Thanks mostly to unrelenting marketing campaigns, perceptions abound that bottled water, in its slick plastic packaging, is cleaner, healthier and tastes better than the alternatives. The Week magazine, a weekly digest of some of the best writing and reporting from the U.S. and international press, reports that in 2006, Americans spent $15 billion on 8.25 billion gallons of bottled water, and that one in five of us drink no tap water at all.

That’s simply amazing.

And if you believe that all bottled water is drawn from “pure mountain springs” and “glacial aquifers” and therefore better than that nasty stuff from the tap, think again. Co-op America, a national nonprofit consumer organization, asserts that, “according to government and industry estimates, as much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually tap water, sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not.”

Some advocates of bottled water tout its undeniable convenience. But that convenience comes only at monumental cost. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that 1.5 million tons of plastic are turned into water bottles each year, and at best, only about a quarter of those empty bottles are recycled. In addition to the energy input involved in manufacturing the bottles, there is the vast amounts of energy consumed in transporting those bottles to all corners of the world. The Week reports that the equivalent of 37,800 18-wheel trucks is needed to distribute the bottle water hauled across the United States every week.

 And lest we forget, the $1.50 spent on a 20-ounce bottle of water would pay for about 1,000 gallons of muncipal tap water. If it’s convenience you’re after, buy one portable container and keep it filled with water from your faucet. In addition to being environmentally friendly, you’ll save a whole bunch of money.

It’s also worth noting that water is a finite resource that already is all but unavailable in some areas of the world. Does it make sense, then, to relinquish the public water trust to private companies that extract as many as 500 gallons a minute, per well, around the clock from aquifers that also may support private wells, streams and wetlands?

Maine is home to one of the major players in the bottled water industry. Nestle Waters North America operates Poland Spring, the nation’s largest bottled spring water company. But it is not Maine’s only bottled water operation. There are approximately two dozen such companies now operating in the state, extracting at least a billion gallons of water a year, according to a citizens group called H2O for Maine. Thanks largely to that group’s efforts, the 123rd Legislature took little noticed steps this year to more closely regulate commercial water extractions. Part of that legislation includes a comprehensive watershed and drinking water well management program under the state Natural Resources Protection Act.

But water will be the oil of the 21st century and underlying questions remain, not just in Maine but wherever this increasingly precious resource can be found. Who will control the groundwater, and when it comes to extraction, who will determine what is sustainable for all interested parties? Lives — millions of them — ultimately may depend on the answers.