Lt. Gov. Cherry proposes funding education with a tax on bottled water

Businesses that make a profit selling Michigan water should pay a ten cent per bottle tax, and this revenue should be used to fund the recently cut Promise Scholarship for Michigan college students, Lt. Gov. John Cherry said at a University of Michigan forum yesterday.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

“We are losing one resource — our talented work force and the energy of our young people, and we are giving away another resource — our water — for free,” he said. “You don’t need a PhD in mathematics to know this is a terrible equation.”

“It’s time for the bottlers to pay their water bill, just like you and I do,” he said.

By charging water bottlers 10 cents on each bottle of water they pull from Michigan waterways, the state could raise $118 million a year, Cherry said. That would cover the $100 million needed for the Promise Scholarship and leave another $18 million for wetlands protection, he said.

Some environmental groups say Cherry’s proposal is misguided.

“We should not be doing anything that remotely appears that we are selling our water until we get our groundwater in the public trust,“ Michigan Clean Water Action director Cyndi Roper said in a phone interview.

State Rep. Dan Scripps (D-Leland) has introduced legislation to establish that groundwater should be held in the public trust and managed for the good of the people of Michigan.

Until such legislation is passed, Roper said, Michigan has little control over how much water companies extract and sell.

Roper praised Cherry for being willing to look at taxes that could fund state services but called his proposed dime-per-bottle tax “arbitrary”.

“The state is in such a dire budget situation,” she said. “We can’t keep doing things in a piecemeal fashion.”