Shortly after its independence in 1948, the country invested in water infrastructure development, mainly to support irrigated agriculture due to the new necessity for domestic food self-sufficiency (Becker, 2013[so]). The agricultural sector was a priority water recipient; it avoided implementing demand management and its water allocation quotas could not be allocated to the industrial or urban sectors. Until 1996, the Ministry of Agriculture managed the water sector and relied on natural water resources to meet all demands, with agriculture as the primary user. The Ministry kept the political objective of maintaining low water prices for farmers (World Bank, 2017(53]). In the 1970s and 1980s, freshwater sources were fully employed and by the 1990s, a period of severe drought, focus shifted to establish new water supply in replacement of freshwater use (Katz, 2013[S2j).