In this paper, we study the problem of designing decentralized reliable state-feedback controllers under a class of actuator failures for a class of linear interconnected discrete-time systems having subsystem and coupling time delays. The failures take into consideration possible outages or partial failures in every single actuator. A decentralized stabilizing reliable feedback controller is derived at the subsystem level to give the closed-loop subsystem delay-dependent robust internal stability with a gamma-level l(2)-gain. The results developed are tested on a representative water quality control example. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.