A ballot petition targets one company with an unfair tax, but also threatens the state’s business reputation.

Proponents of a new tax on Maine companies that bottle water are now making their final push to collect enough signatures to put this issue on the ballot next year. This tax is bad for Maine, and I hope Maine people won’t sign petitions in support of this misguided effort.

It is hard for me not to take this issue personally. I have spent nearly my entire working career helping to make Poland Spring a success, and while other bottled water companies in Maine would be affected by this tax, 90 percent of it will fall on Poland Spring.

When our company acquired Poland Spring in 1980, it was bankrupt and had fewer than 30 workers. Since then, through a lot of hard work by our dedicated employees, Poland Spring has grown to become the third-largest bottled water brand in the U.S. and its owners have invested more than $1.6 billion in Maine.

I think we are the kind of responsible, good paying, non-polluting company that Maine people appreciate.

Today, we employ 550 people in Maine with an average wage of $16 an hour, plus benefits. Our annual payroll for wages and benefits is $37 million. We buy another $65 million worth of goods and services from local Maine companies annually, helping those companies to employ more people and invest in Maine. We also pay millions of dollars in state and local taxes.

We are prepared to invest millions more in new facilities, creating hundreds of additional safe, clean jobs in Maine, but those plans obviously will be put on hold if this referendum becomes a reality. And if this tax should ever be approved, we would have to seriously re-evaluate our ability to continue to do business in Maine.

The backers of this tax say they want to help small business, but more taxes never helped any business grow. Ironically, this misguided tax puts Maine companies at a huge competitive disadvantage because large bottlers like Coke and Pepsi that sell their Dasani and Aquafina right alongside Poland Spring won’t have to pay the new tax because their waters are bottled out-of-state.

On its face, this proposed referendum question is called “An Act to Preserve Maine’s Drinking Water.” Yet at its core, it doesn’t preserve or protect drinking water or anything else.

Poland Spring uses less than 0.2 percent of all the fresh water used in Maine – water that is replenished naturally each year by rain and snow. We also spend millions each year to monitor and protect the health of our water sources and the ecology around them.

It’s worth noting, too, that the Maine Legislature held a public hearing and work session on legislation seeking to tax water during the past session and soundly rejected the bill. Not one member of the Natural Resources Committee supported it.

Finally, this proposal sends a terrible message that Maine is not a good place to do business or invest. Businesspeople that I speak with around the country are incredulous that Maine is even considering a tax on water. Then they invariably ask, what will be next?

This referendum certainly won’t help Maine attract new jobs.

Kim Jeffery is the president of Nestle Waters North America in Greenwich, Conn.