Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The question of who owns groundwater has only recently been debated in the eastern
United States, which doesn't have the West's long history of water wars. “We have the
'absolute dominion' rule here, which, like in Texas, means that even though surface wa-
ter is protected, you can pump all the groundwater you want, regardless of the impact
on your neighbors,” Wilfong explained. “It's an ancient relic from the age of hand
pumps, and most states have abolished it. We should go to 'reasonable use' laws for wa-
ter, like in New Hampshire and Vermont. But so far we haven't. The state legislature has
disregarded its own studies and refused to put our water in a public trust.”
New Hampshire and Vermont have tightened restrictions on large-scale water with-
drawals, while anti-bottled-water groups in Michigan and California have proposed
similar bills for those states.
In 2005, Nestlé submitted an application to build a Poland Spring trucking facility
in Fryeburg, Maine, near Wilfong's home. If approved, fifty tanker trucks would fill up
there every twenty-four hours and drive along Route 302, a narrow, undulating coun-
try road where the tarmac is in poor condition. Alarmed by this perceived incursion,
a group of Frye-burg citizens hired an attorney and filed an appeal. In 2006, the town's
zoning board denied Nestlé's permit. The company responded by filing a countersuit
against the citizens of Fryeburg and the protest group; not content with that, Nestlé then
filed suit in state supreme court. The two sides traded legal broadsides through 2007 and
2008, during which Nestlé was denied a permit to build a Fryeburg pumping facility
three times. Finally, in March 2009, the Maine supreme court ruled in favor of Poland
Spring and cleared the way for a Fryeburg pumping station. “One town after another is
falling to Nestlé,” lamented Wilfong.
By 2010, Poland Spring owned 5,500 acres of land and operated twenty wells in
Maine. A third bottling plant, near Kingfield, had opened, and the company's water
hunters were on the lookout for new sources. “Things have quieted down,” said NWNA's
Kim Jeffery. “We've invested millions into Maine, pay our taxes, and are totally trans-
parent with communities.”
Jim Wilfong predicted that the state supreme court had launched Maine down a slip-
pery slope. “I see this huge demand for water growing worldwide,” he said. “Pretty soon
it's not going to be just companies like Nestlé that take our water away in little bottles.
It's going to be railroad-tanker-trains-ful. It's going to be pipelines. Shiploads. Let's face
it, the world needs water, and Maine's got it. I don't know whenthis will happen, but I
know it will.And we citizens, apparently, cannot control it.”
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