And Nary a Drop for You

By STEVE LOPEZ

This is going to sound too good to be true, but there is still a place in the Lower 48 where cell phones don't work and no one is daffy enough to pay twice the price of gasoline for designer water. They don't have to. Springwater bubbles up everywhere in the villages of New Haven and Newport, an hour north of Madison, Wis.

"Go ahead and take a drink," Dave Krause, 69, says at the fountain that's been bubbling out back of New Haven Town Hall since he was a kid. "You can drink it straight out of the spring."

But the first law of the natural universe is that trouble always finds a path to paradise. And so it was that bird dogs from Perrier's Connecticut-based U.S. operations arrived on the scene early this year to inspect this bubbling wonder and nearly wet their pants.

We can pump up to 500 gal. a minute of that stuff, wide-eyed Perrier officials told the two-town population of 1,000, and you won't see a ripple of an impact on your springs, lakes and streams. Plus, we'll bring jobs and money to the community. They had just said the same thing in another part of Wisconsin and were run out of town. But they had learned nothing about the state's long-standing conservation ethic, or that lecturing Badgers on the environment is the p.r. equivalent of telling them how to make cheese.

The locals, many of them retired, wondered, "Who needs this?" says Newport's Hiroshi Kanno, 63. Retired people don't need jobs; nor do they need trucks rumbling to and from a big processing plant. And they certainly don't need an outsider bottle-feeding their water to a nation of self-indulgent yuppies. "Taking springwater out of any ecosystem is like taking blood out of people," says John Steinhaus, 62. And so began a war that rages to this day. Country roads are flagged with GO AWAY PERRIER! signs, and villagers brainstorm daily to keep multibillion-dollar Perrier from siphoning a single drop. They've even hired Madison attorney Ed Garvey, who brought the N.F.L. to its knees in 1982 by leading the strike.

But Perrier, whose labels include Deer Park, Poland Spring and Calistoga, has a fever to make Wisconsin the Midwest source for its Ice Mountain brand. They're bulling ahead with the blessing of Governor Tommy Thompson and waiting on a state pumping permit that could come any day now. This despite crushing votes against Perrier (by ratios of 4-1 and 3-1) in two referendums and last week's 263-92 recall of New Haven town manager Ed Coon, 66. Coon, speaking in his kitchen, moments before his fate was decided, said he thought it was time to grow the area's job and tax base. Others agreed or trusted Perrier's promises not to proceed if environmental problems arise. But they were in a distinct minority.

"Perrier came in and told us if we don't like what we hear, they'll leave," says New Haven's Dan Ilkich, 34. "And then they say, Look, you're really just a bunch of hicks who don't know what's best for you." This is not a stretch. Perrier flack Jane Lazgin was dumbfounded as to how townsfolk could be stacked against such a winning project.

Perhaps we can help clear it up. Practically, they don't want the noise, traffic, construction, uncertainty or divisiveness. "The worst part," Ed Coon admits, "is how this thing has ripped this community apart." Philosophically, they don't wish to sell off their constitutional right or moral obligation to watch over the land. Especially not when Jim Krohelski of the U.S. Geologic Survey says he doesn't trust Perrier's testing or the state's monitoring and believes the pumping "will have an adverse effect" on the ecosystem.

"This is about the people vs. the powers that be, and we'll fight till we drop," said Chuck Hill, 66, the new town manager, one morning. I had invited five people to breakfast; 40 showed up. Thunder Valley Inn owner Anita Nelson, in Norsk regalia, got on the piano and pounded out an anti-Perrier sing-along to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. And the lesson is this: never underestimate the will or resourcefulness of people who are snowed in half the year.

E-mail your story ideas to Steve_Lopez@timeinc.com