Groundwater isn’t spring water, lawsuit says

A class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday claims that Poland Spring Water is deceiving consumers with evergreen labels that say the bottle contains “100 percent natural spring water” that hails from Maine, USA Today reported.

Filed in a federal court in Connecticut, the suit alleges that Poland Spring’s parent company, Stamford, Connecticut-based Nestle Waters North America, is “bottling common groundwater that doesn’t meet the federal definition of spring water,” the newspaper reported. 

A Nestle Waters representative told a reporter that the water meets “all relevant federal and state regulations for spring water.”

This isn’t the first time Nestle Waters has seen such claims. In 2003, the company settled a lawsuit in Connecticut that claimed water it used did not come from a spring in the Maine woods.  

The latest lawsuit comes as the bottled water company expands in Maine where it is seeking state approval to source water from a public water district well there, USA Today reported.