Bottlemania - Elizabeth Royte [71]
It is easy to play the farm card in Fryeburg: agriculture is a mainstay of the local economy. There’s the beans, corn, and sod, and there’s all the agritourists too: two hundred thousand of them a year drawn to the state’s largest agricultural fair. No one wants to hurt a farmer, Brown knows. “We give Nestlé the benefit of six hundred thousand gallons a day for their profit,” he continues, “while we make this guy over here . . . go before the planning board to get their okay. I’m sorry—somewhere along the line, I don’t know where the balance is.” He turns his palms up and pantomimes a scale.
Personal use is a concern too: will town residents have enough good water as its population grows, as the climate warms, and droughts, like the one that hit in 2005, become more frequent? There is talk of reopening a rail line between Portland and Fryeburg: will it bring more businesses or manufacturing plants that require water? And what about the Saco River, that mythic pathway to the mountains but also, let’s face it, a mighty engine of tourism dollars? If pumping affects the aquifer, someday it will affect the river too.
Not every ordinance skeptic, of course, has high-minded concerns about algal blooms or the survival of family farms and other independent businesses. Some people just want rate relief. (The town’s water bills are about average: in 2006 Fryeburg had the 95th highest rate out of 157 water utilities in the state.) “If we’re gonna sell our water, let’s make some money on it,” another speaker says. In 2006, Poland Spring sold $843 million worth of Maine water.
“Hear, hear,” voices mutter.
I had recently called Bill Black, the state’s deputy public advocate, to ask about the town’s water rates. According to his back-of-the-envelope calculations, if Poland Spring bought out Pure Mountain Springs, then the Fryeburg Water Company could sell directly to Poland Spring, with no middleman. “If they bought from the utility at the same rate they paid Pure Mountain, at the volume they pumped in 2004,” Black had said, “the need for revenue paid by other customers would drop close to zero.” He paused. “People might actually be paid.” It was starting to sound like Alaska.
After a half hour of impressively civil discourse, it’s Howard Dearborn’s turn. In a white tennis sweater, his hands empty and his voice shaky, he says, “My name is Howard Dearborn. I live on Lovewell Pond. I’ve been a resident of Fryeburg for more than fifty years. What else do you want to know?” He scans the room with the same expectant look he wore when telling Miles Waite his pump was sucking air. Dearborn continues, “I’ve been insulted and called a liar.” He pauses. “The information in Water Waves, my newsletter, is correct. I have spent thirty-three thousand dollars on a survey of Lovewell Pond. I’m trying to save Lovewell Pond and also Fryeburg.” He returns to his seat, done. If there’s a smoking gun in the Waite report, Dearborn is keeping it holstered.
A woman with short silver hair and painted fingernails steps up. “This is a trillion-dollar corporation in a three-thousand-population town,” she says. The audience suddenly perks up. Speaking as if the CEO of Nestlé Waters were standing in front of her, eyes downcast after cracking a baseball through her window, Emily Fletcher fires away. “You may win in a court of law, but the burden of proof in small-town America is to win the public’s trust. And I’m not trusting because I don’t know what the fine print means or says.” Last October, she says, the planning board approved the tanker station in East Fryeburg; it favored Poland Spring over a group of neighbors, forcing them into court, and costing them tens of thousands of dollars. She lets that sink in, then continues in a tone of controlled scolding.
“We have one vote: we want to know if this ordinance is in our best interest. It feels to me like the public needs an attorney to represent them, what they want.” Now the town’s residents—lots of them—begin