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.

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.

“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.

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.