From Ground Water to Grass Roots: Two Small Towns —One Large Corporation

By Walter Hampton Baily

Walter Baily, born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, was a signalman aboard a minesweeper in WWII. After the war, he attended Temple University and Bryn Mawr College, still later received a doctorate from the School of Social Services of Catholic University of America. He studied serious family abuse and neglect, especially sexual abuse, at the Family Division of the Sociology Department, University of New Hampshire. Baily and his wife, Thelma Falk Baily, also a social worker, wrote a book on child welfare services, then conducted a three region and five state analysis of emotional abuse and neglect. Initially employed in public health, mental health, services to children and community planning, he along with his wife, joined together for seventeen years to assist public and NGO agencies in the revision of policies and services to protect children. Retiring at age seventy, Baily, who has two sons, a daughter and two grandchildren, has shifted his interests to environmental issues. He became a member of the Green Mountain Conservation Group, comprised primarily of six towns in the Ossipee Watershed in New Hampshire. Those towns, either adjacent to or near the border with Maine, provide a range of activities to protect surface waters and the major aquifer in the Watershed. The educational programs of the Green Mountain group enable Baily to volunteer later with the Parsonsfield, Maine Planning Board to do the needed research to write a regulatory water ordinance for the town. Now in his eighties, Baily lives on an old farm and finds pleasure in caring for a certified tree farm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479784387

Walter Hampton Baily

Walter H. Baily was a social worker throughout his career in mental health, public health, social planning and services to children. Both he and his wife, Thelma Falk Baily, also a social worker, joined together for over fifteen years to enhance services for the protection of children. Baily, who holds a doctorate, has two sons and a daughter and two grandchildren. His commitment to services to people has been transferred to environmental protections, and now, in his eighties, he lives on an old farm and takes pleasure in caring for a certified tree farm.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Walter Hampton Baily.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013902253

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Cover photo: Looking south on the Ossipee River toward the Village of Kezar Falls in Parsonsfield, Maine.

Rev. date: 08/24/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

110889

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 Water Extractor On Our Doorstep

Chapter 2 Defining The Problems

Chapter 3 Fear: Water Removal, Decline And Drought

Chapter 4 Large Tankers On Small Roads

Chapter 5 Building A Citizen Organization

Chapter 6 Citizens Tell Planning Board: Controls

Chapter 7 Powwr Finds New Restraint

Chapter 8 Voters Reject Water Tests

Chapter 9 A Lecture / A Rejection

Chapter 10 Do Small Towns Have Rights?

Chapter 11 Democracy, Ecosystems, Corporations

Chapter 12 Voting For Rights Ordinance

Chapter 13 Choosing Rights Again

Chapter 14 No To Public Meeting With Nestle

Chapter 15 Yes To Rights; No To Nestle

Chapter 16 New Selectman Wins: Newfield Rejects Extraction

Chapter 17 The Costs Of Bottled Water

Chapter 18 Two Centuries Of Land, Water And Forest Protection

Chapter 19 Firewall: Towns Reject Extractors

Chapter 20 Reflections On Water

Bibliography

Appendices

A Shapleigh Water Rights And Local Self-Government Warrant Article

B Lawsuits Against Nestle Waters North America, Inc

C Rights Ordinance In The New York Times

D Starbucks Criticized For Wasting Water

E Large-Scale Water Extraction In Maine Question-And-Answer Flyer

F The Way We Handle Water Is The Same As A Ponzi Scheme

G Maine Should Tax Bottled Water

H The Reality Of A Water Crisis And Its Impact On Sportsmen

I The Largest Single Consumer Of Water In The United States

J Challenge Corporate Control Of Water

By the same author:

Meeting the Stranger Within: Transformation of a Cancer Patient, 2007

Operational Definitions of Child Emotional Maltreatment: Final Report of a Federal-state Project (with Thelma Falk Baily), 1986.

Child Welfare Practice: A Guide to Providing Effective Services for Children and Families (with Thelma Falk Baily), 1983.

DEDICATION

To all those who speak out and care for the entirety of this earth

AUTHOR NOTES

T HANKS ARE HEREBY expressed to many friends and colleagues who contributed in major ways to the preparation of this report. Thanks to the Limerick Library Staff for acquiring essential materials and for help with transmitting data. I am grateful to POWWR members for their counsel and support in the preparation of this narrative and also to the many other persons from various organizations whose names are noted herein. Thanks to my family for their encouragement and aid. Good wishes to friends and colleagues near and far who are dedicated to protecting the finite resources of the natural world.

*     *     *

In this book the word groundwater and the two words ground water, mean water contained in the earth, as distinguished from lake, stream or other surface waters.

