This paper presents a technique for simultaneous targeting and design in cooling water systems comprising of at least two cooling towers and several cooling water using operations. The presented technique is based on a superstructure from which a mathematical formulation is derived using system specific variables and parameters. It is demonstrated that in a system like this, true optimality can only be realized by a holistic consideration of the entire cooling water system. Consideration of individual subsets of cooling towers with their dedicated cooling water operations yields suboptimal results. Four operational cases are considered and structural considerations of corresponding mathematical formulations presented. The first case results in a linear programming (LP) formulation, the second case yields a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation whilst the other two cases yield mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulations which cannot be exactly linearized. However, in all cases significant improvements in excess of 40% were realized in targeting, without compromising the heat duty of the cooling water using operations. The main objective of this investigation is to debottleneck the overall cooling water supply for the cooling water network. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.