Nestle Denies Reality; Ad Pretends It Hasn’t Sued Fryeburg Multiple Times

In an ad run in the Bridgton News (no online edition), Nestle Waters of North America tries to pretend its lawsuit and four subsuquent appeals (including a hearing before the Maine State Supreme Court) against the rural town of Fryeburg

I recently posted a story about a residents’ meeting in Denmark, where Nestle’s well permit is up for renewal. (Denmark is the source of the water Nestle wants to pump to a loading station in a residential section of Fryeburg, the permit for which has been repeatedly denied by the town).

Nestle – unhappy with the growing opposition to their wells in Denmark – bought an ad in the newspaper, suggesting they alone had a grasp of the “facts,” while opposition information was “fiction.”

To get a sense of their grasp of the facts, look at #5 in the ad below:

To paraphrase Nestle, “the facts are” that Fletcher’s statement is accurate, if a little forward-looking. Nestle’s permit for a loading station was first approved by Fryeburg’s planning commission, but then rejected because there’s no way you can pretend 100 heavy truck trips per day wouldn’t have a substantial impact on a residential area.

Nestle’s lawsuit and four subsuquent appeals – one of which was argued in front of the Maine Supreme Court – can’t be construed as anything but suing the town five times, and as Fletcher noted, another appeal is likely.

Finally, in #6 in the ad above, Nestle characterized opposition to their loading station as being the work of a “vocal minority” – an assertion which ignores the moratorium on bulk water export passed by Freyburg’s voters 467 to 304.

By what math does 467 to 304 work out to a minority?

Perhaps in Nestle’s corporate world, pretending something isn’t happening is good enough, but rural, small town America has a little more common sense than that.

If any of our Fryeburg/Denmark area readers has feedback about the ad’s reception in either town, feel free to post it in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you.

We leave you with YouTube video of Nestle/Poland Spring’s argument before the Maine State Supreme Court, where they apparently suggest their right to grow market share supercedes local control of water, planning, noise and traffic:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glKQlsTdrFk[/youtube]

nestle, nestle waters of north america, fryeburg, denmark, bottled water, poland spring

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