Water isn’t free for most Australians, but as people struggle with the cost-of-living, multi-billion dollar businesses are taking it at no cost from the ground in the Perth Hills.
Companies like Coca-Cola Europacific Partners have been doing it for decades, siphoning millions of litres of water and bottling it to sell at a huge profit.
They take the water from an unproclaimed groundwater area, which means they — and everyone else in the region — don’t need water licences, and don’t need to pay.
But locals battling drought and fire say enough is enough, and they want the bottling to stop.
Cherry farmer Kim Bettenay is one such farmer. Winter has hit, but the dry cracks in his dam on his property are more reminiscent of the height of summer.
“I was almost in tears because we just did not have water to put on our trees,” Mr Bettenay told 7.30.
“They take their water and they totally remove it from this natural area, this ecosystem.”
Kim’s orchard is just down the road from a property owned by Coca-Cola, where the company extracts groundwater.
“We’re part of a local tourist trade, selling fruits, ciders, wines, vegetables, the whole Hills experience,” Kim said.
“The lack of water security threatens that very existence.”
“As multinationals, big companies, I think that they can afford to source their water from other places that don’t deprive this stressed environment and this stressed industry.”
The Australian Beverages Council estimates the revenue from bottled water in Australia in 2023-24 to be $763 million.
Tanks running dry
Mark Lange is another local who has suffered during Western Australia’s drought — a recent bushfire made the severity of the situation clear.
His bore supplies groundwater for his family to drink and shower, and fight fires, but he says it ran dry for the first time this year.
“[Fire fighters] asked for water, they were looking around for tanks and I said ‘that one’s empty, that one’s half full’,” Mr Lange told 7.30.
He lives a few kilometres away from another spring water bottling company which is also tapping into the groundwater. He says that’s been adding to his family’s pain.
“We’re paying about six to seven hundred dollars a month, right, to keep the family going in water,” he said.
“The bottlers are taking water away, I’ve got to buy their water to drink.”
Campaign for change
Coca-Cola, Asahi which owns Schweppes, and Aquaworks have been identified as companies which own properties in the Perth Hills and are taking water.
Mr Lange believes the companies shouldn’t bottle up bore water to sell as spring water, and should fill their bottles from somewhere else.
“Pay for reverse osmosis water to filter that and sell it to the people. Stop taking water from up here in the hills,” he said.
Amid recent local concern about commercial water extraction, WA Water Minister Simone McGurk told ABC Radio Perth last Friday Coca-Cola had temporarily stopped taking water from its property in the Perth Hills.
In a statement, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners said “we are voluntarily ceasing water extraction at Karragullen until we see the aquifer replenishment return to an appropriate level”.
But they’re not the only company taking water from the area, and it’s unclear how much is being bottled up.
Fears about the impact of the water bottling industry aren’t anything new, but this year’s drought in Perth has brought the issue to the surface.
A 2023 United Nations University report on bottled water found while the industry’s water use made up a small percentage of total human consumption, local impacts on water resources could be significant.
It also found that Australia has the highest average price for bottled water in the world.
“Australia, the fifth largest market, has the highest price per unit on average ($3.57),” the report stated.
In the face of growing community pressure, the Australian Beverages Council has agreed to measure and publicly disclose how much water companies are bottling up across WA.
Council CEO Geoff Parker has committed the industry to rolling out the transparency measures nationwide.
“Absolutely something that we’ll do in the future. Right here, right now, we’re supporting the WA community,” Mr Parker told 7.30.
“We take sustainable use and management of these resources as our number one priority, and it is important that we have this opportunity to be able to shed more light and more transparency.”
Fair go for farmers?
Ms McGurk says she is considering whether to proclaim the area, which would mean everyone — including bottling companies and farmers — would have to pay for the water they extract.
“It’s … particularly annoying that it is a commercial operation like Coca-Cola, or it could be any other of the bottled water companies, that get the water for free then bottle it up and sell it for a tidy price,” she told 7.30.
“But the reality is that farmers, the community, in our public open spaces, all of us are extracting that groundwater.
“Once we require one company to licence and monitor their use and pay for those licences, we will require everyone.”
Forcing beverage companies to pay for their water or restricting their use wouldn’t necessarily have to mean the same for farmers, according to University of Western Australia water law expert Alex Gardner.
“Certainly it could, [but] whether it should is a question of the scientific judgement about the state of the water resource, and the political judgement of the minister,” Mr Gardner said.
“The Act doesn’t say what should be done — that’s a political choice.”
The minister said while she was sympathetic to farmers because the community relied on them for food security, it was unlikely she would differentiate them from bottling companies.
“I am open to considering those issues,” Ms McGurk said.
“But I don’t think we could expect that in reality where commercial users like bottled water companies take probably less than 2 or 3 per cent compared to farmers and horticulturalists, that those farmers and horticulturalists would be immune.”
Expert says WA water laws lagging behind
WA is the only state or territory which hasn’t passed any legislation in line with the National Water Initiative, which was made in 2004.
Ms McGurk scrapped promised law reforms late last year, saying they were no longer necessary.
Professor Gardner said the proposed changes would have made it more practical to proactively restrict an area’s water use, like limiting extraction during a drought in the Perth Hills if it were proclaimed.
“Reduction can [currently] only be implemented by approaching each individual licensee,” he said.
“You’d only need 30, 40 or 50 of that 2,500 licences [in the hills] to be appealed and the system would break down.”
“Western Australia is long overdue for water resources law reform.”
Minister McGurk said parts of the National Water Initiative didn’t reflect WA’s unique circumstances, and she believed the current legislation was adequate.
“All the information I’ve seen in terms of the information that’s come on to us about the bottled water companies is that we still have quite enough controls within our legislation,” she said.
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