“No corporation shall engage in water withdrawals in the Town of Newfield. … The term “engage” shall include, but not be limited to, the physical extraction of water, and the buying and/or selling of water extracted within the Town of Newfield.”
We have included Shapleigh, Maine’s ordinance text, below, with the understanding that it’s identical to Newfield’s ordinance text. We’d love for someone to send us Newfield’s ordinance, if you have an electronic copy of it.
On March 14, 2009, Newfield residents voted for a rights-based water extraction ordinance that effectively prohibits Nestlé Corp, owner of the Poland Springs label, from extracting groundwater to fill their water bottles. The vote passed 228 to 146.
Two weeks earlier, citizens in the nearby town of Shapleigh also voted to approve the same type of ordinance, which rejected what some consider a corporate assault by the largest food and beverage conglomerate in the world.