BANGOR (AP) – The parent company of Poland Spring plans to purchase more than 80 acres in a small Somerset County town where a ground spring once touted as a source of healing waters is located.

Nestle Waters of North America confirmed it will buy two parcels of land in St. Albans, a town of fewer than 2,000 people, where the Glenwood Spring is located. The project could put 40 trucks a day on local roads.

A loading station will be built there, but there are no plans for a bottling plant, said Tom Brennan, New England natural resources manager for Poland Spring. The company is developing two other springs in western Somerset County.

“We are continually, actively looking for water sources,” Brennan said.

The company has springs and bottling operations in Poland Spring and Hollis, and draws water from a spring in Fryeburg. Together, they supply the company with about 1 million gallons of water a day.

The company has told state officials it also plans to draw up to 80 million gallons per year from another aquifer in Maine’s unorganized territory.

Poland Spring said it wants to build a third bottling plant by 2007, but has not announced where it will be.

Glenwood Spring has been well-known in St. Albans since the 1800s, when local people claimed the water could cure everything from rheumatism to kidney disorders. The claims prompted a local physician to have the water analyzed in 1884.

A bottling business was set up and water from the spring was sold along a route in St. Albans, Hartland and Pittsfield. Ads claimed the water “restores the affected, prevents disease and purifies the system.”

A dilapidated springhouse is all that remains of the original bottling plant.

AP-ES-06-28-04 1323EDT