The Value of Water on the West Coast

Energy companies use billions of liters of the province's surface water for fracking natural gas, and only paid slightly more than a dollar per million liters

That's on top of what the bottling companies use (hundreds of million liters for bottlers) for a few dollars.

This pricing does not look like water is a sparse commodity and so much on the difference it makes not to water your lawn.

Water should be a public resource that is controlled. When it comes to corporations making profits off of a resource they pay almost nothing for, this is a travesty to the public good. I pay local taxes to support water purification, but I don't profit for it - I shouldn't be subsidising profitable businesses.

There is a long (and, to me, fascinating) history behind the current water distribution situation in the western US. Authoritative book on the subject is Marc Reisner's "Cadillac Desert."