The recent article about the town of York buying a million gallons of water a day from a neighboring community brings Maine’s troubling relationship with water bottlers front and center. Poland Spring buys an average of 110 million gallons of water a year from the Fryeburg Water Co. Think about that.

Thanks to this selfish little arrangement, both Fryeburg Water and the Swiss company, Nestle, owner of Poland Spring (and about 8,000 other product brands), make huge profits from a substance that, in my view, is not theirs to sell in the first place: Maine’s water.

It’s time to stop shipping water out of state to enrich a European multinational. Water is not a rapidly renewable resource, the way lumber or lobsters arguably are. Some groundwater aquifers take up to 1,400 years to recharge and recycle, according to the Safe Drinking Water Foundation.

What this year’s drought shows is that Maine’s traditional water abundance is not secure. Residents may need those aquifers soon. Otherwise, the tragic irony is that we may end up buying our own water back by the bottle to slake our thirst.

Water is special. It’s not a luxury, like ice cream or Kit Kat bars. We’re not going to suffer when the supply of Kit Kats gets low.

Let Nestle go and rake in millions with its other thousands of products. They’ll be just fine without corporatizing Maine’s water into something called “Poland Spring” water.

Matt Power

Portland