as opposed to wastewater : المجاري

The adjective "municipal" does not apply to "water" per se. It applies to both "water" and "wastewater." In other words, the conjuction "and" does not conjoin "municipal water" and "wastewater," but rather "water" and "wastewater," with the adjective "municipal" applying to both.

So "water," in this case refers to ordinary water, which explains why it does not need any modifier. It becomes "drinking water" or "potable water" only after treatment.

So, if you want to be faithful to the original construction, the phrase "water and municipal water" is to be translated:

الماء وماء الصرف
أو المياه ومياه الصرف

If you find the construction awkward, you can (preferably with client consent) construct it as

مياه الشرب والصرف

In this construction, مياه الشرب means water intended for drinking (after treatment).

So what about "municipal"?

The truth is that "municipal" here should not be translated literally as

البلدية

The reason is that this would be very confusing to the intended audience, because water treatment authorities are not always part of the municipal government. In many places, water is too precious to be left to the discretion of the locals, so it is run by a national-level authority, even a cabinet levl ministry in some countries.

Therefore, it should be translated as

عمومية

So the whole phrase, now that we have parsed it to smithereens, becomes

المياه ومياه الصرف العمومية
أو مياه الشرب والصرف العمومية

Dear prozers, kindly try to change encoding to Arabic (iso) or Arabic (windows)in case you can not see Arabic.


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Note added at 2 days 9 hrs 37 mins (2005-03-10 22:39:35 GMT)
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Fuad is right and I am wrong (These two words are not a unit), the English term misguided me because there was no context when I answered.

Dear All,

I currently work in the field of environment, and more particularly in wastewater.

I can tell you with confidence that the term municipal here refers strictly to the SOURCE (and use) of the water, that is as opposed to industrial wastewater, stormwater (rain + debris etc..), or agricultural wastewater (runoff, pesticides, etc..).

However in Arabic the word "municipal" in this sentence can be expressed differently for 'water' and 'wastewater' as follows:

municipal water = مياه الشفة / الشرب
municipal wastewater = المياه المبتذلة المنزلية / مياه الصرف الصحي المنزلي

The first refers to drinking water, while the second to wastewater of municipal source (refered to as domestic source - interchangeably).

The word عمومية indicates public ownership and is inapplicable.
The word بلدية is a direct translation and can not be really used in this context.

So Foud's reasoning is perfectly correct.