---
title: "The Spring and the Pond: Poland Spring’s Permit Divides a Drying Town in Maine"
description: "In Denmark, Maine, back-to-back droughts have turned a routine permit renewal into a fight over wells, data and a pond at its lowest in decades"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-08T09:30:00Z
modified: 2026-10-08T16:45:40Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/the-spring-and-the-pond-poland-spring-s-permit-divides-a-dry-272afd
language: en
tags: ["drought", "water", "poland-spring", "environment", "regulation", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# The Spring and the Pond: Poland Spring’s Permit Divides a Drying Town in Maine

*In Denmark, Maine, back-to-back droughts have turned a routine permit renewal into a fight over wells, data and a pond at its lowest in decades*

By Jan Sokol · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/the-spring-and-the-pond-poland-spring-s-permit-divides-a-dry-272afd

## In brief

- Poland Spring seeks to renew a permit to draw up to 105 million gallons a year from an aquifer in Denmark, Maine
- Long Pond is at its lowest in decades; about six households report well problems, though only two complaints are official
- Denise Eldridge, 76, has 3 inches of well water and was quoted roughly $20,000 for a new well
- Poland Spring says the aquifer is overflowing and its monitoring data is public and transparent
- The Denmark Select Board resumes its public hearing on the permit in mid-October

Water, in Maine, was supposed to be the one thing nobody would ever lack. The state is rain-fat and generous; its law gives landowners sweeping rights to the groundwater beneath them, though large-scale extraction carries extra regulation. For years the arguments about bottlers were about whether towns were getting a fair price. Now, as the [Boston Globe reports](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/10/08/science/poland-spring-water-extraction-maine-drought/), back-to-back droughts have turned the question darker: is the pumping itself draining the wells and the ponds?

In the town of Denmark, Poland Spring is seeking to renew a permit allowing it to draw up to 105 million gallons a year from an aquifer feeding a spring — an amount the company calls a small fraction of the precipitation falling on the 3,400-acre watershed, and notes it has pumped significantly less in most years. Residents around Long Pond, ringed by some 40 properties held by old families and by those Mainers call people “from away,” are pressing the Select Board to cut the allowance, or at least to extract some answers. “There’s been a lot of emotion, and I don’t blame people,” said Andrew Kruczek, the board’s chair.

## Three inches of water

Denise Eldridge is 76. Her well near Long Pond holds 3 inches of water — enough, she says, to flush a toilet, and she dares not use it for more. She and her husband have not slept a night in their vacation home in months. A new well has been quoted at roughly $20,000, money that would come from her retirement savings. “It almost brings me to tears,” she said. “You can’t live without water.”

Poland Spring contacted her with an offer of bottled water, and possibly help with the well. She refused. “I don’t want to be bought out by them,” she said.

Tara and David Scholder returned from an August holiday to find their toilet tank would not fill; a sample straight from their well came up dirty brown-gray. They drink bottled water now, eat from paper plates, and shower at the neighbours’. “How can they extract that much water from the aquifer and not have some change?” David Scholder asked. Denmark has logged only two official complaints about well levels; neighbours themselves have tallied roughly six households with well problems.

## The company answers in geography

The company’s defence rests on the slope of the land. Mark Dubois, Poland Spring’s senior natural resource manager, says Long Pond sits high, so rain and groundwater flow “downhill, under, into, and past the pond,” toward the company’s boreholes. Groundwater levels in the aquifer, he says, have been stable since pumping began in 2010, and pump tests showed no change in the pond even under heavy extraction or dry conditions. “The aquifer is overflowing,” he said. “Everything we do in Denmark is transparent. We monitor, report, and share our data openly, and all of our monitoring data is public.”

Residents distrust that data — much of it collected by a licensed geologist contracted by Poland Spring itself, though Dubois notes the town’s own hydrogeologist and code enforcement officer also collect some. And here the arrangement grows curious: the town’s hydrogeologist, whose work will test whether the pumping harms surface waters as the local ordinance forbids, is paid through the permit process by Poland Spring. Audrey Rabinowitz, a Long Pond resident who served on the town’s water extraction review committee, says Denmark needs money for truly independent monitoring, and the state should study the company’s effects. “It’s very hard to do something like this without the expertise,” she said.

The company does not pay the town for the water it bottles. It pays roughly $30,000 a year in property tax, and more in the coin of goodwill — over $250,000 in recent years for fire equipment, ballpark lights, Fourth of July fireworks. Longtime residents say the pond is the lowest they have seen in decades: docks standing in shallows, aquatic plants drying on the shore, and the summer symphony of bullfrogs gone quiet.

## A family firm no longer

Poland Spring began in 1845 as a local family venture and now belongs to Primo Brands, a multibillion-dollar beverage company drawing water from nine Maine towns. In 2024 it lobbied successfully to sink a bill that would have capped large-scale extraction contracts at 10 years — limits its parent argued would have made long-term investment unaffordable. In Hollis in 2022, amid drought, the company withdrew a request to double its take from a well after residents mobilised. “The conversation at local and municipal levels is changing,” said water rights advocate Nickie Sekera. “We have to get through the corporate lobby.”

The quarrel in Denmark belongs to a widening national one, as aquifers are depleted and climate change stretches the dry spells. Federal scientists have studied bottled-water withdrawals; the work is finished, a US Geological Survey spokesperson said, but the national report is unpublished. A draft of another USGS study, released in February, found extraction in the Wards Brook valley near Fryeburg did affect two ponds — minimally — where water is pumped for Poland Spring bottling and municipal use.

In mid-October the Denmark Select Board will convene again to continue the public hearing. Around the pond, people will go on counting inches in their wells, and waiting — as the powerless everywhere wait — on the judgement of a table of officials, and on the rain.