KINGFIELD – The noise levels are estimated to be lower than crickets chirping at night. The light will be masked by trees and special equipment. Traffic is not expected to create delays along Route 27. And the water – well, suffice it to say, it’s a lot.

A cadre of nearly 30 engineers, lawyers, Planning Board members and Poland Spring Water Co. officials discussed, in minute detail, all those issues, and many more, during the first day of a public hearing about the bottling company’s proposal to build a plant in Kingfield.

Nearly 50 people sat inside the Kingfield Elementary School gym Wednesday, many taking notes as questions and answers flew around the room.

It took three years – and thousands of dollars – to get here.

When Poland Spring began efforts to expand its more than $600 million water bottling business into Western Maine, it studied aquifers and towns all over this area. Kingfield, with its huge, clean underground water source and its easy access (via route 27) to the company’s other plants and southern New England market, quickly became the prime candidate.

Over the course of two years, the company’s initial plan to build a $100 million plant was scaled down to a range of $60 million to $80 million. Officials have said they expect to hire about 30 people and pump around 200 million gallons per year at first, and to scale up to a work force of nearly 100 people, pumping and bottling nearly 750 million gallons of water per year, according to Natural Resources Manager Tom Brennan.

After more than a year’s worth of hydrogeological testing, meetings with residents and town and state officials, and planning, the bottling company submitted an application to build a bottling plant this spring.

The submission set the town’s permitting process in motion.

Step one, already finished, was when Planning Board members reviewed the application for completeness, making sure they had all the information required by law, and anything else they needed, in their application materials.

Step two is the ongoing public hearing. Public hearings are a chance for everyone involved in the process to make their case before the board, for or against the proposal. They also provide a chance for people to ask questions of the applicants.

After the hearings are complete at the end of this month comes step three, when the board will review the application, not for completeness, but to decide if the proposal meets its criteria for acceptance.

The discussion began Wednesday with an hour-long description of the proposed plant and of Poland Spring’s application process, given by engineer John Edgerton of Wright Pierce. Edgerton described the building plans and location using maps projected on a screen.

He discussed issues ranging from the amount of water officials expect to pump, to use for sewage and other “household” uses, and to use for cleaning pipelines and other industrial tasks. He talked about how the company hopes to mask the massive factory, noise and light pollution associated with it, and how many truck trips will come out of the plant per hour.

For the sight issues, it plans trees, a big setback and a curved driveway. The company expects somewhere approaching 30 trucks per hour, or nearly 500 per day, at peak times.

After his presentation, Planning Board-employed engineers took the Poland Spring side of the room to task, asking exacting questions focusing on everything from traffic patterns and idling policies, to decibel levels to the construction process. At one point, a Poland Spring engineer said the noise levels were expected to stay under 45 decibels. A discussion about what that meant ensued, until an engineer on the Planning Board side picked up a piece of equipment that measures decibel levels. “If everyone could be quiet,” he asked, then did the test. The decibel level in the quiet gym was found to be 40 decibels.

Discussion was still going on late into the evening Wednesday.

The hearing continues today, and will again be held in the gym at the Kingfield Elementary School. Public comment will be from 7 to 8 p.m., and then discussion will continue until 10 p.m.