Climate change, the quantitative and qualitative decline of water resources, and the increasing demand for water consumption are among the most significant challenges for sustainable drinking water management, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. These conditions highlight the urgent need to reconsider conventional approaches to drinking water supply and distribution and to move toward more sustainable solutions. The metropolitan city of Tabriz, due to its semi-arid climate, rapid population growth, and considerable dependence on inter-basin water transfer, has faced serious challenges in ensuring a sustainable drinking water supply in recent years. Accordingly, the present study aims to evaluate and compare alternative drinking water distribution scenarios based on the separation of potable water from domestic (non-potable) water. In this study, five scenarios dual distribution network, local water withdrawal stations, household water treatment systems, bottled water in single-use containers, and bottled water in reusable containers were evaluated using a group multi criteria decision making approach based on the analytic network process and fuzzy decision making within the group fuzzy decision making software. The final ranking of scenarios was performed using the simple additive weighting method. The evaluation was conducted based on five main criteria technical, economic, social, environmental, and political and 18 key sub criteria, including important indicators such as carbon footprint and public acceptance. The required data were collected through expert judgments and the analysis of 659 public questionnaires. The results indicated that the technical (0.1157), economic (0.1089), and social (0.1073) criteria were considered the most important from the decision-makers’ perspective, while the political criterion received the lowest weight. Furthermore, the dual distribution network scenario, with a score of 0.8014, was identified as the most sustainable option and demonstrated superior performance compared with other scenarios across most evaluation criteria. The findings of this study indicate that decision making in sustainable drinking water management requires a comprehensive and multidimensional approach combined with stakeholder participation. This study provides a framework based on group multi-criteria decision-making for the simultaneous evaluation of alternative drinking water distribution scenarios, considering a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria in a semi-arid metropolitan area. The proposed framework can serve as a basis for planning and decision making in other regions facing water stress and similar climatic conditions.