A Boston-based consumer and environmental group is bringing its campaign against bottled water to four states, urging them to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from strapped budgets by ending their purchases of water in plastic containers.

Corporate Accountability International took aim at state agencies' purchases of bottled water in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont. It urged the states to have their public employees drink tap water and step up efforts to protect public water supplies.

"Public dollars spent to support the private water interests robs the public water system of available dollars, nearly $12 billion in the U.S. in 2007," said Vermont state Rep. Jim McCullough. "Many of these dollars could instead be spent to be sure tap water is safe."

Sarah Holzgraf of Corporate Accountability said the group focused on the four states because they're in the Northeast, near its Boston headquarters, have activist members of the group and ample high-quality public water supplies. New York was not included because it already has taken some of the steps the group is seeking, she said.

Among the group's complaints about the bottled water industry:

_ Environmental impacts of the energy consumed and waste created by the production, packaging and transport of bottled water.

_ Declining support for public water supplies: The report noted that the federal share of support for local water systems has declined from 5 percent in the 1970s to 5 percent today. A November report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation's public drinking water infrastructure a grade of D-minus, Corporate Accountability said.

_ Depletion of aquifers that support public water supplies for private profit.

The campaign brought rebuttals Wednesday both from state officials responsible for ordering bottled water and from the bottled water industry.

Tom Lauria, vice president for communications at the International Bottled Water Association, called claims of aquifer depletion "a science-fiction fantasy." He said the bottled water industry is using a tiny fraction of groundwater supplies, easily offset when they are recharged by precipitation.

"Frankly, bottled water is popular because it is portable, it is convenient and it isn't tap water," Lauria said. "Tap water is all well and good but there are people who don't like the smell and flavor of chlorine and would prefer a natural spring water or a purified water."