Should Maine have an extraction tax?

Alaska makes a pretty penny on its oil industry, and other states have extraction taxes on coal and other ores. Is it reasonable for Maine to levy an extraction tax on wood or water? If so, where do we draw the line? If we start taxing, say, water, should we also tax lobsters taken from Maine waters or potatoes grown in Maine soils? What sort of limits should be imposed on pumping water from an acquifer, if any? T. Boone Pickens and some partners are buying up thousands of acres of brushland and prairie in the Texas Panhandle, reportedly with plans to sell the water under it to the highest bidder. Could that happen in Maine, and what can we do to prevent it or control it? Or should we?

Or do we succumb once again to big business? aquifers run dry if over used like forests that are clear cut lose their value.their is two sides to every argument and the people lose when you give big business a pass.we can site examples of this in nearly every endeavor. huge profits are being made from the bottled water industry;what if anything are they contributing to the state? answer as little as possible,what rules are they bending?
one example is the fryburg (grand-fathered) contract with a small water company who can draw unlimited water from an aquifer and are now subbing to a national company.I mean really do you think this was the intent of the original contract?
and really do you think these companies would continually be acquiring new areas if the supplies would never dry up? of course not!

Shorebound and Lucky -
Are you suggesting there should be a tax on taking water? How would this work with our local municipal drinking water districts? I'm not convinced the bottling companies like Poland Springs do not do something for the state. They create jobs, they already pay property taxes, income taxes, excise taxes and fuel taxes for their trucks, etc.
I understand the premise, but ...

yes dirtman they do;but it is a very small token compared to the harm they do. and i'm sure you sided with the national paper companies when they stripped our forest and transported most of it out of state. and now our historic paper mills can't compete because we lack the raw material. now if you only ask around you will find out those jobs
move with the water supply. and they prefer to hire local. so the guy in poland and his fellow property owners pick up the slack. do you think nestles really cares? do you even know who owns most of the local water companies? do you know how many areas are now dry? no your such a great thinker. suppose thats why we got the high taxes,to many thinkers like you?
how many taxes does Budweiser,pepsi and coke pay? they leave the state? why,because the profit margin is exorbitant!
another flaw in your thinking;why would a town pay taxes on a municipal well? just more smoking mirrors.
sounds like latrine gossip,or did you serve?
remember the slogan:the forest is growing faster than we can use it. the paper industry is here forever; do you think we'd invest 100 million dollars if we were planing to leave?
NOT UNLESS YOU WE'RE GOING TO TRIPLE IT IN 5 YEARS! AND THATS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!

... mention my name in the same sentence with Lucky's. Gawd, my eyes, my eyes! :)

But to answer your question, I'm not suggesting there should be a tax so much as asking others here what their opinions of it are. There was an unsuccessful petition drive last year to put a water extraction tax on the ballot, and the petition backers have tried to get a bill passed in this session of the legislature to do the same thing. So obviously the idea is out there.

As for how it would work, presumably government entities would be exempt, although some provision would have to be made (or would it?) for private companies that supply municipal water systems. But why should it be limited to water? What about gravel mining or any other form of mining? What if oil or natural gas is discovered off the coast? What about trees?

As for Lucky's comment, it is so completely riddled with errors and disinformation that it should be ignored in this discussion.

YOU SOUND LIKE ONE OF THOSE OFFICALS THAT KNOW ZIPPO.
in case you don't know a report is filled out to mine in maine or any other state;including municipal properties.And I wonnder if you worked for them? 5 years after i left the public sector they were still sending me papers to fill out for my winter sand
and const' projects.
Is your area sabattus? or do you work for the maine heritage group. you know the mis-information center of our area?
As far as fryburg get an area paper it's been an on their agenda for over a year.
ck out hollis;they had a dip rep. pushing for it is that you?
I have an idea your far more important in your own mind, than you are to your fellow man.
I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHY I RESPOND TO SOME ONE LIKE YOU WHO PROBABLY NEVER DONE A DAY OF MANUAL LABOR.
YOU MIGHT SPEND A LITTLE TIME RESEARCHING THE VALUE OF WATER;AND ALSO WHY LAND FILLS ARE BEING DUG UP IN OTHER STATES AT AN UNGODLY COST TO RESIDENTS.
BUT THEN YOU KNOW ALL THIS.
THE REASON;THEY'VE POLLUTED THE GROUND WATER AMONGST OTHERS. SO LETS BE LIKE YOUR GRAN-DAD AND FOR SAKE PICKERL FOR JOBS. THAT SURE DID HELP US ESP. NOW!
I WAS GONNA CK THE SPELLING -BUT FOR U HECK NO

