Nestle is removing all test wells in the Vernon Walker Wildlife Management Area

FROM: Protect Our Water and Wildlife Resources (POWWR)
185 Hooper Rd., Shapleigh, ME 04076
powwr@live.com
(207) 608-1979

DATE: July 23, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Protect Our Water and Wildlife Resources (POWWR) is pleased to report that Nestle Waters, N.A, has begun removing all of the test wells it installed in the state-owned Vernon Walker Wildlife Management Area, located in Shapleigh and Newfield, Maine.

The removal began on Wednesday, July 22, is expected to be completed in less than a week, and represents what is presumed to be the concluding stage of a more-than-yearlong public controversy over the company’s right to large-scale water extraction in those towns.

That controversy erupted early in 2008 when the firm went public with a plan for drawing water from a large aquifer beneath the region. Proposed as an extraction site was a tract of land belonging to the town of Shapleigh.

Much earlier, however, in 2006 and 2007, Nestle had drilled at least 16 test wells in the Walker preserve, and the fact that it had done so both with state approval and without public notice only fueled objections to its proposal in 2008.

Since then, widespread, prolonged and overwhelming public opposition has resulted in both Shapleigh’s and Newfield’s enacting local self-governance ordinances to prohibit large-scale commercial water extraction within their boundaries.

“This is an example of local control at its best,” said POWWR leader Shelly Gobeille this week, as she watched the start of the dismantling process.

“All the citizens whose votes led to this result deserve congratulations,” she added, “and local state Representative Jim Campbell merits special thanks for his diligence in working with state agencies and Nestle to effect the wells’ removal in a timely fashion.”

“Hopefully,” she concluded, “this puts an end to plans for large-scale water extraction in either Newfield or Shapleigh.”

POWWR, Gobeille added, will be working to educate citizens of other towns about Newfield’s and Shapleigh’s new ordinances, as challenges to local water rights arise elsewhere. Those ordinances, she noted, are the first of their kind to be passed in Maine.

POWWR is a private, not-for-profit group of volunteer citizens formed in 2008.

The Vernon Walker Wildlife Management Area consists of over 4,000 acres managed by the State of Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Nestle Waters, N.A., a division of the Swiss-based food-processing giant of the same name, does business in Maine as Poland Spring.

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