How to Know if Your Water Is Safe to Drink

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted June 4, 2008.

When Elizabeth Royte first began following the story of the town of Fryeburg, Maine, battling the giant multinational Nestle, it seemed like an easy David and Goliath story. But it turns out that when it comes to water issues, there is a whole lot of gray. Her new book, Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It, is about the backlash in a rural Maine town over Nestle's bottled water business. She writes, "Incomplete knowledge drives the town's narrative. No one can say for sure how much water lies beneath Fryeburg or what removing it will do."

The story tackles the environmental costs of sucking spring water, which are still largely unknown and further complicated by each side's geologists for hire. It also deals with the backroom deals, the politicking and the legal maze as citizens get their hands dirty with democracy.

While the main narrative is about Fryeburg, the book is really about the conundrum of what to drink. If bottled water is bad, then what about our tap? Is tap water safe? Why are kids today growing up on bottled water? Why is the federal government cutting funding for public water infrastructure?

Royte addresses these issues in our interview below; you can read more about them in Bottlemania. You can also find an excerpt on our site.

Tara Lohan: The narrative of your book follows the ongoing story in Fryeburg, Maine, where residents are battling the world's largest food and beverage company, Nestle, which produces Poland Spring water. Explain what's going on in Fryeburg.

Elizabeth Royte: Right now the town is being sued by Nestle. The company drilled a well in the town of Denmark, and they have very small dirt roads and then couldn't get the water out of the town so they built a pipeline to Fryeburg, and they wanted to build a tanker station where the trucks would fill up and then they'd haul it to the bottling plant in Hollis or Poland.

First, Nestle was given a permit to operate the tanker station, but the people who live near the tanker station fought the permit, and eventually the town's appeals board denied the permit. So Nestle sued the town, and the judge sent it back to the town to hash out whether it is a permitted business in a rural residential zone. Essentially it was a zoning issue.

The planning board looked at it again and then decided no, the tanker station is not a permitted use. So, Nestle appealed, but the planning board was upheld. That was three decisions in a row that went against Nestle, so Nestle a few months ago took the town back to court again. It is costing the town a great deal of money, and there is a citizens group that has formed to fight the tanker station, and they have spent tens of thousands of dollars. And there are people in the town who aren't talking to each other, and there are lots of hurt feelings.

TL: But that's not the only issue with Nestle in Fryeburg, right?

ER: Yes, there is a well in Fryeburg also that is already pumping 180 million gallons a year of water and delivering it to Hollis and Poland. When you drink Poland Spring and it says it came from Evergreen Spring, it came from Fryeburg. An elderly man who lives on the town's pond believes the pumping is affecting his well and the pond. That is in dispute, and I talk about that in the book.

The people who are fighting the tanker situation are fighting it on the grounds that they don't want the truck traffic in this rural community. It is a zone issue for them. Others see an environmental issue with the pumping.

TL: One of things that is so interesting in the book is that this is not really black and white. It is frustrating to think that it is so hard to figure out whether there is environmental harm or not.

ER: If you've read Robert Glennon's Water Follies, which is about groundwater pumping across the country, you can see it is a really complicated issue. There are different groundwater rules in different states. It is difficult to link cause and effect with groundwater problems. He says just because you don't harm a spring or stream doesn't mean your aren't hurting the broader environment. We see harm from groundwater over-pumping with saltwater intrusion to aquifers and with sinkholes forming and with lower water tables and with wells gone dry. There are people in Michigan who are also fighting Nestle's pumping in their communities because they think that their stream levels are being affected. But no one has been able to prove this direct cause and effect in court.

TL: Why is it so difficult? If you are taking out 180 million gallons a year, as is the case in Fryeburg, there has got to be an effect, right?

ER: Nestle says that this is sustainable, that they've done all these hydrogeologic studies that say they are taking out x amount, and x plus y are replenished. So there is no net loss. They say what they're taking is extra water, and I make the point in the book that there is no such thing as extra water. The 180 million gallons used to go somewhere, and even if it wasn't staying right there around that spring it went to a pond or into the soil -- it was feeding an ecosystem. We may not know exactly what is going to happen when that's gone, but it just doesn't make sense to me that absolutely nothing would happen when you subtract those gallons.

See more stories tagged with: water, bottled water, nestle, privatization, poland spring, freyburg

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.

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