You need a license to fish, so theres a tax there. Property tax also covers the potatoes, or anything else where you utilize the actual surface of the soil.

Personally, I'd love to see a study done (if it hasn't been done already) on the affect that industrial/business usage has on the level of the aquifers here in Maine.

Water is a public resource, and rapidly becoming more valuable with passing time. I think the state needs to make sure it's usage is in line with what's in the best interest of Maine's people.

The property tax is a tax on the value of the land, not its products. I pay the same tax on ten acres of field as I do on ten acres of woodlot, and the value doesn't change if I cut off the woodlot. But I wonder, does anyone know if property values and thus taxes decline on land from which all the gravel (or water or whatever) has been extracted? They don't, so far as I know, but I'm willing to be educated on the question.

As for the aquifer study, I've not heard of any instances in Maine where aquifers have been affected adversely by industrial/business usage. Have you? And while it's generally acknowledged that lakes and rivers are public resources, that idea has not been extended to underground water in Maine to my knowledge. Generally speaking, under current law aquifers and the water they contain belong to whomever owns the rights to the land above them.

As for the fishing license being a tax on fish, I think it's more accurate to describe it as a lottery ticket, one I rarely win. :)

Edited to add: I can think of a couple of examples of local aquifers that have been affected by industrial pollution -- South Hope and Bath come to mind -- but I assume you were talking about depletion. Right, MG?

THEIR HAVE BEEN SEVERAL THAT CANNOT MEET THE DEMAND THAT THE COMMERCIAL COMPANIES
NEED;OTHERWISE WHY MOVE FROM POLAND SPRINGS TO HOLLIS,BIDDEFORD,FRYBURG ETC.?
I MEAN COME ON CHECK YOUR FACTS.

that's still a tax. It's up to the owner on what to do with the land. Trees? Potatoes? Mini-Golf course?

My biggest concern is that consumption does not exceed supply. According to this newsletter from the Maine Geological society about 20% of rainfall makes it back into our aquifers, 2-5 *trillion* gallons a year. According to that same letter bottled water producers use up 500 million gallons per year. A teeny percentage. But of course it is possible to drain one aquifer locally down, and it will take time to recharge. If you live in the same valley as aquifer pumping station I wonder what affect this has on one's well?

:shrug:

Personally, as long as we sensibly regulate, and of course tax the business, I'm not sure what a groundwater tax would do, especially as we seem to get an awful lot of water here in Maine.

A company comes into Maine and buys, say, 900,000 acres of North Woods, including all the shoreline of several dozen lakes and ponds plus all the aquifers under its property. And then decides, since it can't develop the land for house lots, to start selling the water on and under the land to Boston or New York City using a new pipeline paralleling the already existing natural gas pipeline.

The idea isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Back in the early 1980s, according to rumor, the NYC Water Department sniffed around both Sebago and Moosehead Lakes as potential new water sources for the metro area. Water shortages are already becoming apparent in the Southwest (which wants to tap the Great Lakes) and the Midwest. Water may well be the next great resource shortage. And as Mainegreen has noted, "we seem to get an awful lot of water here in Maine."

I'm not sure Maine has one big aquifer or hundreds of small, independent aquifers. If we have lots of little ones, that would probably make such wholesale extraction difficult.