PROLOGUE

I felt that I was called, that something called me, and I set out alone. That was in my eighth year, when spring was turning to summer. In every year following, that feeling has come at ice melt, when I go out to see the stream at its first running clear, see the water in marshes and swamps at the moment of opening up, trembling with the restless stirrings of the air at the time of great transition—water set free, vibrant and vibrating, shimmering back to the sun, the heart-melting light of spring’s awakening. The touch of the ascendant sun on ice at length gives birth to water, and water gives life to the year.¹

N EARLY EVERY DAY there are reports from around the world on freshwater contamination, lake and river water levels dropping, insufficient water supplies for agriculture, droughts affecting thousands of people, depleted water supplies resulting in livestock deaths, and water shipped from water-rich lands to water-deprived lands. Reports also describe emergencies restricting domestic water use—women, as well as children, in emerging countries carrying water long distances; water tables falling; the cost of and conflicts over bottled water; ground subsidence from excessive water use; the deterioration of old large public water systems; and long-term legal battles over the control of surface and ground waters. We even hear reports of too much water from excessive rainfall, including floods.

In the United States, conflicts between states, between cities, as well as between citizens and large water extractors are now common over the removal, distribution, sale, and control of water. Who owns the water, and should it be privatized? Sites currently include Georgia; the Colorado River; Florida; California; the Great Lakes; the Columbia River; Massachusetts; New Hampshire; and now small towns in Maine.

This is the story of two rural towns, Shapleigh and Newfield, in southwestern Maine, and the twenty-month effort by a small citizen group to try to control or stop Nestlé Waters from extracting groundwater. Citizens learned of four other nearby towns that had already developed strong regulatory ordinances to limit water extraction. Residents also learned of citizen protests against extraction in Fryeburg, about eighteen miles north of Shapleigh and Newfield. Citizens in several other regions of Maine had expressed concern over the possible depletion of groundwater. In addition to their concerns about water, citizens have become opposed to huge tanker trucks moving large volumes of water night and day over local and state roads.

In early 2008, a citizen group, Protecting Our Water and Wildlife Resources (POWWR), developed quickly upon learning that Nestlé Waters wished to remove groundwater from the town of Shapleigh. As group members learned that current state law permitted extraction with some restrictions, they also found—to their distress—that by state law a town could not stop an extractor. Towns could only limit the amount of water removed.

POWWR members then learned about two New Hampshire towns that stopped all extraction by a principle called rights. Based on the same concept of citizen rights found in the US Constitution, it has been used by over 140 small towns. While considered by most attorneys to be unconstitutional, it has not yet been fully tested in court. POWWR members wondered, Dare we use this approach? Then the group reasoned, "But dare we not risk using this principle when others have proven its power and have protected their communities?"

POWWR fought not only the Nestlé Corporation but some officials who seemed to resist citizen efforts to control groundwater extraction. In contrast to, and as evidence of the differing views toward this new and now increasingly accepted expression of citizen control, Newfield officials supported both the rights ordinance and the citizens. Residents in both towns also learned that state officials can be divided over who should control groundwater. Their own senator believed that this effort might deny other citizens the right to extract water, while their state legislator gave his strong, continuing support to the citizen group.

CHAPTER 1

WATER EXTRACTOR ON OUR DOORSTEP

Water has been our world’s architect—carving and sanding stone, breathing life into forests, testing the patience of deserts. But water has also been the architect of our communities, enabling us to put down roots along the banks of rivers and build lives as deep as our wells.²

T HE TELEPHONE RANG twice in the manager’s office. Hello, this is Ann Co . . . She couldn’t finish stating her name.

Did you—oh, it’s Walter. Did you see the local paper? It’s about Shapleigh and the possibility of Nestlé taking water, maybe lots of it.

Shapleigh? Nestlé? Oh. Her voice suddenly dropped and was followed by a tone of sharpness that I had not previously heard, and she said, No, I didn’t; what else does it say?

Well, first, sorry to call you at the end of the day and at work, but I believe this is serious—or it could be. The selectmen in Shapleigh have had a beginning conversation or talk or something like that with Nestlé—you know, Nestlé Waters / Poland Spring—and there’s the possibility of Nestlé coming in there to remove what may be a lot of groundwater. I can’t believe it, but that’s what the article said. The only good part may be that the selectmen announced they want the people to decide whether Nestlé should come in.

Where are you? I’ll be finished at work soon. Ann quickly picked up my sense of urgency.

Tell you what, I can be in town in twenty minutes. I can drop off the paper, I just picked up a copy at the post office.

The date: February 7, 2008, 4:30 p.m., Limerick, Maine.

