Aruba, one of the Dutch Caribbean islands with a semi-arid climate, has practically no natural freshwater resources. It
is geographically located approximately 20 miles north of the coast of the Península de Paraguaná of Venezuela. In the
pre-industrial era, before seawater desalination, the small population (mainly immigrated aboriginal inhabitants from the
mainland of South America) used the scarcely available surface and groundwater for their drinking water supply. In the
rainy seasons rainwater is collected in the dry stream beds and in the colonial-period houses were built with cisterns to
effectively collect rainwater. In those days peeled off cactus plants were applied as a natural coagulation treatment of the
muddy surface water to improve its quality as drinking water. The first application of the seawater desalination technology
started already in the period of 1903 to 1917 for the production of process water for the Gold Mining Company. Commercial
desalination however started in 1932, with the beginning of the booming economy era due to industrialization and further
on with the increasing tourism. Since then seawater desalination became the most import source for water augmentation
especially for the production of drinking water and industrial water. The desalination activities in Aruba have followed
the desalination development trend in the world. Since the early desalination years till recently the thermal desalination
(the Multi Effect Distillation and the Multi Stage Flashing evaporation) was the main dominating desalination technology.
In 2008, their desalination supremacy had been taken over by the nowadays more energy efficient Seawater Reverse
Osmosis membrane technology. Freshwater produced by seawater desalination is very pure and re-mineralization and
addition of effective corrosion inhibitors are very important for the conditioning of drinking water. In Aruba natural dissolution
of fossilized coral stones and addition of polyphosphates were always used for the post treatment to mitigate iron and
copper corrosion causing brown water and blue water in the water distribution network. This paper outlines the important
history of drinking water supply in Aruba from primitive treatment and supply toward seawater desalination for the reliable
production of fresh water and will also elaborate on the effective post physicochemical conditioning of one of the world’s
highest chemical and bacteriological quality drinking water. The high quality drinking water and good maintenance of the
distribution system resulted in a low percentage of Non-Revenue Water and a low Infrastructure Leakage Index. The
subject discussed in this paper may be beneficial for Small Islands Developing States with limited fresh water resources
to consider the application of seawater desalination for their freshwater augmentation and to effectively reduce the water
losses in the distribution system which is very important for cost effective drinking water management.