Lawsuit claims Nestlé’s Poland Spring defrauds consumers with bottled water

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This article was published 23/08/2017 (2968 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Poland Spring, America’s best-selling bottled water, is “a colossal fraud,” according to a class-action lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Connecticut, alleges that instead of spring water, parent company Nestlé Water North America has been selling billions of gallons of groundwater to its customers.

“Not one drop of Poland Spring Water emanates from a water source that complies with the Food and Drug Administration definition of ‘spring water,’ “ the lawsuit states.

And, it goes on: “the famous Poland Spring in Poland Spring, Maine, which defendant’s labels claim is a source of Poland Spring Water, ran dry nearly 50 years ago.”

According to the Food and Drug Administration, spring water must come from an underground source and flow naturally to the earth’s surface. But spring water doesn’t have to be literally collected at the spring — it can also be pumped out from a hole in the ground. A spokeswoman for Nestlé Waters North America said its water meets all federal and state guidelines for spring water.

“Poland Spring is 100 per cent spring water,” the spokeswoman said in an email. “The claims made in the lawsuit are without merit and an obvious attempt to manipulate the legal system for personal gain.”

Nestlé oversees a dozen brands of still and sparkling water, including Deer Park, Acqua Panna, Perrier and San Pellegrino.

Poland Spring, its website says, comes from “some pretty incredible springs — eight of them to be exact. We carefully select each spring source in Maine based on such things as geologic formation, mineral composition, quality and taste,” it says.

The lawsuit, however, alleges that there is not “any historical evidence for six of (Nestlé’s) alleged springs, and two are former springs that no longer exist.”

Instead, it says, “the vast bulk of the water is drawn from wells in low-lying populated areas near potential sources of contamination.”

Nestle’s six groundwater collection sites in Maine, it goes on, “are near a present or former human waste dump, landfill, fish hatchery or toxic petroleum dump site.”

The class-action lawsuit has 11 plaintiffs and is led by Vermont resident Mark Patane, who says he has spent hundreds of dollars buying Poland Spring water since 2003.

— Washington Post