PORTLAND (AP) – A coalition of activists and citizens has kicked off an initiative they say will protect Maine’s groundwater supplies from what they call “corporate exploitation.”

At a rally in Portland on Wednesday, state Rep. Rick Burns of Berwick said he has submitted a bill in the Legislature called “An Act to Protect Maine’s Groundwater.”

The language of the proposed legislation has not been written, but Burns said he will introduce it in the next legislative session.

Burns and a several other speakers said more needs to be done to protect Maine’s groundwater supplies from corporations that extract it for bottled water.

Residents in several Maine towns in recent years have protested expansion efforts by Poland Spring bottled water company, a subsidiary of Nestle Water North America Inc.

Jonathan Carter, director of the Forest Ecology Network, said the bottled water industry is conducting a “greenwash campaign” to try to convince the public it is a good environmental steward.

“There is no question that bottled water is not environmentally friendly,” Carter told a gathering of a few dozen people.

In a statement, Poland Spring said it used about 700 million gallons of Maine groundwater last year, a tiny fraction of the 2 trillion to 5 trillion gallons of water it says infiltrates the ground to recharge groundwater each year.

Poland Spring has 800 employees in Maine.

“To Maine people who know about our economic development in rural parts of the state and our environmental and sustainability practices, these protests just don’t make sense,” said Tom Brennan, Poland Spring’s natural resource manager.

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