The Great Water Heist: How Corporations Are Literally Stealing Our Most Precious Resource

A permit to drain 1.15 million gallons daily is how much!? Welcome to America's most brazen corporate welfare scheme

How much would you pay for a one-time fee to extract 1,150,000 gallons of water a day from an aquifer? You could use that water to bottle it and sell it for a dollar a bottle or even more at some places. Well, in Florida it's a $115 one-time fee for that extraction limit. That happened at Ginnie Springs. I think it's a great value for the corporation at $0.000028 per gallon. That's an incredible markup as well. Assuming the bottle sells for one dollar, we're looking at a markup of exceeding 3.5 million percent. Bottled water costs 2,000 times more than tap water, and yet some people only drink it. This whole system is predicated on legalized theft of public resources, and it is wrong.

The Water Cartel's Greatest Hits

Nestlé is probably the biggest customer and culprit here, but there are others. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are also major extractors. In the United States, there are over 170,000 monitoring wells, and they've shown 30% of aquifers are in decline, in part because of this theft of water from the water cycle locally. The geographical concentration also happens to be in drought-prone areas such as California, Florida, and Michigan. Billions of gallons annually are taken from the public sector and put into the private sector at barely any cost. The revenue was $4.5 billion for North American bottled water alone.

California's Strawberry Creek: A Case Study in Environmental Vandalism

Let's look at some examples. We'll start in California's Strawberry Creek, where 45 million gallons were extracted in 2018 alone. The Forest Service determined the operations "impaired" the creek. (Shocker.) Nestlé extracted about 25 times more water than it could legally justify under its claimed rights. This water-use scheme had a $524 annual fee for 30 million gallons from public forests. It dried the creek beds, wildlife died and moved on. A small price to pay for corporate profit.

Michigan's Great Lakes: The Flint Water Crisis's Evil Twin

Michigan's Great Lakes are also being exploited. You can pay a $200 annual fee for 130 million gallons. We can put this in context with the Flint water crisis, where residents were paying high prices for contaminated water. When Nestlé's permit was expanded, there were 80,945 public comments against it, with 75 comments supporting the expansion. Guess what happened? It was approved anyway. A court ruling found that Nestlé was solely responsible for draining the Dead River watershed. Clean water was extracted while communities suffered. Business as usual for the water cartels.

Florida: Where Sinkholes and Corporate Greed Collide

Florida is another prime example. The Santa Fe River flow is down 28% from historical levels. Every time you hear about a sinkhole, there's a good chance it's near a spring where water extraction was a potential contributing factor, because sinkholes can happen with aquifer depletion. That one-time $115 fee I mentioned before is obscene. A few years back, they tried to tax the companies like one cent per 10 gallons, and the corporation threatened to leave and destroy several hundred jobs, which caused the legislature to back down. This water extraction is 900 times more environmentally damaging per gallon than other withdrawals because it specifically targets the headwaters of springs and rivers, disrupting entire downstream ecosystems that depend on consistent flow.

Maine: Where the Original Spring Ran Dry 50 Years Ago

Maine's rural communities are also under siege. Poland Spring withdraws 1 billion gallons annually while it pays $34,000 in property taxes at one facility. They have a 45-year contract for up to 220 million gallons yearly. Wells are running dry during droughts while extraction continues. Fun fact: the original Poland Spring ran dry 50 years ago, but tell that to corporate branding.

The Rigged System: When Permits Cost Less Than a Nice Dinner

The permit cost versus company profits is obscene. In Texas, companies pay around $1,000 annually for permits to extract millions of gallons. Nevada charges $300 per year for similar volumes. Meanwhile, profit margins are 35 to 200% on individual bottles. The company BlueTriton is valued at $4.3 billion while paying hundreds of dollars - not hundreds of thousands or hundreds of millions, but hundreds of dollars - in permits. When you calculate the profit margins, it's over 10,000 times the permit costs alone. Insanity.

The Legal Loopholes That Make It All Possible

Some states still follow "absolute dominion" rules, which essentially mean that if you own land, you can pump as much groundwater as you can squeeze from beneath it, regardless of the impact on neighbors. It's like being able to drain your neighbor's pool because you dug a deeper hole. Water rights dating to pioneer days are being repurposed for industrial extraction on a massive scale.

