When he hears the truck, the hiker glances furtively over his shoulder, then slips into the roadside bracken. His black Lab darts into the trees, then back out and in again. Turning a bend, we come upon a man in casual clothes walking rapidly, a roll of duct tape in his hand.
Brennan fumbles with a security card and keys, then we continue downhill through a young forest. I am eager to see the water, the place where it springs from the earth. I take a good look around, not really appreciating the engineering that goes into such a place, and then we turn to leave. When the water comes back out, it's in plastic containers labeled Poland Spring. "Any sort of intrusion into the pump house," Brennan says, "and the water automatically shuts off." The pump house aggregates water from five boreholes, or wells, located not far away at the bottom of a gentle valley, and sends it shooting through an underground pipe and, a mile to the north, into the largest water-bottling plant in the country. Are they guarding a gold reserve or an arsenal? No, they superintend an assemblage of stainless steel pipes, gauges, levers, and a device called a pig, about the size and shape of a boat bumper, that's periodically forced through the pipes with water pressure to clean and disinfect. Behind it are cameras and a motion detector. But its green wooden door opens not to reveal a rag rug and a woodstove but yet another door - a serious-looking door made of thick steel that can be breached only with the right combination of keys, codes, and security, cards.
The building wouldn't look out of place in the Adirondacks. He parks his truck in front of a small stone cottage topped by a pitched green roof. On a balmy fall afternoon, with the maples at their flaming peak and the white ashes shading to yellow, Tom Brennan, natural resources manager for Nestlé Waters North America, drives down a gravel road in western Maine.
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