Umgeni Water's area of supply covers 7000 sq km and has a population of approximately 5 million people of which only about 60% have access to safe drinking water while a lessor percentage have adequate sanitation facilities. The terrain in the rural areas tends to be extremely hilly and thus presents a problem for water engineers to design cost effective systems to serve the people. The bulk of the population live in a wide variety of concentrations throughout the area, but generally centering in and around the Greater Metropolitan Areas of the cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Umgeni Water has set itself the objective of providing potable water for all in its area by the year 2005. The reasoning behind, and the methodology used in, the approach to the rural areas was the subject matter of Umgeni Water's presentation to the AWWA Conference in Vancouver in 1992. This paper presents how, in Umgeni Water's experience, the provision and subsequent administration of water supply schemes to rural communities promotes the empowerment process and the empowerment of the people living in these areas. Two case studies are also presented.