*3.1. Water Supply*

It turns out that the intraregional strategies with respect to irrigation water blending only have a minor impact on the water supply patterns in the country as a whole; the total amount of water supplied to all users varies by less than 1% between the FB and RB scenarios. While minor, these changes correspond to the hypothesis that the salinity impact under the RB assumption is exaggerated: the buildup of seawater desalination capacity under the RB scenario is expedited (Figure 3). Consequently, for a short period of time during the middle of the planning horizon, desalinated water replaced some of the natural freshwater and thereby reduced the salinity of the total supplied freshwater. In addition, the agricultural sector obtains slightly larger amounts of freshwater, whereas the freshwater quantities supplied to the urban sector decrease somewhat (not shown).
