the typography hasn\u2019t changed in a century<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 can be glimpsed in Boston Red Sox dugouts, in movie and TV product placements (famously in a Seinfeld episode as the precursor to Mr. Pitts\u2019 new brand, \u201cMoland Spring\u201d), and at Bates Commencements. (Committed to buying from local vendors, Bates bought 103,776 bottles of Poland Spring water last year.) The company has 689 employees, a payroll of $45.9 million, and sprawling plants in Poland and Hollis, each churning out 1,200 bottles of water per minute.<\/p>\nBought in 1992 by Nestl\u00e9, Poland Spring is the nation\u2019s best-selling spring water, defined as coming from specific sources, several Maine aquifers in the case of Poland Spring. Among all bottled waters, the brand places third nationally, behind Aquafina (Pepsi) and Dasani (Coca-Cola), which are purified waters (tap water). Domestic growth in the bottle-water sector has been stunning: between 9 and 13 percent annually. \u201cThe industry\u2019s performance is unrivaled,\u201d notes the trade group Beverage Marketing Corp. To keep pace with growing demand, Poland Spring in late 2003 began to investigate locations for a third Maine bottling plant. It was Brennan\u2019s job to talk to Maine towns and citizens about Poland Spring\u2019s expansion plans, specifically the company\u2019s water-use practices and policies and its focus on sustainability.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d think a company dedicated to selling clean water would be revered like L.L.Bean. But beginning in 2004, Poland Spring faced growing opposition to its expansion plans, fueled in part by alarmist misinformation about Maine groundwater resources (\u201cA company could pump your aquifer dry!\u201d), by landowner concerns about increased truck traffic (hundreds of trucks a day go to and from the company\u2019s bottling plants in Hollis and Poland), and by a grassroots campaign that sought, but failed, to impose a first-in-the-nation tax on commercial groundwater withdrawals in Maine.<\/p>\n
In two places where Poland Spring had ideas to expand \u2014 Kingfield in the northwest and Fryeburg along the New Hampshire border \u2014 Mainers delivered emotional and at times ugly potshots at Poland Spring\u2019s point man. Even today, he shows no signs of wilting. A recreational marathoner, he\u2019ll go the distance. \u201cI\u2019ve got this philosophy: if you keep showing up, people will eventually stop hitting you and you can start talking,\u201d says Brennan. \u201cIf people give us an opportunity, we can demonstrate how we protect and care for [aquifers] and monitor our activities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within Maine\u2019s science and policy community, however, Brennan and Poland Spring take few hits. \u201cI\u2019ve known Tom for a long time and I know him to be a straight-up intelligent guy,\u201d said Keith Taylor \u201982. Taylor, a senior hydrogeologist with St. Germain & Associates of Westbrook, has watched Brennan work from across the stream, so to speak. Taylor represented water districts in Kingfield and Rangeley in their water-use negotiations with Poland Spring. \u201cSay what you will about [water] trucks, but the one thing Poland Spring is not doing is wrecking the water supply,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Also watching Poland Spring with a critical but approving eye is Andrews Tolman \u201970, chief hydrogeologist for the state\u2019s drinking water program, which approves bottled-water projects. \u201cThe geology community in Maine and New England is small,\u201d he says. \u201cAnyone who bends the science doesn\u2019t last long.\u201d (The small community includes Tolman\u2019s wife, Susan Spalding Tolman \u201968, a Maine Geological Survey cartographer, and John Peckenham \u201979, senior scientist and assistant director of the Sen. George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine).<\/p>\n
Over the years, Brennan, Taylor, and Tolman have often crossed paths. In the early \u201980s, Tolman gave Taylor an internship at the Geological Survey. Tolman then assisted Brennan with his senior thesis on groundwater flow south of Sabattus Pond. And later, as a principal in an environmental geology firm, Tolman hired Brennan, and the two worked together for nearly a decade investigating groundwater contamination from mishaps such as gas spills. Now, all three sit on the state\u2019s 28-member Groundwater Withdrawal Study Group, convened by the Maine Legislature to \u201ccomprehensively review groundwater regulations.\u201d The group\u2019s report is due this winter.<\/p>\n
Like Brennan, Tolman and Taylor brighten when talk turns from resum\u00e9s to earth science, suggesting that each has retained much of the enthusiasm they experienced as undergraduates when fieldwork at Reid State Park was a trip into an intriguing new world. The son of a revered Albion College geology professor, now retired, Taylor at first did not consider Bates a stepping stone to a career in geology. \u201cThe resource in Maine convinced me,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was going outdoors, taking those field trips. The geology in Maine was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tolman, who seems the lowest key of the three, is something of a renaissance water man, an affable contradancer, board member of a community readers\u2019 theater based in Gardiner, and bicyclist who\u2019s done 10 Trek Across Maine rides for the American Lung Association. (\u201cI\u2019m currently on a break,\u201d he quips, \u201cplanning to do another the year I turn 60 to prove I still can.\u201d) Of geology, he says, \u201cYou\u2019re trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, but 80 percent of it is missing. It\u2019s the puzzle, the problem-solving that is exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
They all agree that the recent controversy around Poland Spring\u2019s growth plans are distinctively controversial, featuring a mix of NIMBYism, distrust of a foreign-owned multinational corporation, local politics, and citizen jitters in a state that suffered several years of drought ending in 2005.<\/p>\n
