The slogan “What it means to be from Maine” takes on new meaning when applied to Poland Spring’s paradoxical treatment inside the state nowadays. Last week provided examples of the water bottler’s Jekyll-and-Hyde existence.

On Wednesday, a rally in Portland excoriated the company’s business as the corporate exploitation of water. On Thursday, the Maine Development Foundation gave Poland Spring top honors for its $400 million investment into the state during the past 15 years.

What it means to be from Maine is, apparently, to be slapped on the back with one hand and stabbed with the other. Polarization of opinion about Poland Spring is an example of what happens when fears and facts become meshed and indecipherable.

Of all the natural resources in Maine, fresh water is perhaps least to worry about. It is abundant and renewable. Of 24 trillion gallons of rain here each year, some 2 to 5 trillion seeps into the ground to recharge supplies.

Poland Spring bottled 700 million gallons of groundwater last year, an amount – given the vastness of this resource – that can be considered infinitesimal. The company points out that a good-sized lake can lose this much water to evaporation in one summer month.

Yet concerns about sustainability of Maine’s water resources are being aired with an hysteria usually reserved for petroleum, and Poland Spring is being regarded – in some circles – with the same skepticism and contempt now being slapped against “Big Oil.”

The issues regarding Poland Spring are much different. While the amount of a resource is a concern with oil, for example, nobody cares much about how an oil barrel is made. The same cannot be said for Poland Spring, which is suffering from a bottle image issue.

Worldwide proliferation of water-bottling has generated environmental concerns about disposal, which is a legitimate point of criticism for Poland Spring. To its credit, the bottler has reduced plastic in its bottles by 30 percent.

Yet, because its bottles are made in Maine, it’s worthy for activists to air their environmental concerns here about their impact. Pressure on Poland Spring to improve its bottles will help move the entire industry in a better direction.

The issue should, but doesn’t, stop there. It spreads into inflated concern about Maine groundwater supplies and the inevitable anti-corporate rhetoric. The former is a non-issue and the latter is a non-starter.

Maine should welcome the investment made by Nestle/Poland Spring over the past 15 years, especially in such rural locales as Kingfield, where perhaps the best example of a methodical planning relationship between a town and business occurred in 2006.

Poland Spring is a not perfect business. (Precious few are.) But it is also not the corporate ogre its critics claim. There are many facts and fears flying around about the bottler.

A better job must be done to separate them.