Privatizing public water resources in Australia (but not in Minnesota)

As reported by The Guardian:

The Tamborine Mountain state school has run out of water, even as water miners in the Gold Coast hinterland are sending millions of litres to commercial bottling operations.

Trucks sent by the Queensland government carrying emergency supplies to the school, including Mount Tamborine bottled water, have been passing trucks heading in the opposite direction taking local water to bottling plants for beverage giants such as Coca-Cola.

The school remains open but parents have been advised by teachers to consider keeping their children at home.

Water miners in the Mount Tamborine area supply roughly 130m litres of water each year to commercial bottling operations. Now the local bores are running dry.

“Now the government is buying water back from Coca-Cola to bring here, which is where it came from in the first place.”

In reply the state's natural resources minister replied that...

“As I have previously said, groundwater is not regulated on Mount Tamborine and so my department does not have the power to limit take.  I do have the power to limit take in a declared water shortage – but that is everyone’s take, including local farmers, households, and businesses.

“QUT research says levels of groundwater extraction are equivalent to less than five per cent of average annual groundwater recharge.  Of that five per cent, farmers use almost 84 per cent of the extracted groundwater for horticulture, households almost 11 per cent, and bottled water operations, about five per cent.”

Obviously the recent heatwave and drought are exacerbating the situation.

Here's the situation in Minnesota, where there are proposals to ship the water to Arizona (!):

Empire Builder Investments, the real estate arm of Progressive Rail, sought approval in October from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to install two pumps on 6 acres in southern Dakota County. Under the scheme, the pumps would have tapped our deepest aquifer, extracted up to 500 million gallons of groundwater annually, and then shipped it by rail using Water Train, an Oregon-based company currently providing water to agencies in Colorado, Utah and Arizona.

This request to export groundwater is unprecedented in Minnesota history.

The Dakota County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to oppose this exportation of water for several reasons, not the least of which is that Dakota County may face water issues of our own over the next two decades.

Locals have offered to let Empire Builder Investments take the snow from their driveways.