Residents Oppose Renewal of Nestle/Poland Spring Extraction Permit in Denmark
Nestle’s legal bullying of the tiny Maine town of Fryeburg has taken on an almost Alamo-esque patina; activists around the country point to Fryeburg whenever Nestle’s operatives verbalize Nestle’s “good corporate neighbor” spin.
Fryeburg’s planning commission has repeatedly turned away Nestle’s attempt to build a 100 truck-trips-per-day loading station in an East Fryeburg residential area, yet Nestle simply fires up another lawsuit or appeal.
With opponents roughly $20,000 in debt, and Nestle’s fifth lawsuit against the town pending, it’s possible Nestle’s within a stone’s throw of getting its loading station… unless the nearby town of Denmark revokes Nestle’s permit to extract water.
Opposition to Nestle Appears in Denmark
Nestle/Poland Spring plans to pump water from Denmark wells, then pipe it to the East Fryeburg loading station. With its Fryeburg loading station stalled and its Denmark water extraction permit up for renewal, Nestle’s suddenly facing failure on both fronts.
Residents of Denmark recently gathered to discuss the issue (Nestle’s Mark DuBois also attended), and the Water in the News blog published a detailed report of the emotionally charged meeting:
Anger and a sense of determination prevailed among the nearly 40 people who met last Thursday to discuss action plans ranging from a water mining moratorium to a new ordinance with even stronger restrictions and conditions than the existing ordinance.
What a difference three years makes.
Back in May 2005, local residents were largely silent when multinational Nestle Waters asked for permission to dig a well and extract water to be pumped underground to a silo in East Fryeburg. The silo would serve as a tanker-truck filling station to send the water on its way to a bottling facility. Selectmen issued the permit, and residents passed a tough ordinance a year later giving the town the right to shut the extraction operation down if it was shown to be harming the underlying aquifer.
Since then, Fryeburg has been torn apart by the battle between “pro-” and “anti-Nestle” forces and a series of lawsuits and appeals, the latest of which awaits a hearing in the Maine Supreme Court. Work has yet to begin on the 40-foot tall silo. Meanwhile, residents of Shapleigh passed a six-month moratorium on Sept. 24 that stopped Nestle in its tracks and gained them national attention.
The Fryeburg situation can only be described in terms of disgrace, and it’s fast becoming an albatross around Nestle’s neck. The loading station delivers little in the way of economic return to the small town, yet the town’s suffering the kind of social strife and polarization that always seems to accompany Nestle’s attentions.
Nestle’s operatives are skilled at framing local disputes about Nestle bottling plants in “pro-business vs no-business” terms, even when it’s clear the issue is one of local control over resources vs handing control to a Swiss multinational.
A good example is this passage, where Jim Wilfong – former state representative Jim Wilfong, who founded a group called H20 for Maine – spoke about the town’s options (that local control thing again). Read on, and you’ll see Nestle’s operative attempt to derail the meeting:
His [ed: Wilfong] tone was even and measured — that is, until Mark Dubois, Poland Spring’s Natural Resource Manager, raised his hand.
“So you want to take control?” asked Dubois. “It sounds to me like a property rights issue.”
“That’s the way you see it,” Wilfong replied. “Some people don’t like it that our culture and our environment are being changed” “by Nestle’s activities in western Maine.
That prompted Emily Fletcher of Fryeburg to say that “we’re really grassroots people trying to confront what we see as a threat. We don’t have control, and I’m angry.”
She said Nestle” has changed the social environment in its 10 years in Fryeburg, pitting friends and families against each other.
“It is a highly charged political atmosphere,” she said, where people have been “put in office to support Nestle’s agenda.” When the Fryeburg Planning Board ruled against the company’s silo plans after it was remanded back to them by the Oxford County Superior Court, Nestle” once again appealed the decision.
“Now they’re about to appeal our court case for the sixth time. I think that’s dirty politics[ed: emphasis added],” said Fletcher. “We have so far succeeded but we have succeeded because we haven’t failed,” she added, and urged Denmark residents to educate themselves if they want to be effective.
“I don’t think they understand or really care what we think — they are here for the resource,” Wilfong said.
Should Denmark prove successful at squelching Nestle/Poland Spring’s extraction permit, then it’s possible Fryeburg’s nightmare would end (though Nestle would likely wield its legal bludgeon against Denmark too).
How quickly the rifts in the town heal are another matter – one of little concern to Nestle.
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