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SHAPLEIGH — Poland Spring has removed its test wells from a wildlife management area in Shapleigh and Newfield and no longer plans to pursue extracting spring water from the area, according to a spokesperson for the company.

The city of Flagstaff will not be selling millions of gallons of spring water from the San Francisco Peaks to a bottled-water subsidiary of the Nestle Co.

Mayor Sara Presler stated Tuesday that the proposal by Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water to annually pump 55 million gallons of potable water has been rejected by the city. She said the proposal wasn't a good fit for the community for a number of reasons, including long-term water sustainability and the use of plastic bottles.

Nestle Waters North America's Poland Spring subsidiary finished removing the last of more than a dozen test and monitoring wells near the border of Shapleigh and Newfield on Friday, a Poland Spring official confirmed.

Mark Dubois, the company's natural resource manager, said the decision followed the end of unsuccessful negotiations with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to tap into an underlying aquifer for commercial bottled-water production.

"We weren't able to come to an arrangement with the department, so we are not going to be pursuing that site," said Dubois.

In this issue:

* Changes to the bulletin
* Nestle Project Update
* Local News and Water Media
* MCSD Updates
* Supporter's Corner
* Community Outreach & Events

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Nestlé Waters North America Inc. will pump $14 million into the local economy to convert a warehouse in the Florin Fruitridge Industrial Park into a two-line water bottling plant.

The company announced Friday that it will create by early next year a bottling plant that will employ about 40 people. The plant will be created from 214,434 square feet of existing warehouse space on Younger Creek Drive in Sacramento.

The Citizen is recapping only the major issues debated by the Chaffee County Board of Commissioners during a special hearing held July 1 to consider Nestle Waters North America proposal to harvest water here for its commercial bottling operations. Additional posts cover economics, wetlands and air quality.nestle

WATER

Test

Should nature be able to take you to court?

Last February, the town of Shapleigh, Maine, population 2,326, passed an unusual ordinance. Like nearby towns, Shapleigh sought to protect its aquifers from the Nestle Corporation, which draws heavily on the region for its Poland Spring bottled water. Some Maine towns had acquiesced, others had protested, and one was locked in a protracted legal battle.

Crystal Geyser Water Co. announced Friday afternoon that it has submitted an application to build a sparkling mineral water bottling plant in Orland.

Tri-County Newspapers reported June 13 that an unnamed company planned to conduct tests to determine the feasible of drawing groundwater and building a water-bottling facility near Orland.

At that time, environmental engineer James Strandberg, vice president of Malcolm Pirnie in Emeryville, said the company did not want to reveal its name until the it was determined that the area was suitable for the project.

McCloud, Calif. -

Dear Editor,

In Nestle’s science meeting on June 2, Nestle’s natural resource director Brendan O’Rourke said, “I think we have different ideas about what adaptive management means.”

This is concerning.

The preliminary scientific studies being conducted are important for establishing thresholds of impact, but adaptive management is a long term iterative process that addresses the uncertainty inherent in complex ecosystems.
New data and new understanding often requires a change in behavior in regards to the use of a resource — water in McCloud’s case.