Crystal Geyser Water Co. officials will meet some Orland residents Thursday concerned with groundwater issues and the proposed opening of a new plant.

Vice President of Manufacturing Richard Weklych said he, President and CEO Peter Gordon and engineer James Standberg of Malcolm Pernie will have "casual, informal meetings with neighbors," he said Monday, adding "there is nothing secret about it and there are no big meetings planned."

SHAPLEIGH — Poland Spring has removed its test wells from a wildlife management area in Shapleigh and Newfield and no longer plans to pursue extracting spring water from the area, according to a spokesperson for the company.

The city of Flagstaff will not be selling millions of gallons of spring water from the San Francisco Peaks to a bottled-water subsidiary of the Nestle Co.

Mayor Sara Presler stated Tuesday that the proposal by Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water to annually pump 55 million gallons of potable water has been rejected by the city. She said the proposal wasn't a good fit for the community for a number of reasons, including long-term water sustainability and the use of plastic bottles.

Nestle Waters North America's Poland Spring subsidiary finished removing the last of more than a dozen test and monitoring wells near the border of Shapleigh and Newfield on Friday, a Poland Spring official confirmed.

Mark Dubois, the company's natural resource manager, said the decision followed the end of unsuccessful negotiations with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to tap into an underlying aquifer for commercial bottled-water production.

"We weren't able to come to an arrangement with the department, so we are not going to be pursuing that site," said Dubois.

In this issue:

* Changes to the bulletin
* Nestle Project Update
* Local News and Water Media
* MCSD Updates
* Supporter's Corner
* Community Outreach & Events

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Nestlé Waters North America Inc. will pump $14 million into the local economy to convert a warehouse in the Florin Fruitridge Industrial Park into a two-line water bottling plant.

The company announced Friday that it will create by early next year a bottling plant that will employ about 40 people. The plant will be created from 214,434 square feet of existing warehouse space on Younger Creek Drive in Sacramento.

The Citizen is recapping only the major issues debated by the Chaffee County Board of Commissioners during a special hearing held July 1 to consider Nestle Waters North America proposal to harvest water here for its commercial bottling operations. Additional posts cover economics, wetlands and air quality.nestle

WATER

Test

(07-09) 09:01 PDT SYDNEY, (AP) --

Residents of a rural Australian town hoping to protect the earth and their wallets have voted to ban the sale of bottled water, the first community in the country — and possibly the world — to take such a drastic step in the growing backlash against the industry.

Should nature be able to take you to court?

Last February, the town of Shapleigh, Maine, population 2,326, passed an unusual ordinance. Like nearby towns, Shapleigh sought to protect its aquifers from the Nestle Corporation, which draws heavily on the region for its Poland Spring bottled water. Some Maine towns had acquiesced, others had protested, and one was locked in a protracted legal battle.