*     *     *

Ann works for a financial services group, and she has been a manager for many years. Known throughout the area for her activity in service organizations in several communities, she is recognized as a steady and consistent person, one who cares about her own town, Newfield, and also the surrounding towns. Currently on the appeals board in Newfield, she has had previous experience on the planning board and in other community or civic efforts for the improvement and well-being of towns. A former US Marine and still proud of that tradition and her part in it, she feels just as strongly about community and about protecting the environment, especially the multitude of wildlife that inhabit this area. Both Newfield and Shapleigh have substantial forested areas as well as many open fields; both areas serve different forms of wildlife. Ann and I had known each other for several years, and our vision for the environment in this area was similar.

I am a resident of Parsonsfield, a town that abuts Newfield. In the early months of 2006, the Parsonsfield planning board had advertised for a citizen to assist in preparing a groundwater ordinance to control large-scale water extraction. Members of the board had been concerned about the incursion of Nestlé Waters into York County, primarily because of publicized conflicts between the residents of nearby Fryeburg and the Nestlé Corporation. Residents were concerned about what they believed to be excessive water extraction by Nestle. The Planning Board, with the full support of the selectmen, wished to avoid any of the problems that the presence of Nestlé or any other large-scale water extractor might cause if an extractor chose to apply to the town. I volunteered to assist in research and writing; the effort took sixteen months. The towns of Cornish and Hiram, both to the northeast of Parsonsfield, had just completed strong groundwater ordinances for the same reasons that Parsonsfield wanted to prepare one.

Fryeburg had become a divided and troubled small town because of what some citizens perceived as not only excessive water extraction but also the small amount of money that Nestlé paid in relation to the quantity of water it was removing. Residents were also alarmed because of the potential contamination of the large aquifer beneath this region, various restrictions on residents for protection of that aquifer, and the dramatic increase in the number of heavy twenty-two-wheel trucks that haul water. I had attended planning board meetings in Fryeburg and observed and listened firsthand to some of the conflicts.

*     *     *

I arrived at Ann’s office just as a staff member had closed and locked the main door. As Ann and I walked toward her car, she began to look at the newspaper.

Here it is, with quite a few details, I said. Just look at the first few paragraphs, as well as the headline.

As we walked toward her car, she stopped abruptly under the bright outside lights over the ATM machine, eager to read the news. After she read quietly for less than a minute, she pulled her jacket around herself, saying, I’m not really cold, but this is a chilling thing to read. It’s more than a surprise, but I wonder how this has happened so quickly, so fast that none of us ever got any word of this. Around here, something like this travels rather quickly, before it’s in the papers. I wonder if the board of selectmen is really going to let the people decide. I hate to think where this could go. But . . . She looked down at the news article again.

Well, Ann said, the headline may tell it all: ‘Water May Be Revenue Stream.’ Wonder how much they’ll get per gallon? That could be a tempting draw for the citizens. But it says that the trucks would be going to Hollis to the east of us where a major bottling plant is, and that may mean, could mean, that they would be going through Newfield. I don’t like the way this looks. She paused. Not at all.

A sharp wind, which was beginning to sweep around the corner of the building where we were standing, caused Ann to tighten her hand around the paper for a moment. The brisk, sharp chill in the early-evening air seemed to reinforce the bad news, if true, for Shapleigh and other nearby residents. Water extraction might bring more than a chill to many people in the entire area.

She looked down at the news article again. I was glad to have reached out to get this quickly into her hands. Ann, like many an experienced business person, knows this territory very well. We talked briefly and then decided that perhaps we and our mutual friend Denise, also from Newfield and the chair of the planning board there, could get together soon. I told her I’d contact Denise and then asked, Are you free for breakfast tomorrow morning about eight if she is?

Sure, Ann replied. I said I’d call if we were not meeting. Then I added that I had asked Denise to look at some of the ordinance statements from Fryeburg to see what she thought of them. After she had reviewed them, she agreed that the planning board seemed to be quite supportive of Nestlé. When I attended several of their citizen meetings, it appeared to me that members of the board had nothing to say, as if there was some prior agreement that only the chair and vice chair would respond to citizen comments and questions.

I then reminded Ann that since Newfield now had the Parsonsfield ordinance and was working on developing their own ordinance for Newfield, perhaps we could send ours to the Shapleigh selectmen. They might be interested in seeing it. I paused a second before she could answer and added, Maybe we shouldn’t try to move this quickly, what do you think?

Ann hesitated; she looked away for a moment but realized this issue was important and maybe they should discuss this tomorrow. Yes, we have to protect both the earth and wildlife. Okay, maybe tomorrow, let’s agree before we do anything.

Then I’ll call and check with Denise. See you tomorrow.

