HARRISON -The bottled water industry has a long history in Maine but water experts say not all springs lend themselves well to commercial bottling operations.

Marc Loiselle, a state hydrogeologist, said all the natural springs in Maine have not been mapped, but he assumes their number to be in the thousands.

“They can occur in many, many places,” he said. “They can occur in a variety of settings. It’s just about impossible to map all the springs in the state.”

In Auburn, Crystal Spring Water Co. has been in the Bornstein family since 1909 and has 20 employees. They bottle about 1.6 million gallons a year, according to state data. But business has leveled out because the company has saturated its market, General Manager Derick Laliberte said.

And Carrabassett Spring Water Co. in Peru, which was bought by Jim and Marty Milligan in 1988, bottles 230,370 gallons annually, according to state records.

Nestle, Poland Spring’s parent company, on the other hand, bottles about 511 million gallons in the state, state records show.

A spring, in the strict geologic sense, is a place where the water table intersects with the ground surface.

Some natural springs are year-round, some are seasonal, and for it to make anyone money, it has to put out a relatively high volume of water, Loiselle said.

Other considerations for potential bottlers include how far from major roads a spring is and whether the land use around a spring might threaten its water quality as some point, he said.

“Just the presence of a spring alone might not meet all the criteria,” Loiselle said.