Nestlé's Abuses in Fryeburg, Maine

Fryeburg, Maine: Poland Spring Runs Aground

Howard Dearborn has lived on Lovewell’s Pond for more than half a century. His home among southwest Maine’s dense forests and bucolic waterways has long been a get away for friends and family from up and down the eastern seaboard.[1]

But now his guests are reluctant even to swim on their visits. A “green gunk” has begun to form, something Dearborn attributes to his new neighbor –  a pumping station for Nestlé’s Poland Spring.[2]

“It’s a bad thing that [Nestlé’s water withdrawals] started in the first place, and then Nestlé overdid it,” says Dearborn, a retired businessman, now in his nineties. “People say, ‘oh, well, he’s just trying to protect his own property.’ And I say -- yes, I am trying to protect my own property. I have three little brooks, and two of them have gone dry. Those are the two that come from the north and west -- where the pumping is happening.”[3]

The operations of America’s largest water bottler are not only impacting water quality but community access to drinking water at large – raising serious questions about who should be allowed to control water and to what end.

The struggle between Dearborn’s community and Nestlé has stirred up a brand of community antipathy that the corporation could not have anticipated from this sleepy town in southwest Maine.

Though Poland Spring became a Nestlé subsidiary in 1980, Dearborn’s struggles with the corporation began in 2003. In that year, Poland Spring first began drawing on the Ward’s Brook Aquifer, which sits beneath Dearborn’s hometown, Fryeburg, Maine. The aquifer feeds Lovewell’s Pond and has also been a primary source of drinking water for many of the town’s 3000 residents.

In time, as much as 168 million gallons of water would be transported in a single year from the town’s privately-owned pump house into Nestlé’s 8,000-gallon tanker trucks, ultimately finding their way into Poland Spring bottles. [4]

Dearborn and local business owners would be among the first to raise flags about such pumping operations.

“The aquifers we have are our life support, and if these companies keep walking in, drilling holes, taking what they want until it’s gone and leaves, they’re actually hurting human life down here, a way of life,” said Al Davis, owner of a Fryeburg bait, tackle, and gun shop. “Are you going to hurt people just to get someone else a bottle of water somewhere else?”[5]

It was early on that Nestlé managers began getting a taste of these deep-seated concerns about their bottling operations.

Bill Maples at Nestlé’s Poland Spring bottling plant in Hollis once commented to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "I think people fundamentally have an issue with people taking the water and selling it."[6]

One reason community members were concerned with Nestlé’s practices was the fact that the corporation was getting local water for a relative bargain, while most residents of Fryeburg got the short end of the stick.

Nestlé secured a deal with a handful of local investors giving the corporation exclusive access to the town’s primary wells. While Nestle and a few local investors reaped large profits from the deal, other residents received no tangible benefits – instead, it became more difficult for Fryeburg residents to protect a water source that had once been designated to serve the needs of the local community.[7]

In response to the local opposition, Poland Spring opened an office in Fryeburg.

“When Poland Spring decided to open an office in Fryeburg to offer ‘free coffee and real communication’ as part of their ‘good neighbor policy,’ they also offered to give away free cases of Poland Spring water,” said Mike Dana, a Fryeburg resident. “I was amazed at how ludicrous it was to pump water from the aquifer into tanker trucks, ship it to a bottling plant, put it into plastic bottles, ship it back to Fryeburg and offer it to the local residents as a ‘free gift.’”

Dana, along with Dearborn (the two are neighbors), had an idea about what Poland Spring could do with its free gift.

“I invited people to bring their free cases of water and pour it all back into Lovewell’s Pond, where it would have naturally gone if it wasn’t trucked out of town,” said Dana.[8]

In December 2007, Dana invited the media to a rally at Dearborn’s pondside home, where 50 neighbors ceremoniously ‘welcomed their water back home’ by emptying cases of Poland Spring into the pond.[9]

Such visibility events and community organizing have since staved off, or slowed plans, to set up new pumping stations, including a proposed station in East Fryeburg. The level of scrutiny Nestlé has faced statewide led to the introduction of legislation in 2007 that would provide greater protection for groundwater at the state level. Nestlé saw the writing on the wall and agreed to support the new measures if some compromises were made – a sign Nestlé was flinching under public pressure.[10]

And while the new laws may be a step in the right direction, some Maine activists think they don’t go far enough. Nestlé’s inside seat at the table in shaping the new laws has left activists wondering whether such protections will be adequate in prioritizing public control over private profits.

In the meantime, Nestlé continues to search for more water. Earlier this spring, it began talks with the community of Shapleigh to explore whether water from an aquifer underlying the community might make a good source of water for Poland Spring.[11]

For activists like Dearborn, this signals that still more landowners will be caught in the struggle to protect their backyard streams before this whole business of bottling water is all done.

[1] Fahrenthold, David A. “A swirling debate over water,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 25, 2006. Reprinted from earlier publication in The Washington Post
[2] “Maine’s water wars: Source of Trouble,” The Economist, October 28, 2006.
[3] Personal communication between Howard Dearborn and Corporate Accountability International, April 4, 2008.
[4] Turkel, Tux. “Water deal too sweet?” Portland Press Herald, April 1, 2007; Nestle Waters North America website accessed 10 April 2008, www.nestle-watersna.com/Menu/OurBrands/Poland+Spring.htm
[5] Personal communication between Mike Dana and Corporate Accountability, April 3, 2008.
[6] Fahrenthold, Ibid.
[7] Turkel, Ibid.
[8] Personal communication between Mike Dana and Corporate Accountability, April 3, 2008.
[9] “Poland Spring Protest: Demonstration targets Poland Spring,” Associated Press, December 9, 2007.
[10] Adams, Glenn. “Bill enacted to alter water extraction rules,” Associated Press, June 22, 2007. Published in the Bangor Daily News.
[11] Harkness, Seth. “Poland Spring pitch regarding test wells rolls into Shapleigh,” Portland Press Herald, March 2, 2008.