The water rights system west of the Mississippi operates on a "first in time, first in right" principle, vastly different from eastern states. In the West, water rights are property rights that can be bought, sold, and transferred. Eastern states generally follow riparian rights, where landowners have reasonable use of water adjacent to their property. Many western water rights include "use it or lose it" provisions that actually encourage overconsumption. If you don't use your full allocation, you might lose it. Regulatory interpretations in this area almost always favor corporate interests over public welfare.

The Tax Scam You've Never Heard Of

There are federal water depletion tax credits in eight states that allow companies to deduct water as a "depleted asset," similar to oil. These tax deductions can actually increase with more water consumed during droughts because the water is considered a "loss" for tax purposes. Nearly 3,000 Texas landowners claimed drought depletion credits, meaning they got tax breaks for using more water during a drought. It's a massive wealth transfer from public to private that hardly anyone talks about. Even if companies were just taking tap water and putting it in bottles while paying the same rate you pay, they'd still be making obscene sums.

The Revolving Door and Regulatory Capture

There's a revolving door here, in case you hadn't guessed already. Former regulators often move on to work for bottled water companies. An example from Maine was that three Public Utilities Commissioners all had Nestlé ties - one was a former lobbyist, another an attorney, and the third a consultant for the company. At the federal level, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman sits on Nestlé's board. The FDA initially ruled that Nestlé was selling groundwater labeled as "spring water" in California, then mysteriously reversed course after a former FDA official working for Nestlé intervened. The corruption is so blatant it's almost comical.

Lobbying is a thing too. Companies spent $634,000 in Maine over a decade and $280,000 in federal lobbying by water companies in 2020 alone. There's a Trump administration executive order protecting "private property rights" that has been used by water companies to justify extraction from public lands. State-level influence operations show similar patterns - in Michigan, four Nestlé lobbyists descended on lawmakers when water tax legislation was proposed. In California, the company hired former state officials to navigate regulatory challenges.

Community Manipulation: Boy Scouts and Blackmail

The corporations also manipulate communities through predatory targeting of economically vulnerable areas. They make pitifully small donations to local Boy Scouts, sports teams, and community events to buy positive PR while draining the life away from a community. There are job promises and economic development claims that almost never pan out. Maybe a couple dozen jobs here and there, but it's essentially a pump that doesn't require much in the way of people power - most of the jobs can be automated. In Michigan, Nestlé provided new ambulances and baseball fields to rural townships while extracting millions of gallons. In Maine, they bought ski equipment for high schools and sponsored local fairs. This allows them to legally intimidate community opponents because they're everywhere, they're so powerful in the community, and everyone loves them. So how could we possibly stand up to them? The answer is very easily (you just stand up) but it can be intimidating.

Environmental Devastation: The True Cost of Convenience

Let's look at the environmental impact. Aquifer depletion rates scare me the most. We're losing 25 cubic kilometers yearly as of 2008, and I'm not sure what we're at now, but it kind of sucks. Some of it is irreversible. In Florida, for example, when the aquifer level drops, saltwater intrusion happens, and if the fresh water refills that part of the aquifer, it is then saltwater, not freshwater. I guess we're going to need to invest in desalination technology because all the freshwater was taken by the water bottlers.

A lot of times they concentrate their extraction at springs, which can cause disproportionate damage downstream to river and lake ecosystems. This leads to wildlife habitat loss as trout streams no longer support fish and manatees can't navigate as easily. It causes wetland destruction and biodiversity collapse.

The Climate Cost of Convenience

On the climate side, 17 million barrels of oil are used annually for plastic bottle production. Three liters of water are consumed to produce one liter of bottled water. Transportation emissions from long-distance shipping add up. Water is not exactly light, so you're lugging it around and burning a lot of fossil fuels. The carbon footprint is somewhere between 300 and 3,500 times higher than tap water. But hey, it's convenient, so we should only drink bottled water, right?

