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Nearly eight years ago, I spent months following a proposal by Poland Spring to drill a borehole in Rumford. In 2014, the company, then owned by Nestle Waters North American, had come to the town with a proposal: it wanted to tap an aquifer in the Ellis River, close to where Rumford had one of its two municipal wells. The company wanted to withdraw roughly 100 million gallons annually.
Reporting the story took me deep into the world of water, in Maine and around the globe. I spoke to water rights advocates, to town officials and residents and to state agencies. I visited the original Poland Spring and had long conversations with company representatives. I emerged convinced that this fight, over what is perhaps our most precious resource, would be one of the defining issues of my lifetime.
Our environmental reporter Emmett Gartner has been following the efforts of Maine towns to manage their relationship with Poland Spring for months now. This week, he looks at recent changes to the town of Denmark's water extraction ordinance.
The changes, years in the making, mark the first time in more than a decade that the town has updated its regulations, and come just over a month after Poland Spring’s former parent company, Blue Triton Brands, finalized its merger with a rival corporate water bottler to form Primo Brands on Nov. 8. The timing of the merger allows the bottled water giant to narrowly avoid a new permit transfer process the company would be subjected to under the ordinance changes.
Also this week, Emily Bader explores weapons restrictions orders since the Lewiston shooting, Jacqueline Weaver asks real estate agents and home buyers and sellers how commission changes have impacted them, and I take a look a ownership of utility-scale battery storage systems.
We've also got an update from Emmett on the dams on the Royal River and an episode of our monthly Maine Monitor Radio Hour podcast on the state's indigent defense crisis.
Thanks for reading (and listening),
— Kate |
