Application of Water Safety Plans to Improve Desalination Water Supply at Matrouh Governorate, Egypt

Water resources in Egypt - represented by the Nile water, renewable groundwater, and some scant annual precipitation-have been exhausted. Further development measures require a review of current water allocations in order to raise efficiencies and protect against pollution, in addition to exploring new options of nonconventional water resources to narrow the gap between water supply and demand. This paper aims to provide the steps and evaluate the impact of the implementation of WSP for a desalination supply system in Matrouh governorate, as one of the northern areas in Egypt that suffer from water shortage. Based on the outputs of the study two layers (institutional and operational) have significant improvement in terms of coordination between stakeholders internally and externally. Internally, a complete description of the water supply chain has been done that led to proper corrective actions assigned to definite members of the WSP team. Externally coordination through group meetings and negotiation has also been achieved. Finally, this research concluded that water desalination as a conventional water resource should be considered as an imperative measure for water security in Egypt. Besides effort should be done to encourage the participation of the customers which is essential in such cases of highly costly water that needs rationalization of use and cost acceptance.