Either way, if that day arrives some day, I see no reason why we can't add an extraction tax on non-individual and non-maine-municipal use then. You know that law would pass in a jiffy if NEW YORKERS were to try and take our water! ;)

But how much of a problem is it now? :shrug:

Difficult issues.

once shorebound doesn't have several yes men to back him his stance drops or changes.
he has tried several times with several posts on this subject to give the green light
to companies to have a free ride on our aquifers.
he uses several different identities but always the same spiel.your right about the fact that aquifers can be drawn down;and re-charge takes time and may even include severe damage.
like our rivers that were polluted for industry because we had little or no control of the chemicals discharged into them (and we all know how hard it was to amend these laws )
our small towns cannot afford or are they equipped to handle the litigation by themselves.
if you read about fryburg you will find out why towns need to have an out clause which can shut down or limit the draw down of it's aquifers. and you will also see how laws are
circumvented by big business.
I don't like taxes any more than the next guy; but we definitely need a professional state board to help regulate these important decisions. and a user tax would fund such an operation.
now don't jump on me about "d.e.p" they are overwhelmed and underfunded. yes they have some good people,and if you ask them for help on landfills they probably wouldn't tell you
to go to "sawyer land fill" for information like they did in the 70's.
It takes time to evolve and mistakes will be made but the worst thing is to stand by and
have no checks or balances. believe me if their was no demand or supply business would not be interested.and most of what you hear or read is put out by business public relation depts.

There's no super-aquifer under Maine, such as the Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwest, but that doesn't mean that many millions of gallons of water a day can't be withdrawn from the various smaller ones. Sort of like an oilfield that's made up of many smaller pockets.

It's not a problem ... now. But it will be, and soon, IMO. I worry that we will once again be caught in a reactive position, like we are currently with the Plum Creek situation. (900,000 acres there BTW; my choice of that number above wasn't accidental.) It would be nice if, for a change, we actually put some thought into preparing for a coming challenge rather than playing perpetual catch-up when it arrives.

Nestle Corp, parent of Poland Spring and many regional bottled water companies, recently bought land - at a considerable premium - in Somerset and Franklin Counties. They are drawing water now from Pierce Pond in northern SOmerset County and from a well in the Rangeley area. They are soon to be taking water from wells in the Sugarloaf area where they're building a bottling plant. I think they are allowed to take 200 million gallons a year, or something like that.

The bottling plant will be good for that area but the number jobs promised at the beginning of the process (about 300) has been whittled down to 60 or so. Almost all of that water will go out of state, I gather.

Rangeley residents are in an uproar over the number of tank trucks going through the town. They've petitioned LURC to limit the traffic (because the well is in LURC territory.)

What do the local areas get for all this water extraction? The promise of jobs that never show up? The joy of having hundreds of tank trucks drive through their towns? Nestle as a neighbor?

I'm almost to the point of thinking there should be some compensation but I'm not sure it should be a tax. I have to think and read more about this.

I do agree with the though that the next global war may well be over water.

maine has a lot of water but ther have been some drowts wich
they made some legislasion for in 2003
maine has a reporting sistem to make sur all of the peeple who take
out the water have to make a report to the governmint of maine
to make sure we know wher it goes
the "d.e.p." is responsbal to moniter the water and get the reports
rite now there are geoligy surveys going on to find out HOW MUCH WATER WE HAVE
IN THE GROUND.
THEY THINK THERE IS PLENTI OF WATER IN MAIN RITE NOW BUT THEY ARE GETING MORE "INFORMATION"
FOR THE GOVERNMINT
look at the home page you can see that ther is a lot of water in the aqifers u can see the "charts"
and graphs" ther to show what they meen
there is also informasion there about how to keep the water supply up

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I thought the Ignore feature had stopped working. Geez, don't scare me like that!

Funny, though. Very funny. Is Lucky still posting to this thread?

he comes from a state that has many water problems;in fact their problems have been in the national news since the 60,s.
google florida water supply,or is florida water supply stretched to limit.
We can survive with out oil;we done it for centuries,but you can't survive a month without clean water.
you can call yourself a conservative,but if you voted for Regan,Bush senior or JUNIOR
YOU VOTED FOR THE BIGGEST SPENDERS THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER ELECTED!
CONSERVATIVE YOUR NOT; SUCKERED YOU WERE!