In its new report "Take Back the Tap," Food and Water Watch researchers look at the booming business of bottled water, which surpassed soda in sales in 2016.
The group finds nearly 64 percent of bottled water comes from municipal taps and that it cost almost 2,000 times as much as tap water and four times as much as gasoline.
"It is much more the norm in other countries where you have to go buy bottled water because the safety systems aren’t there for tap water," she says.
"That’s not the case in most American cities.
Bottled-water companies contend their water is safer.
But she adds it can be difficult to get support for this idea.
"It’s hard to build that political will if people think that you buy water at the grocery store and you just have to go take care of it that way," she explains.
"We kind of undermine this sense of ownership and accountability for having a tap-water system that works for everybody."
The bottled-water industry has spent millions lobbying the U.S. Congress and federal regulators.
From 2014 to 2016, the industry spent nearly $29 million on in-house and hired lobbyists.