Now reinvigorated and reimagined, the Palm Jebel Ali has been part of the Dubai landscape for more than 20 years.
Construction began in 2002 as part of a hugely ambitious series of artificial offshore islands that included Palm Jumeirah, The World and Palm Deira.
At one stage, it was proposed some of the islands off the Palm Jebel Ali form the shape of a poem written by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai.
The projects were a response to the city’s fast-growing population and a lack of highly desirable beachfront for development. Combined they were to add hundreds of seaside kilometres for new housing and leisure facilities.
Expense aside, creating them would be a huge engineering challenge. For the Palm Jebel Ali, Nakheel, the developer, appointed a Dutch dredging company, the Jan De Nul Group.
By 2006, a 17km breakwater 200 metres wide that would protect the project had been built. More than 10 million tonnes of rock was hauled over land from quarries in Ras Al Khaimah, then loaded into barges and dumped in the sea to form the barrier.
Other material came from the Jebel Ali Entrance Channel dredging works, previously carried out by Jan De Nul – a total of 200 million square metres of cap rock, sand, calcarenite and limestone.
Originally published on: www.msn.com