It also adds to our plastic pollution problem. Did you know that 1 million plastic bottles are purchased per minute globally? (That’s 20k per second.) Ninety-one percent of plastic waste is never recycled. 1.6 billion pounds of plastic enter our oceans annually. Microplastics have been found at higher levels in bottled water than in tap water, though tap water is catching up because microplastics are pretty much everywhere these days, including in your body.

Environmental Justice: Guess Who Gets Screwed

Beyond the climate impacts, there are environmental justice ones as well. Shockingly, there's a pattern of extraction in communities of color and low-income areas. You can juxtapose the Flint water crisis with nearby clean water extraction. California has drought restrictions on residents and farmers while corporate extractions happen freely. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? There are also indigenous communities' treaty rights and water sovereignty that are often neglected or trampled upon. Wells run dry in extraction zones and contamination risks increase, but they keep on draining the water. There's reduced access to clean water for vulnerable populations, but they keep on pumping. That doesn't even get into the health impacts from plastic pollution and chemical leaching.

Fighting Back: David vs. Goliath (With Better Lawyers)

But they're not invincible. People have stood up and fought. Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation had a great court win, forcing Nestlé to reduce pumping and pay for environmental monitoring. California sent cease-and-desist orders against BlueTriton, ultimately forcing them to abandon operations in San Bernardino National Forest. Indigenous treaty rights challenges have been particularly effective, with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians successfully challenging extraction in Michigan. The Story of Stuff Project's lawsuit helped expose that Nestlé was taking 25 times more water than legally permitted in California.

Local initiatives can be more successful than state or federal efforts. Hood River County had a ballot measure banning bottled water that passed overwhelmingly despite Nestlé spending $105,000 to defeat it. Washington's state senate voted to ban new permits, declaring bottled water extraction "detrimental to public welfare," though it stalled in the house after industry lobbying. In Ontario, a moratorium forced Nestlé's withdrawal entirely - the company sold its Canadian operations and shut down major bottling plants by 2024 due to "fierce community opposition."

Successful Resistance Strategies

Some successful methods include citizen science monitoring. Jim Maturen, an 83-year-old in Michigan, documented stream temperature changes that provided crucial evidence in court cases, showing how Nestlé's extraction made water too warm for trout survival. Coalition building between environmental groups and indigenous groups has been particularly effective. In Michigan, the combination of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation and the Grand Traverse Band created legal and political pressure that companies couldn't ignore.

Public pressure campaigns and media activism work too. Anytime you can write a letter to the editor (or other kind of publication or post) in the neighborhood where this is happening, it's a benefit. Communities need to develop alternative infrastructure like public fountains and refill stations, but local utilities also need to provide clean and potable tap water that doesn't taste gross, doesn't look gross, and just works. That can be expensive, but if local communities don't need to purchase bottled water to survive or boil their water to survive, they might be more in favor of stopping extraction.

International Models: How Other Countries Got It Right

As often is the case with environmental and climate regulations, Europe is ahead of the United States. They have a Water Framework Directive requiring all water bodies to achieve "good ecological status" by 2027, meaning healthy ecosystems with sustainable water use across entire river basins. In 2020, they established a human right to water and sanitation, requiring member states to ensure affordable access for all citizens. That would be nice to have in our country, wouldn't it? This matters because it legally prioritizes human needs over corporate profits. They also have ecosystem-based management with strong enforcement mechanisms and comprehensive monitoring with public reporting requirements. This is a stark contrast to the U.S., where companies often conduct their own environmental studies in secret.

Learning from Our Northern Neighbors

Canadian provinces are also doing well. Ontario's permit moratorium and stricter regulations have protected natural resources by requiring companies to prove no environmental harm before extraction permits are granted. Federal-provincial coordination on water protection works well because both levels of government must agree on major water decisions, preventing corporate forum shopping between jurisdictions. This could be a model for the U.S., where companies often play states against each other. Municipal leadership in banning bottled water purchases has been particularly effective, with cities like Toronto and Vancouver eliminating bottled water from city facilities and events.

