KINGFIELD – With less than 36 hours to go before decision-time, town attorneys worked Wednesday to draw up preliminary approval papers for Poland Spring’s bottling plant application.

Planning Board members read and re-read draft legal documents. Some have already decided which way they would vote at tonight’s meeting. Others were still deciding.

At Poland Spring Water Co.’s offices in Poland, Technical Manager Terry Coffin was working on building plans and bids. Natural Resources Manager Tom Brennan was working and anticipating the vote that will decide the fate of the $60 million project.

“I’m certainly looking forward to it,” Brennan said.

“We’re feeling pretty optimistic,” Coffin said.

Planning Board Chairman David Guernsey said he can’t be sure which way the vote will go. But Wednesday, attorneys drew up papers detailing the board’s conditions for approval, he said. “It’s a conditional approval. We don’t just say yes. There are about 40 conditions.”

“I just hope that we’ve covered everything, you know?”

Board member Betty Ann Listowich said Wednesday she was up to her eyeballs in work and planned to go over the paperwork once again. “My gut instinct? I think that it will be approved with conditions to the permit. We’ve come too far now to not say that,” she said.

Poland Spring has been a great company to work with, she said. “They’ve shown every effort to want to work and be a part of our community. What more could you want of an applicant?”

Even if the approval goes through as expected, she said, that doesn’t let anybody off the hook. “As a small community, like many small communities in Maine, the whole issue of ongoing enforcement of permits granted is a very tough test.” Small volunteer governments and part-time code enforcement officers can’t do all the policing.

“The whole community needs to grab onto this, whether with a large company like Poland Spring or (a one-person operation), it’s the whole community’s responsibility to ensure they’re abiding by the conditions on their permit and trying as well to be good community citizens,” Listowich said.

At Tranten’s Market, board member Clay Tranten was working. He’s already decided which way he would vote, he said, but wouldn’t say how that will be. The decision has to be purely based on the facts, he said, and not his personal feelings.

He said he thinks, if approved, the plant will make a big impact on the town.

“I remember when the three mills were working,” he said.

Now, Tranten’s is the second-largest employer in Kingfield – with 54 workers. The average family income in town is only $23,000. “With Poland Spring, one person’s going to bring that home,” he said.

“I haven’t decided (which way to vote) yet,” board member Marianne Stevens said. “We have to put aside how we feel personally – that’s the hardest part of the whole thing,” she said.

Eaton Peabody attorney Mike Clisham worked on a draft of the board’s findings and conditions.

The most important conditions reflect some of the fears expressed in meetings during the past year, he said.

“The bottling plant will be the principal use and (the approval) will require the majority of the water extracted to be bottled in the town of Kingfield,” he said.

“It will regulate the overall withdrawal at levels that have been determined safe by the Planning Board’s experts.”

“And it will regulate associated traffic issues with trucks coming to and from town,” Clisham said.

The meeting begins at 7 tonight at Webster Hall.