Should Bottlers Pay for Groundwater? The Nettlebridge Extraction Fee

Resolution. Resolved: This state should charge bottling companies a per-gallon fee on the groundwater they withdraw for sale.

Background. Nettlebridge is a fictional town of about six thousand residents. Its municipal wells draw from the same aquifer as the Clearspring Beverage Company, a fictional bottler whose plant sits four miles north of town. Under current law in this scenario the state charges Clearspring a one-time permit fee and nothing per gallon. Every household in Nettlebridge, meanwhile, pays a metered rate for the water it uses. The bill before the legislature would set a per-gallon fee on water withdrawn for bottling. The fee would be collected quarterly, and the revenue would be split between a state monitoring fund and the county where the withdrawal occurs.

Two figures anchor the argument. The Clearspring plant withdraws about 240,000 gallons on a production day, a figure the company reports in its permit filings in this scenario. EPA WaterSense reports that the average US household uses about 300 gallons of water per day. Both sides use these numbers, and neither side disputes them.

Roles. Divide the class into an affirmative team and a negative team of three to five students each, one moderator, and a panel of judges made up of the remaining students. The moderator keeps time and enforces the order of speeches. Judges score with the rubric below and must each write one sentence naming the moment that decided their vote. Every student on a team, including students who do not speak, submits the one-page case brief.

Format. Session one is reading, brief writing, and preparation. Session two runs the rounds. Each side gives a four-minute constructive. Then comes a three-minute cross-examination in each direction, a three-minute rebuttal from each side, and a two-minute closing from each side. The judges then decide, and the class writes a short reflection.

Every point below is drawn either from a published source, named with the point, or from the fictional Nettlebridge scenario, which is labeled as such. Students may use points from either column, since the strongest cases usually turn an opponent's evidence rather than ignoring it.

Case for the extraction fee

• The aquifer is a shared resource that no one owns outright, and a fee puts a price on what is currently taken for free. In this fictional scenario Clearspring pays a one-time permit fee, while Nettlebridge households pay for every gallon they use.
• Deep groundwater is not replaced on a human schedule. The USGS Water Science School notes that water can spend centuries to millennia in deep groundwater. A withdrawal today is not restored by next winter's rain the way a river flow would be.
• Revenue would pay for monitoring the town cannot afford on its own. Testimony from the fictional Nettlebridge Water Commission states that the town has no continuous water-level recorder on its wells and learns of a decline only when a well draws down in late summer.
• The product leaves the basin while the drawdown stays. Bottled water is sold across several states, so the benefit spreads out while the effect on the aquifer stays in one county. A fee returns part of that value to the place that supplies it.
• States already charge for extracted resources. Timber cut on state land and minerals and oil produced under state leases carry stumpage or severance charges, so charging for extracted water applies an established principle rather than inventing a new one.
• The volume is not trivial in local terms. The plant withdraws about 240,000 gallons on a production day. EPA WaterSense reports that the average US household uses about 300 gallons per day. On those figures the plant matches the daily use of roughly 800 households, in a town of about six thousand people.

Case against the extraction fee

• The fee targets a small but visible user. FAO and UN Water figures put agriculture at roughly 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. In this scenario the farms in the same county would pay nothing per gallon under the bill. The measure leaves the largest withdrawals untouched.
• The plant is the largest private employer in Nettlebridge in this fictional scenario. The company has told the legislature it would weigh moving production to a state without the fee. A fee that moves the jobs and the withdrawal to another aquifer protects nothing.
• A company is likely to pass any fee through to buyers rather than pay it out of profit. The burden then lands on consumers of a low-cost product, not on the company the bill means to reach.
• A fee is not a limit. Paying a charge does not reduce pumping by a single gallon, and a profitable company can pay and continue. A permit condition that caps withdrawal when the water level falls below a stated depth would protect the aquifer directly, and the bill contains no such condition.
• Administration would cost money before it raised any. In this scenario the state agency has no metering or audit program for private industrial wells, so it would have to build one first. The fictional state farm bureau has testified that the same metering requirement would reach farms next.
• The precedent runs in one direction. Once withdrawal is charged for one purpose, the same reasoning reaches breweries, food processors, and municipal systems, and a charge on municipal withdrawal would arrive on household bills.