Bottlemania

Published 6/19/2008
Poland Spring is the best-selling spring water in the nation, even in a city with some of the best tap water in the world. Everyone is drinking the stuff, and other waters like it. In the West, it's Arrowhead and Calistoga; in the South Central region, Ozarka; in the Midwest, Ice Mountain; in the mid-Atlantic, Deer Park; and in the Southeast, Zephyrhills--all owned by Nestlé, a company with estimated profits of $7.46 billion in 2006. Pepsi (nyse: PEP - news - people ) and Coke (nyse: KO - news - people ) are bottling water too, and making billions.

The company has been bottling water from the town of Poland since 1845. Legal history recorded no objections when Hiram Ricker began to sell water from his family farm there, though a Portland newspaper, anticipating the nuns and the Canadians, scoffed at "selling something that God gave everyone for free." In recent years Poland Spring, which was bought by Perrier in 1980 and then Nestlé in 1992, has expanded its reach into other Maine aquifers, and the objections have been hard to miss.
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