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Opinion | Bottled water companies get a (nearly) free ride in Michigan
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Michigan’s abundant water has turned into a cash cow for private bottled water companies.
They’re making large profits off publicly owned water, while paying next to nothing to the state for water extraction.
At the same time, low- and middle-income families often pay more for home water use than the companies that take and sell the public’s water at a huge markup.
Household customers of public water systems in Michigan pay average monthly bills of $33 to $174. This equates to annual bills of $396-$2,088, according to a 2023 study by Public Sector Consultants. For Michigan residents living on fixed incomes, rising water rates hit particularly hard.
Meanwhile, bottled water companies seeking approval to extract groundwater, like Primo Brands (formerly Nestle and Blue Triton), pay a one-time $2,000 application fee and an annual administrative fee of just $200 for withdrawals that could amount to hundreds of millions of gallons per year.
Families pay hundreds or even thousands each year for the water they need, while bottlers pay pennies and make tens of millions in profits. The average Michigan household will use 45,625 gallons in a year, at an average total cost of $864. That’s just under $0.02 per gallon. A new water bottler on the scale of Primo Brand’s Evart facility (which withdrew 138 gallons per minute in 2022) would use 72,532,800 gallons in a year, at an annual cost of only $200 — or $0.000003 per gallon.
The bottom line? Michigan households, on average, pay a staggering 6,666 times more per gallon for drinking and sanitation needs than bottled water companies do to turn water into outrageous profits.
As of 2023, there are approximately 100 companies with approval for bottling by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). EGLE’s 2023 water usage data documents bottled water withdrawals from Michigan lakes, rivers, and groundwater totaling
nearly 473 million gallons. And that figure doesn’t include bottled water brands that draw from municipal water systems, like Aquafina and Dasani, which bottle and sell Detroit city water.
Michigan’s meager fees for large-scale bottled water companies do not reflect the significance of the water they’re taking — water that belongs to Michiganders. Meanwhile, too many Michigan families are paying 20%, 25%, or even more of their household income for basic, essential water needs.
Michigan also needs to get a better handle on who is extracting and bottling water, and how much. Databases are inconsistent, and the regulatory framework is a hybrid between EGLE and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD).
Under Michigan food law, bottled water facilities are listed as food processing facilities, meaning each facility requires a food establishment permit from MDARD. In order to sell bottled water in Michigan, companies also need a bottled water registration from MDARD for each brand name and water dispensing machine. There are currently 42 licensed bottling companies on MDARD’s bottling registration list.
In short, Michigan’s regulatory framework is fragmented: EGLE oversees water safety and withdrawals, while MDARD regulates bottling as food processing. This patchwork makes it difficult to track who is bottling water and how much they’re taking, leaving major gaps in oversight.
It’s time for Michigan to protect our shared, public waters from corporate exploitation, ease the cost burden to households, and stand as a bulwark against the growing threat of privatization and commodification of our state’s publicly-held water resources.
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