Re: “Maine regulators allow sale of town’s water to bottler of Poland Spring” (Oct. 23):

Is this any way to run a state? Gov. LePage scratched around enough to find two people who would serve as “substitute commissioners” of the Maine Public Utilities Commission without apparently reviewing their experience.

This may be guessed at, perhaps, by the fact that they did not recuse themselves, which almost all of the honest, hardworking real commissioners who have worked on this problem did. Recent national judicial activity shows that someone’s having been a judge – like the “substitute commissioners” – is certainly no guarantee of their good judgment, even in areas supposed to be familiar to them.

Perhaps there is a sense that this issue is unimportant. Some years ago the Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, and Wells Water District made a similarly one-sided contract with the same company, which was quickly abandoned when the public found out about it. The contract was canceled and an ordinance was rejected that would have allowed such water-extraction attempts in Wells.

Why is Nestle doing this? Have the Alps run dry? Well, Exxon’s doing it, too. Readers may not be aware that one possible scenario for weather under impending climate change is abundant rain and snow in northeastern North America and Greenland, with widely dispersed serious drought scattered around the rest of the globe.

Want these folks controlling the water market? Remember oil.

Lyman A. Page

Kennebunkport

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