Control water withdrawal

As the song “Rocky Top” immortalized a Southerner’s desire to drink corn from a jar, it seems a growing number of Americans prefer their water from a bottle. The United States leads the world in bottled water consumption despite the noted safety and quality of our public water supplies.

It leads me to ask why. Do we doubt the safety, are we just finicky, or is it just easier to buy a bottle than to remember to bring one with you?

Also, if you get your bottled water delivered to your home or office, you best enjoy it. Ron Donoko, a representative from the International Bottled Water Association who spoke recently at the Maine Water Conference, said this service may soon be going the way of the milkman. From the perspective of the bottled water company, it makes much more sense to make the consumer purchase water from a grocery in small containers than to pay an employee to deliver five-gallon containers. It certainly means higher profits for the company, but compared to the efficient tap-water delivery system, no bottled water delivery system is efficient.

According to Emily Arnold of the Earth Policy Institute, more than 1.5 million barrels of oil goes into plastic container production each year, and only 14 percent of these water bottles are recycled. To add to the inefficiency, a quarter of all bottled water is sold outside of the country of origin. With the approach of peak oil and $70-a-barrel pricing, we can no longer waste this resource. Maybe your Earth Day resolution will be to drink your water from a reusable container.

I am supportive of people consuming more water. If you drink water, you might not be drinking high fructose corn syrup beverages which are adding to the girth of Americans. But does it have to be bottled water? I stopped in at a rest area en route to Aroostook County the other day and I found a water vending machine selling water for $1.50 per 20-ounce bottle. If you do the math, this is more than three times the current cost of gasoline. What’s even more amazing, you may not be drinking what they say you are drinking.

Most people think when they buy spring water, it is groundwater that flows to the earth’s surface that has been captured and bottled. For a bottled water company selling spring water, this is not necessarily true. Much Maine “spring” water today comes directly from pumping wells placed in our quality sand and gravel aquifers. It only has to be chemically similar to and connected to a spring to be called spring water. The people working with the industry use this as their test for sustainable water “harvesting.”

If they dry up the spring, it can no longer be called spring water. Although it may be safer to pump from an aquifer than to bottle from an open spring, it still seems like false advertising to me.

Those interested in privatizing water say they are only using 0.02 percent of the water that recharges Maine groundwater. With the 15 years of phone calls that I have received from people complaining about poor home well water quality (the logical bottled water customers in our state), all Maine groundwater is not the same. Well water from sand and gravel aquifers can be pumped at high rates, has a better mineral profile and has generally fewer quality problems than standard drilled wells. That is why the Nestle Corp. moved quickly into Fryeburg and Dallas Plantation to get their straws into some of the best sources now. That is just sound business.

While Nestle is not likely to over pump the Fryeburg or Rangeley water supplies, it doesn’t preclude someone else from unsustainably pumping a water source. Under the current law of absolute dominion, if I own the land, I own the water beneath the land. It does not make sense that the state regulates surface water withdrawal but not groundwater. If groundwater followed property boundaries, the current law might make sense. But, groundwater flows constantly within and across property boundaries; as such, it should be regulated like surface water.

Under current law, if I over pump my well and cause my neighbors’ wells to go dry, they have little or no recourse. You can bet that people and corporations from water-limited parts of the world will continue pumping our state for water.

I want to see Maine residents see the value of this resource and be able to control water withdrawal so that no one loses their water supply. Water may be the next natural resource boom for the state, but our water law should better reflect groundwater science and protect citizens’ property rights.

John M. Jemison Jr. is an extension professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.