A water fight in Maine

Walk about 100 yards down a well-worn path, past wild berry bushes, and take a left into leafy growth. Just a few more feet into the green canopy, and there they are, jutting out from the earth.

"I don't even like the sight of them here," said Liz McMahon, a Shapleigh resident for 23 years, as she stared, frowning at the 3-foot-high rust-colored pipes.

These metal fingers are the source of a fierce debate that has gripped this small town and others across Maine, forcing residents to choose between Poland Spring - a company with a century-old history in the state - and their newfound environmental and social sensibilities.

For more than a hundred years, the company has drawn waters from Maine springs and marketed it to the world as just possibly "the best tasting water on earth." But now McMahon and others are part of a growing movement raising questions about the homegrown company's corporate parents - Nestlé Waters North America purchased it in 1992 - and the very concept of bottled water, which uses plastic and oil to deliver a product that many can get from their faucet.

As the company seeks to tap new springs, a number of towns have begun to push back against locating water-extraction sites on their land, forcing this quintessentially Maine company to consider the once unthinkable: looking to other states for its water.

"We're a Maine company," said Mark Dubois, Poland Spring's natural resource director. But if the industry continues to grow, he said, the company is going to need more water.

"We might have to force our hand," he said.

Later this month, Shapleigh residents will decide whether to put a moratorium on water pumping, which would freeze Poland Spring's plans to test the town's water. In Ogunquit, selectmen are considering a citizen petition they received in opposition to water extraction. Nearby Wells residents are set to vote in November on a 180-day moratorium, much like the one in Shapleigh, while they prepare an ordinance that would set ground rules for pumping.

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