By David Harry

Staff Writer 

Shelly Gobeille likened the experience to a tailgate party in the woods. Ann Winn-Wentworth kept score on a sheet of unlined paper.

The two Newfield residents and several other members of Protecting Our Water and Wildlife Resources gathered last week in the 4,000-acre Vernon Walker Wildlife Management Area in Newfield to watch a crew remove 23 pipes from 16 sites sunk to evaluate possible commercial water extraction by Poland Spring. 

The pipes were sunk for test wells averaging more than 50 feet deep, said Mark Dubois a natural resources manager at Poland Spring.

To Gobeille, Winn-Wentworth, Eileen Hennessey and Fay Greenleaf, and other POWWR members, they are last vestiges of commercial water extraction in the area, a prospect opposed by POWWR and other activists.

“This is a perfect example of home rule,” Hennessey said as she sat in a lawn chair in a thicket of trees off the path leading through the preserve. 

Commercial water extraction has been illegal in Newfield and Shapleigh since voters passed ordinances last spring. In Shapleigh, the fight to prevent water extraction also led to unseating of incumbent Selectman Bill Hayes. He was defeated by Charles Mullins, who ran on pledges to make the board more responsive to citizens it serves.

John Pratte, a Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife supervisor who oversees the Vernon Walker area, said the wells were initially drilled in 2006 as the state considered ways to increase revenue from the areas to buy more land for conservation.

Pratte said the state and Poland Spring never reached agreement on water extraction. He estimated approval for the process would have required five state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Health and Human Services, but because the wells were used only to evaluate the aquifer, no public notice was needed when they were drilled.

Winn-Wentworth, who said she discovered the wells after people told her about heavy machinery taken into the wildlife preserve, said “we are not going anywhere until this is over.”

When the state and Poland Spring did not reach an agreement, the bottling company approached Shapleigh selectmen about using town land to draw from the aquifer, which also flows under the Vernon Walker preserve.

In September 2008, Shapleigh voters passed a moratorium on drilling for wells and commercial water extraction. 

Gobeille, Winn-Wentworth, Hennessey and others are members of the group formed to prevent extraction at the site. In the year since the group formed, membership numbers have been fluid, but Gobeille estimated at least 20 people were active members.

Dubois said the moratorium, not ordinances passed in Newfield and Shapleigh in March, was a signal the company should look elsewhere for water.

“When the economy is good, we were exploring four or five sites a year,” Dubois said. “There is about a 300-to-1 chance that a site works out.”

Water sources area a constant search, Dubois said.

“We are looking ahead to 2012 and 2013 for growth in York County. We want to invest in the Maine economy and its people,” Dubois said.

New sources have been or will be tapped with the opening of a new bottling plant in Kingfield and a Maine Supreme Judicial Court decision in May that allows Poland Spring to draw water from a site in Denmark and pipe to a truck-loading station on Route 302 in Denmark.

Last week, Gobeille said POWWR members enjoyed pizza as they watched the first wells removed by Rich Fortin’s crew from Drumlin Environmental, staying out of range as the boom pulled well pipes and screens used to measure water flow. 

Fortin said the first three wells were the most difficult to remove because of iron buildup on pipes and the composition of soils around them.

Once the pipes were removed, the holes were refilled with sand or clay-like chips before they were capped with soil, Pratte said.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 241