Here's the deal.
Maine wants to start taxing entities that extract water from the ground. It would be a per gallon tax, but the first million gallons of water extracted per year, are exempt. So, it's only gonna affect those sucking A LOT of water out of the ground...or, Poland Springs Bottling Company. They're the only ones, currently, that this would affect.
I'm not necessarily against taxing groundwater use, but it seems this is simply a policy to generate tax money because the state is broke - and Poland Springs isn't, rather than a carefully thought out policy to oversee the use of a valuable natural resource.
Poland Springs is one of Maines bigger, and better employers. They're reportedly a good company to work for and have seemed to be decent stewards of the natural environment that they depend on (except that they are responsible for the generation of billions of plastic bottles of water that get trucked all over the continent).
There are some that are equating this to Alaska state government generating income by taxing oil as it's extracted from the states subsurface.
I'm just not sure about taxing water.