How the hell is there a bottled water industry?

Seems like a steel. I mean all you really have to do is bottle it as it comes out of the ground. Sometimes you don't even have to pull it out yourself... it just bubbles up.

I'm not talking about oil, it's water and we need it. We need it so much that we've created massive amounts of regulation and really screwed up property rights schemes to make sure everyone who's thirsty gets their thirst quenched and every one who gets dirty gets to wash off their dirt. Yes, we (private individuals) pay a water bill but the water industry is anything but private: well sort of. To be fare, there really is two water industries. The water industry that delivers to your house in pipes, that we use to wash, flush, and sometimes drink, and the water industry that specializes in tasty sparkling mountain spring water or mineral water or anything else that sounds neat.

So my question is, and I can think of only one plausible answer, how does the bottled water industry exist when their competition is giving stuff away for free? I mean how can Fiji, Arrowhead Aquafina, or Evian compete with free stuff?

The only possable answer I can think of, is that public water sucks so much that even when they give away their product people are willing to pay for something different. Public water companies... you really suck.