperatures and harms biodiversity (đa dạng sinh học), fisheries and coastal communities.

... In Dubai, the Jebel Ali Power and Desalination Complex — the largest facility of its kind in the world — pipes water from the sea, sending it through a series of treatment phases (giai đoạn xử lý), then to the city as drinkable (có thể uống được) water. But Jebel Ali’s 43 desalination plants (nhà máy) are powered by fossil fuels (nhiên liệu hóa thạch). The U.A.E. produced more than 200 million tons of carbon in 2022, among the highest emissions per capita worldwide.

... The Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, developed by Emaar and designed by Adrian Smith, uses an average of 250,000 gallons of water daily and requires a peak cooling capacity equivalent to roughly 10,000 tons of melted ice. At the foot of the building, the 30-acre Burj Lake and its five dancing fountains use a wastewater reclamation system by Hitachi that reuses the Burj Khalifa’s sewage water to replace fountain water lost each day.

source: nytimes,