FRYEBURG – A public hearing about Poland Spring’s proposed truck-loading facility on Route 302 drew well over 100 residents to the fire station to urge the Planning Board to reject the water company’s application.
The $2.1 million loading facility would be part of a larger project to extract water from an aquifer in property the company owns in Denmark. During the peak summer season, 50 trucks a day would pull in at the Fryeburg station to fill up with water, said John Edgerton, a Poland Spring representative.
Philip Merrill, an attorney representing some of the residents who would be affected by the plan, said in a speech that drew loud applause that the facility violates town zoning law.
“If your ordinance means anything,” he told the Planning Board, “this proposal needs to be rejected.”
Merrill said the Poland Spring Water Co. facility is a commercial-industrial use and does not belong in a residential and rural zone.
But there is one clause in the rural zone that Poland Spring might use to its advantage. The ordinance claims that “natural-resource based businesses” are allowable. These include businesses that involve the sale of products raised or grown on the premises, Merrill explained. But that is referring to enterprises like farm stands, he said.
The clause in no way meant to allow large-scale operations, Merrill said.
Moreover, Merrill added, the ordinance explicitly prohibits filling stations, or gas stations.
“If you want to find an analogous use,” he said of the proposed facility, “it’s a service station.”
Elbridge Russell, a tree farmer whose property abuts the proposed project, defended the facility.
He said Maine has always depended on trucking to export its products, including wood and fish. He also said Poland Spring employs many people in Maine.
But a neighbor pointed out during the meeting that Russell has sold 150 acres to Poland Spring so that the company can put part of a two-mile underground pipeline there. Russell did not deny this.
Tom Brennan, a natural resource manager for Poland Spring, said at a previous meeting with the town that the company would provide Fryeburg with tax revenue and try to hire local truckers. And the company, which is owned by Nestle Waters North America Inc., would donate to local causes, he said.
Other residents were concerned about the noise from trucks and more of them on Route 302, as well as a potential decrease in value of their properties.
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