Denise is both a cattle farmer and a critical care nurse; she is well-known to be committed to the protection of environmental resources. She places high value on water. When you have cattle, fowl, and forestland, water is absolutely essential. To reduce or even minimize water volume, especially water quality, can result in lost income and eventually loss of one’s livelihood—in her case, losing both animals and land. Without volumes of high-quality water in continuous supply, Denise would have no large or small animals. Like Ann, she wants to maintain forested land, open fields, and all waters for wildlife, especially in Newfield and the adjoining towns.

Denise and I had known each other since the time several years earlier when she began cutting hay on our land, and the two of us have gone to state and local forestry and agricultural meetings together. We found comparable interests in caring for and improving fields and woodlot areas. Our values include protection for all forms of natural life. For example, a highly moist wooded area—sometimes called a swamp but correctly and scientifically named a marshland—or, if there are numerous mature trees, a forested wetland, was never something we would think of filling in. That land has greater value as a small pond, a small watering area for cattle, or as a vernal pool for upland birds, water birds, and wading birds, as well as for the smallest amphibians and invertebrates. The forms of life found in these pools are at the very bottom of the food chain. Rainfall and snowmelt primarily supply them. Some vernal pools are supplied by groundwater. But without water in those shallow pools during the spring and early summer, there is no existence for larger forms of life in the food chain. Small creatures, especially salamanders and wood frogs born and living in these small pools, depend upon surrounding land up to 250 feet from the pool for their food supply.³

Throughout this book, Nestlé Waters North America (NWNA) will be referred to in several ways, such as Nestlé or Nestlé Waters, the Nestle Company or Poland Spring. Any of these names have been used by various media, and most everyone, in New England, recognizes that the various terms all refer to the Nestle Corporation. The corporate headquarters are in Switzerland; there are many divisions with many products. The Poland Spring division, located in the town of the same name, was purchased some years ago by Nestlé, and water extracted there has been advertised as Poland Spring water.

CHAPTER 2

DEFINING THE PROBLEMS

A study by Goldman Sachs predicted that the water business would become the oil business of the decade from 2020 to 2030 . . . . The players looking to take over local water supplies will be the largest and most powerful financial institutions the world has ever known. But they will be squaring off against local groups that are now a national movement for a democratic and sustainable water future. Are these water wars merely a last stand against an inevitable corporatized future, or the beginnings of a far-reaching revolt to redefine citizenship, reassert democracy, and re-determine how we interact with the environment? ⁴

"OKAY," ANN SAID to the waitress, let’s start with three coffees. Denise and I had already deferred to Ann to get things started. This was the first time that the three of us had ever met and talked together, but our discussion began easily. The date: February 8, 2008, 8:15 a.m., in Limerick.⁵

Denise had picked up her paper and saw the article. So here we are, what shall we do, if anything?

I don’t like this at all, Ann replied. I thought about this last night, and if they get into Shapleigh, then we are going to pay a heavy price on our roads in Newfield, especially Route 11. You know that runs north-south for a while, then bends to become an east-west road to travel quite a distance through our town.

Denise responded quickly, Eleven would probably be their primary highway to the bottling plant in Hollis, about fifteen miles to the east from here. I think the question is how much water might be taken to the south in Massachusetts, where there is a major bottling plant. Then they would be traveling only through Shapleigh, going both south and then east to pick up Interstate 95, which runs north-south along the coastline. We don’t know which way they would go. And the truth is they could send trucks both ways.

Slowly I added, We may have to wait and see what they say or plan. Knowing that Nestle is quite powerful once in place, it’s possible they could do whatever they want. It seems that these small towns can yield or cave-in quickly. They just don’t have the money to stop them. I know what I am saying is a bit strong, but I sense we should be cautious in communicating in any way with this company.

Denise returned to truck routes. I’m sure that we cannot stop them from using state roads, so they can go on Route 11, but we absolutely can stop them from using Mann Road. That’s a town road and could be seen as a shortcut to get to Hollis, their bottling station. Furthermore, we can stop them from using any local town road.

I have heard that in the past they have had to rebuild parts of local roads that they were going to use prior to water extraction, I said. And my belief is that any road rebuilding would have to be very clear, very precise in a contract. Or at the very least, what a town must do is have an engineer evaluate the condition of the road prior to heavy truck use. If you don’t have things clear in the beginning, then you might quickly get into a disagreement, perhaps a lawsuit.

Wait a second, Ann said. lawsuit?

I paused for a moment and then said quietly, Well, that’s what they do, and I suppose they may do it rather quickly. What I learned in Fryeburg, whether true or not, is that Nestlé can move to a lawsuit when their interests seem thwarted.

Example?

Probably the best I know is about East Fryeburg and the pipe—

Denise interrupted, Thought they were only in Fryeburg.

Not at all, I continued. "They wanted a pipe stand in the East Fryeburg area so trucks could fill up in Fryeburg and then transfer water from the pipe stand