KINGFIELD – Three days of public hearings on the Poland Spring bottling plant application held over the course of three weeks ended Wednesday.

Lawyers, hydrogeologists, engineers, executives, Planning Board members and townspeople have said their piece.

The written record – notes, opinions, and information interested parties want to add to what was said at the hearing – closes at precisely 4:30 p.m. Oct. 4.

“What comes next? We are meeting on the 4th to begin our deliberative process,” Planning Board Chairman David Guernsey said Thursday. “I hope we can do it expeditiously,” he added. “I’m looking forward to it being over, I guess.”

But there’s much to be done before it’s over, he said.

“The most important thing we have to hash out, in my opinion, is the monitoring system,” he said. “All this (Poland Spring’s plans to build at $60 million to $80 million bottling plant) sounds good, but it’s still on paper. The question is how do we come up with a monitoring regime that shows the reality matches up with what the technical experts said?”

Poland Spring Water Co. proposed one, which Water District trustees have supported, but board members have to make their own decision.

Not that the board doesn’t trust the Poland Spring experts, he said. The Water District and Planning Board both have experts, and they respect and, in large part, seem to agree with Poland Spring’s people, Guernsey said. “There’s no one there that’s a charlatan or a snake oil salesman,” he said. “If there were, they would have been found out a long time ago.”

Even so, he said, monitoring will probably be the issue of the day next week.

“If this thing passes muster with the Planning Board and the Department of Environmental Protection, the monitoring program onward is critical.”

They have three choices now, Guernsey said. They can accept the application, deny it flat out, or accept it with conditions.

“I can guarantee you we’re not going to say yes without conditions,” he said. “But there may be some real sticking point (with the conditions imposed),” he added.

“We’re getting to where the rubber meets the road, you know?”