The Water Down Under

Australia is a very dry country, and they have strong local action. Bundanoon was the first town globally to ban bottled water sales in 2009, replacing it with public fountains and a "Bundy on Tap" campaign promoting reusable bottles. Their community-driven alternatives and public infrastructure investment show how towns can thrive without plastic bottles filled with water. Unlike the U.S., their regulatory framework prevents corporate capture by requiring independent environmental assessments and giving communities real veto power over extraction projects.

The Path Forward: What We Can Do

To bring the U.S. to where it needs to be, we need to expand FDA oversight and testing requirements. Currently, the FDA devotes only 2.6 full-time positions to bottled water inspections nationwide and doesn't regulate cryptosporidium, BPA, or microplastics. We should tax water extraction on the federal level, even if we just did one cent per gallon (or per ten gallons!), it would raise substantial revenue and might make bottled water expensive enough to discourage consumption. We need to eliminate water depletion tax allowances that reward overconsumption during droughts, require environmental impact assessments for major extractions instead of giving 50-year permits, and establish national groundwater protection standards.

If every state adopted California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act model, things would be a lot better. This law requires local agencies to achieve "sustainable yield" within 20 years through comprehensive monitoring and extraction limits, closing loopholes that allow unlimited pumping. Per-gallon extraction charges would ensure companies pay fair market value for public resources. We need to close water rights loopholes like "free river conditions" (which allow unlimited pumping when rivers are full) and establish water trust funds from extraction revenues to protect the natural resources damaged by water extraction.

What You Can Do Right Now

Consumer choices matter. Refillable bottles are great (I love them and have so many of those little Yetis and tumblers around my house.) Tap water might not taste the best, but you know what's cheaper than a couple cases of bottled water? A water filter. You just keep it in your fridge and pour it. You can also get your refrigerator to have a fancy filter so your ice and water taste lovely. Modern refrigerators can have multiple options.

You can contact your representatives about water protections - that's always helpful, especially if you live in an area where they extract water from the ground like this. Support organizations fighting water privatization like Food and Water Watch or Story of Stuff Project. There might even be one near you. Participate in local water governance and planning. Often this stuff is decided at meetings nobody shows up to because it's at a level of government most people don't deal with in their day-to-day lives or even know about. Stay informed, stay involved.

Water as a Human Right, Not Corporate Commodity

I truly believe that water is a human right. Water is essential for human survival - you die within a couple of days without it. Something that's essential for life should not be exploited for profit. The public trust doctrine and democratic governance show us that water belongs to everyone, not just those who can afford to buy it back in plastic bottles. We have an intergenerational responsibility for water protection. If water runs out, your grandkids might not have it. Do you want that? If all the aquifers run dry or are contaminated with saltwater, it would be a tragedy with costs for everybody, fundamentally altering entire ecosystems, because things like desalination aren't cheap and most plants can't survive in brackish or saltwater.

This is another one of those issues that requires systemic change. We need to end corporate welfare through water giveaways and prioritize public health over private profits. We should strengthen democratic control over water resources and value them more than we do. Just because we've had easy tap water in living memory doesn't mean we always will, and it doesn't mean everyone in the country always has. There are many examples of people who lost access to easy and cheap potable water and how it completely altered their lives, from Flint, Michigan to communities near fracking operations where water became flammable.

We need to transition to sustainable water governance models that benefit communities, not corporations. This means robust public water systems serving all communities with good quality water, ecosystem protection and restoration priorities specific to different regions, and frankly, we should just stop all new extraction permits and figure out what the problems are before we let companies do any more damage.

Climate change will make these issues worse as changing precipitation patterns, increased droughts, and extreme weather events stress water systems further. We need corporate accountability and environmental justice. If people's wells start running dry because of the Nestlé plant nearby, Nestlé needs to be punished and required to fix the issues, no matter the cost. They caused the problem; they should fix it.

The immediate steps are simple: bring your own reusable bottle, support organizations fighting water privatization, engage with local water governance, and contact your representatives. And remember, every time you choose tap water over bottled, you're saving money and fighting against one of the most brazen corporate resource grabs in American history. And if that's not something worth raising a glass of tap water to, what is?