The first drop of controversy came in 2004, in Fryeburg, when a pump for the privately owned Fryeburg Water Co. failed. Some 750 customers of the water company had to boil drinking water for four days, and their tempers boiled too as Poland Spring, the Fryeburg Water Co.\u2019s biggest customer, continued to truck its water out of town. (Poland Spring\u2019s water came from a different pumping station.) Then, the very day after the boil order was lifted, Poland Spring representatives, including Brennan, came to Fryeburg to discuss the possibility of building a bottling plant. After a subsequent study revealed that the town had overcommitted water to commercial uses, Poland Spring crossed Fryeburg off its list of potential plant sites. (Kingfield remains a possible location.)<\/p>\n
But by then a citizen\u2019s group \u2014 called H2O for ME and formed by a former state legislator from Fryeburg \u2014 was raising water questions statewide: Do bottlers pay enough for what they take? How are bulk water withdrawals monitored, not just in Poland Spring\u2019s case but in agriculture too? H2O for ME began a dialogue about bulk-water use in a water-rich state that had never considered such questions, culminating in the formation of the groundwater study group. But, Taylor and Tolman agree that it was unfair that specific problems in Fryeburg, whose compact aquifer is a Maine anomaly, set the tone for what came in 2005, when H2O for ME charged that Poland Spring lacked a sustainability focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consensus of most of us on the Groundwater Withdrawal Study Group is that there is not a current problem with groundwater allocation \u2014 Fryeburg being the exception,\u201d Taylor said. Particularly frustrating to Taylor and the others is witnessing the public\u2019s distrust of their science. One Rangeley selectman, for example, dismissed all the hydrogeology reports on a proposed Poland Spring pumping station in Dallas Plantation as \u201cvoodoo science.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disturbing to all of us when you have unbiased technical decisions, and a well-educated public puts a blind eye to it,\u201d Taylor said. Brennan, in particular, has had to develop a tough skin, and it troubles him most when foes question his integrity. \u201cI\u2019ve been a hydrogeologist in Maine for 18 years,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve worked for a variety of water withdrawers, and I\u2019ve never seen anyone held to the standards Poland Spring is, and our internal standards are higher than any external regulations. This is our lifeblood. We can\u2019t compromise it.\u201d<\/p>\n
An oft-repeated line during the citizen petition drive in 2005 focused on Poland Spring\u2019s \u201cabuse\u201d of water resources and how the company \u201cignored\u201d regulations. Stewarding the company\u2019s water resources is his job, Brennan says fiercely, \u201cand I can tell you that for damn sure we\u2019re doing it.\u201d The upside of the entire controversy, Tolman points out, is that \u201cwe can use the heightened interest [in water policy] to get people to do things to protect their water supply,\u201d he said. \u201cIn working with Fryeburg on their water withdrawal ordinance, for example, we convinced them to include language protecting the aquifer from development.\u201d<\/p>\n
Development and its evil cousin sprawl are far bigger threats to aquifers than water extractors like Poland Spring, Tolman says. \u201cOver the past 10 to 15 years there has been a significant increase in population moving into the country and living near water supplies. We\u2019re encouraging towns to manage growth in ways that don\u2019t hurt water supplies. I\u2019ve gone from being a geologist to a technical and educational assistance person.\u201d<\/p>\n
The issue provided educational fodder for Bates students, too. Associate Professor of Economics Lynne Lewis asked her environmental-economics students to evaluate H2O for ME\u2019s failed proposal to place a 20-cent tax on each gallon of bottled water extracted by large bottlers. Most of the students concluded it was bad economics. \u201cThe proposed tax was seriously flawed,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt was modeled after the Alaska oil tax, but oil is a nonrenewable resource whereas most Maine aquifers are rechargeable via rain and snowmelt.\u201d (Poland Spring drew about 600 million gallons of groundwater last year, equivalent to .03 percent of what flows back into Maine aquifers each year, according to one estimate.)<\/p>\n
Other flaws were the size of the tax (too big) and its target (the proposal would have basically targeted just Poland Spring). On the other hand, affixing a price on water is a good idea. \u201cA lot of economists would say if water was priced appropriately \u2014 at its true value \u2014 we wouldn\u2019t be having the issues we have now,\u201d Lewis says.
\nBut that market model is a long way off, as many agree that questions about the value and ownership of Maine water will take time to settle. \u201cIt will be more politics than geography,\u201d says Roy Farnsworth, professor emeritus of geology and the Bates mentor of Tolman, Taylor, and Brennan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWater is going to be our most precious commodity, and there will be long political fights over who owns it,\u201d he says. \u201cUntil that is clarified, it will be a tough situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freelance writer Virginia Wright lives in Cumberland, Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minutes earlier, Tom Brennan \u201983 had been inside a highly automated bottling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":1096,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-1105","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13706,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1105\/revisions\/13706"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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