KINGFIELD – Poland Spring Water Co. representative Tom Brennan said Wednesday that the company will not “commit to a significant capital investment” in a bottling plant in Kingfield while the Legislature considers implementing a statewide tax on water extraction.
He said earlier this fall that rather than losing money in Maine if the state enacts the tax, Nestle Waters North America, Poland Spring’s parent company, will probably move elsewhere.
The Maine-based water bottling company has been considering opening a plant in Kingfield for more than a year, buying options on land surrounding the proposed site of the $100 million facility, conducting pump tests to evaluate, among other things, the sustainability of pumping from the Kingfield aquifer, and holding townwide meetings to introduce the company to residents in Kingfield and the surrounding towns from which Poland Spring plans to pump.
All the company’s work may have been for nothing if a petition campaign for a statewide tax on water extraction succeeds, according to Brennan.
Brennan said Wednesday that although the company may go forward in the permitting process for a possible Kingfield plant at any time, company executives will not commit financially to the project until the water extraction tax question is resolved. “At some point we will be committing to bricks and mortar, and that begins to get expensive,” he said. “Committing is not something we can do” while the proposed water tax is “still potentially alive.”
State officials are currently in the process of validating petition signatures, Brennan said. If even 1 percent of those signatures are determined to be invalid, he said, the petition will not have the required support, and the issue will be dropped. If enough signatures have been collected, he added, the question will go to referendum next year.
Brennan has indicated in numerous meetings that Poland Spring will, in all probability, move out of Maine if a tax on water extraction is passed. “The competition doesn’t bottle their water in Maine,” Brennan noted at a Franklin County Municipal Association meeting this September. “And the notion that we can just add (the amount of the tax) to the price is completely false. The customer is just ruthless,” he said.
“If they get enough signatures there’s a good probability that the allocation of resources would go someplace else,” Brennan said. Nestle Waters North America has “eight regional brands,” he added.
Brennan will meet with Kingfield’s Planning Board on Monday, Nov. 14, to discuss the town’s permit application procedure. He said he will not be making any announcements regarding the timing of the possible application.
Planning Board Chairman David Guernsey explained that, if Poland Spring does submit an application to build a bottling plant in Kingfield in the near future, the permitting process will be a “bigger project than everything the Planning Board has ever done to date, all wrapped into one.” Preliminary meetings with the bottling company may make the process easier, he said.
Brennan and other Poland Spring representatives also plan to meet with Kingfield residents at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, at Kingfield Elementary School. Brennan said the meeting will be routine, and that it was scheduled in order to update the town on the results of the company’s recent aquifer pump tests, among other things. The company is not planning on announcing anything regarding a possible permit application at the meeting, he said.
Comments are no longer available on this story