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Palm Island

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THE DUBAI PALMS: CONSTRUCTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES ETHAN POLIE

In the late twentieth century, the Middle Eastern nation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) began to make plans to distance itself from the petroleum industry that dominates most of the Persia. Driven by the fact that internal experts believe the country’s oil reserves will be depleted by the year 2012, the UAE is attempting to transition to a service industry, with a major focus on tourism, retail, and entertainment. In order to transform its economy, the UAE is first focusing of the already advanced city of Dubai, which is the first tax free, centrally-planned, freemarket capitalist society in the Middle East (1). With an economy valued at over forty six billion …show more content…

At this point, the island began to show shape, but rose only several feet above the surface of the water. The final step was to dredge over 8,500,000 m3 (302,000,000 ft3) of ocean sand onto the top of the base structure in order to create habitable islands. This sea sand increased the island’s height to 4 m (13 ft) above low tide (6). In order to quickly, yet precisely acquire and distribute the sand, fleets of dredging vessels and massive transport/delivery ships were brought from a European manufacturer. Dredging In dredging millions of cubic meters of sea bed, the project used specialized cutter suction dredgers in order to apply the sand to the desired surface. A cutter suction dredger, according to the European Dredging Association (EuDA), is a large rig with a powerful underwater suction tube generally 10 - 100 cm in diameter extended angularly from the centroid of the vessel with a large crane extending from the rear of the ship to stabilize the tube (7). Due to the dense makeup of the Persian Gulf, the dredgers had a cutting head at the base of the tube. This head chews through the rock bed with over 5,000kW cutting power. It was equipped with a massive jet dredge system powered by a submerged pump attached to the tube to help pull the destroyed bedrock into the ship (8 & 9). The jet dredge systems create an extreme negative pressure in the pipe, which creates a basic Bernoulli venturie tube effect.

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