The corporation’s intention to build another plant — possibly in the Lincoln area — that could extract another 175 million gallons per year from an aquifer has, predictably, fanned fears that nearby wells or the entire aquifer will be sucked dry.
Could Poland Spring deplete Maine’s groundwater?
That included the 768 million gallons pumped out by bottled water companies, Gordon said.
Last year, Poland Spring bottled around 900 million gallons of water, less than 1 percent of the state’s groundwater, according to Thomas Brennan, Poland Spring’s senior natural resource manager.
Could Poland Spring bottling plants dry out nearby wells and deplete streams?
Gordon, the state hydrologist, said during the drought he checked each of the company’s test wells that measure how the aquifer being tapped is being affected by the bottling operation.
Poland Spring controls water under land it owns.
The Maine DEP typically checks testing wells at a proposed extraction site to see how the surrounding area would be affected, said Mark Margerum, an environmental specialist for the department.
During droughts, the Maine Geological Survey will check the company’s test wells itself.
Nisha Swinton, senior organizer for Food and Water Watch, said she wants stronger regulation of water extraction and says the state ought to have control over all of Maine’s groundwater.

What happens to those single-use, non-biodegradable, plastic bottles?
The list of monitored contaminants and acceptable levels are very similar.
The EPA requires that community water systems (suppliers of most tap water) provide Consumer Confidence Reports, which describe their water quality in detail and are publicly available to all consumers.
Bottled water is FAR more expensive than tap water If you buy bottled water for drinking all year, you’d pay about $1,400.
Bottled water costs between 450 and 10,000 times the cost of tap water, depending on the brand and quantity of purchase.
Bottled water use is harmful to the environment The plastic material used to store bottled water (PET or Polyethylene Terephthalate) is non-biodegradable, and even though it is recyclable, as much as 85 percent of these bottles end up in the trash.
For every pound of PET made, 3 pounds of atmospheric CO2 is generated.
It takes as much as 3 gallons of water to produce 1-gallon of bottled water.
Buy your own refillable bottle, fill it with tap water, and carry it with you.
Adding final filtration to your tap water can improve flavor, add additional protection, and is still far cheaper than bottled water.

Budget Buster: Buying bottled water is for brainless buffoons.
All I knew was it came from the tap any time I wanted it in a refreshing and never-ending stream.
The developing world is crying out for a safe and affordable water supply.
Tap water in Auckland is 0.14c a litre, which is about 2300 times cheaper.
In 2015, fizzy drinks were bumped off their throne as the world’s top-selling beverage.
While pretentious types love their $11 imported French H2O, numerous blind tests have found consumers can’t tell the difference, and sometimes even prefer tap water.
We’ve established that tap water is just as safe, just as tasty, and about a zillion times cheaper than the bottled stuff, but there’s another factor which makes it an absolute slam-dunk.
That’s how much energy is consumed by manufacturing the plastic, packaging, transport, and everything else.
If you stop buying a weekly bottle of water, you’ll save $150 in the first year alone.
In a country like New Zealand, we’re incredibly blessed to have clean water – it’s time to stop taking it for granted.

Would you eat your water bottle if that would save the planet?.
With an edible water bottler, for instance, consumers can experience the immediate satisfaction of doing their part to reduce waste – a step beyond tossing recyclables into a bin and hoping they end up where they are supposed to.
“If you buy a plastic bottle that is made of 30 percent less plastic, you really don’t experience your contribution to a greener society, whereas if you ‘eat’ your water bottle, you’re actually reminding yourself and consciously thinking of this step that you’re taking to be sustainable, to be greener, and that could have a more positive impact on the consumer.” And without the need to open something or throw the container away after consumption edible packaging also gains another advantage: convenience.
In some cases, edible food wrappings have been so accepted by mainstream consumers no one ever gives them a second thought, such as the ubiquitous ice cream cone or a popular Japanese candy that comes wrapped in edible rice paper.
“I mean there has always been this notion of … something around the [food] product that is edible,” says Bernd Schmitt, a marketing professor at Columbia Business School in New York City.
However, Elizabeth Minton, an expert in pro-social marketing from the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., says sustainable innovations like edible water bottles could easily build up following – if consumers are given a chance to try it out at events like athletic events or summer concerts.
“With a lot of these really new products, if you can get it involved in some kind of event-based marketing that is already using your product, you can get it to big audience,” says Ms. Minton.
Follow Stories Like This Sign Up Considering the mental barriers to accepting a new product like Ooho, Coary says these products with edible food packaging will probably only appeal to a small fragment of consumers who are "trying to lessen their impact on the earth when it comes to waste."
"I do see growing steam in these companies increasing in revenue and having growth in the next few years," he says.
"But would I see this is kind of overtaking our traditional water bottle in the next 10 years?

