Napier MP Stuart Nash says water bottlers are are doing nothing but the inability to charge for it is.
Napier MP Stuart Nash has long championed a levy on water bottlers, introducing a private member's bill that will allow councils and communities to charge for water.
He said the Resource Management Act only allowed councils to charge for the consenting or monitoring of water.
Charging by quantity was "by far the best measure".
"A lot of places have water metres anyway, so they know exactly how much has been consumed," he said.
"I don't blame the bottled water companies, what they are doing is taking advantage of the situation that exists.
"They are doing nothing wrong but I think the fact that we can't charge for it is wrong."
New Zealand legal position is water is like air - nobody can own it.
Mr Nash said he would like water bottling included in the Overseas Investment Act, to see if overseas investors were setting up bottling plants for export.
"The Overseas Investment Office provides a level of oversight that doesn't exist in other areas. The Regional Council can provide oversight, but that is a different type of oversight."
He said his "test" for charging for water was whether it was being used for economic gain.
"I don't think we should charge for water if it is being used for a life necessity - cooking or cleaning or washing. But I do think if you are making an economic gain out of it - it is an economic input - then you should be charged for it."
Should his private member's bill become law in its present form "councils will need to make a decision".
"Theoretically they could charge horticulturists, viticulturists or farmers for the water they use."
He considered that interpretation too wide.
"I would argue viticulturists and horticulturists are actually growing a product and creating value, whereas the bottled water guys are simply putting water into bottle and sending it off without any sort of upstream value being created."
Pending Treaty of Waitangi claims "are where it gets tricky around who actually owns the water".
A 2012 Waitangi Tribunal ruling said Maori had rights and interests in water equivalent to ownership.
The Treaty protected the rights but the expectation was water would be shared with pakeha.
The second phase of the Maori Council's claim is underway using the story of Poroti Springs near Whangarei.
The Springs were vested to six Maori owners in 1896 but the only remaining right for descendants is for cultural purposes. Meanwhile the water is bottled and exported.
Mr Nash said his view was all people owned water "but nobody has a pre-emptive mandate or right to use that water above anybody else".
"So I could get a resource consent to use the water and that is treated just the same as a consent put in by you, Bob or Nagati Kahungunu.
"I'm the first to admit it is a thorny issue but it doesn't mean you should shy away from it."
Ikaroa-Rawhiti MP and former Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Inc chief executive Meka Whaitiri said there should be no profit from water resource "without paying a bean for it".
Tukituki MP Craig Foss said any charge for water would drag down the entire Hawke's Bay economy.
The region's water resource was "Hawke's Bay's competitive advantage" and payment for water would bring widespread litigation "but as the courts have found no-one owns water, be it from the sky, stream or aquifer".
Many sought a levy on water bottling "because they just don't like the idea" but it would be a tax passed on to everyone.
"It is hard to think of a job in Hawke's Bay that is not linked somehow to our use of water," he said.
"I fully understand the concerns, but if someone wants to put a charge on water in Hawke's Bay they are essentially putting it on every orchard, farm, job - everything we do."
The issues of the Ruataniwha Dam and Havelock North campylobacter outbreak meant water was increasingly a political football, but he said they were separate issues.
"What seems to have been forgotten is the government's Land and Water Forum, to bring everyone around the table. Their recommendations about fresh water management above the ground, by and large, have been put into place."
Basil Sharp, Professor of Energy and Resource Economics at the University of Auckland, said a key issue was quantifying how much water was available "because if it is scarce it has value".
He said in New Zealand fishermen don't own fish - all they have is the right to harvest "and so the water bottler can harvest and sell".
"I live on an island where we don't have reticulated water. I don't own the water that comes out of the sky but once I have collected it off my roof and put it in my tank, that's my family s property."
He suggested water rights should be linked to a percentage of the available resource, to best manage the resource.
"The bottling company might own ten per cent of that, which converts into a volume. Farmers could own twenty per cent and that converts into a volume. Then the council can adjust the volume depending upon the state of the aquifer.
Water rights should be tradeable if water was to be best used.
Under the current system, of consents given to those who applied for water rights first, there could be more valuable uses of the water foregone.
"The value of that water and its next best alternative is an opportunity cost," he said.
He said in a drought situation water bottlers might sell their water right to farmers, or farmers could sell to water bottlers during a wet summer.
Currently many with rights to water in Hawke's Bay don't use their full allocation, depriving its benefit to others.
"The council could put a price on that like they did when they were introducing tradeable rights for the radio spectrum, so bore holders sitting on their allocation could say, 'It is worth our while paying this fee or get rid of it?'."