LINCOLN, Neb.
(AP) – A Lincoln company that manufactures equipment for the bottled water and craft brewery industries has broken ground on a $1.25 million warehouse building.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports (http://bit.ly/2pAe4pn ) that Norland International held the groundbreaking Wednesday on its Lincoln campus.
Company officials said construction will start on the 18,000-square-foot building this week and is expected to be completed by October.
The new building will give Norland close to 90,000 total square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space.
Norland was founded in 1993 and moved to its current location in 2004, when it constructed its first 33,000-square-foot building.
The plant has more than 100 employees.
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Sen. Ananich of Flint still drinks bottled water, says, “I was lied to like everyone else".
Mayor Karen Weaver says she wants Flint to return to a long-term agreement with the Detroit-based Great Lakes Water Authority.
This reverses the plans to connect Flint to the new, competing Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA).
The Michigan Senate Minority Leader, Senator Jim Ananich, D-Flint, joined Stateside’s live show in Flint last Saturday to talk about the state of the city and why something needs to be done about the water rates.
Water is a right … it’s something that we have to have.
"I was lied to like everyone else was, so I buy bottled water with fluoride in it for my son, and I use that primarily myself," Ananich said.
So I feel like a lot of people in Flint do.
Lead is a neurotoxin that has really damaging results to people and if they’re worried about costs, then that’s just a ridiculous reason not to make changes.
"Lead is a neurotoxin that has really damaging results to people and if they’re worried about costs, then that’s just a ridiculous reason not to make changes."
"Michigan should lead the way [in water quality standards]," Ananich said.

Bottled water is destroying our oceans.
Re: That plastic bottle you tossed is on its way to Arctic, April 22 That plastic bottle you tossed is on its way to Arctic, April 22 The time has come for us to start dismantling the bottled-water industry.
The Wellington Water Watchers and letter writers to the Star have convincingly argued that we need to protect our precious groundwater resources.
Now scientists are showing us we produce and throw away so many plastic products that we are destroying our oceans and the marine life.
We should care less about the profits of huge multi-national companies like Nestlé and more about the long-term health of our planet and our children.
When we learned about environmental dangers in the past, our country often joined the international community to tackle problems such as acid rain, the use of DDT, lead in gasoline and the uncontrolled dumping of toxic chemicals in our waterways.
We should be able to apply the same resolve to this issue of sustainable water resources as we did when we became global leaders in the campaign to ban landmines.
We have the ability to make the necessary changes.
We just have to stop procrastinating and act in ways designed to help our planet survive so our next generation will have a livable home.
Paul A. Wilson, Toronto

Pescadero High School’s water has again exceeded the maximum contaminant level for nitrates, forcing the district to revise the corrective action plan for improving water quality it planned to send this month to the State Water Resources Control Board.
Those included treating the water or connecting to County Service Area 11 and using bottled water in its kitchen for cooking and food preparation.
But last week, test results showed that nitrate levels had again exceeded the maximum contaminant level.
The results mean La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District Superintendent Amy Wooliever will “have to revise the revised revised” plan to reflect the high nitrate levels before submitting it to the state, she said at Thursday evening’s school board meeting.
But the new test results and revised plan won’t result in substantially different day-to-day operations for the school, Wooliever said.
The school had been using an elaborate system of pipes, tubes and bottled water in its kitchen to wash dishes to avoid using its well water.
Before the new tests, the corrective action plan listed replacing bottled water in the kitchen with a nitrate removal system.
The school has no plans to cease using bottled drinking water throughout the school, which it has done for around 15 years.
The plan also proposes constructing a new well on the southwest corner of the high school property, to replace the current faulty well that had been at the site before the high school was constructed.
In January, the district governing board gave the green light for staff to begin pursuing state funding for the new well, which could serve both the school and a new fire station that has been proposed for the site as well.

Brewery equipment maker Norland expanding again.
Construction will start on the 18,000-square-foot building this week, and it is expected to be completed by October, company officials said.
The new building will give Norland close to 90,000 total square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space.
“Our company has grown exponentially over the past several years and … and we see this as a wise investment for the future,” Vice President Bruce Kucera said in a news release.
Norland was founded in 1993 and moved to its current location in 2004, when it constructed its first 33,000-square-foot building.
In late 2011, the company decided to get into the business of manufacturing craft beer production equipment leading to its next division, American Beer Equipment.
In 2013, Norland established its most recent division, Norland Pure, which is dedicated to delivering premium distilled and enhanced bottled water to Lincoln and surrounding areas.
In early 2016, the company opened its 34,000-square-foot innovation and technology center, which houses a new canning line, a high-speed bottling line that accommodates both glass and plastic bottles, a new spirits distillery manufacturing line and a "de-palletizer" that makes unloading and stacking cans easier.
Norland, which as recently as 2014 had fewer than 50 employees, now has more than 100 and continues to grow it’s labor force.

Swicorp advises Delta in closing bottled water deal.
Swicorp, a leading investment banking group, acted as the exclusive financial advisor to advise Jeddah-based Delta Marketing in the divestment of its bottled water activity to Agthia Group, a top Abu Dhabi based F&B company.
Daniel Schencker, CEO of Swicorp, said: “It is our pleasure to be the Exclusive Financial Advisor to Delta Marketing Company on this important transaction.
The successful closing of this transaction reinforces Swicorp leading position in the M & A market, having successfully advised on many mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures for leading Saudi companies over the last two years."
He added that Swicorp was involved throughout the entire process – from origination to due diligence, to deal structuring and negotiations of transactional documentations.
Hassan Alireza, managing director of Delta Marketing Company, said: "The transaction will enable Delta Marketing Company, a leading Saudi business conglomerate, to refocus its attention to the retail activities while providing strong growth prospects for the Al Ain brand through the regional leadership of Agthia Group.
We also value the commitment of our financial advisor Swicorp that added value through the project which was a key factor for the successful closing of this transaction."
– TradeArabia News Service