FRYEBURG, Maine — In an environmentally conscious state with a lackluster economy, Poland Spring has been a decades-long delight: a nonpolluting industry that relies on a renewable resource to provide hundreds of good-paying jobs in small towns.

The bottle of spring water with the dark green label has become as much a part of Maine's image as a pair of L.L. Bean boots. The company's longtime slogan says it all: "Poland Spring. What it means to be from Maine."

But the love affair between the third-largest bottled water brand and its home state is showing signs of strain.

Poland Spring is a target of a campaign to impose what is thought to be a first-in-the-nation tax on the water it draws from Maine's underground aquifers. And the company's expansion plans are running into opposition from residents who are annoyed by tanker truck traffic and worry about groundwater drying up.

The campaign has prompted Poland Spring to suspend plans to add a third bottling plant. Its parent company has even warned that approval of the 20-cent-per-gallon tax could force Poland Spring to abandon the state.

"If this tax ever were to be approved, we would have to seriously re-evaluate our ability to continue to do business in Maine," said Kim Jeffery, president of Poland Spring's parent, Nestle Waters North America — a unit of Swiss giant Nestle SA, the world's biggest food-and-beverage company.

It's a surprising turn of events for one of the state's best-known economic successes. The company was mired in bankruptcy 25 years ago when it was acquired by Perrier — which itself would be acquired later by Nestle — and grew in line with America's thirst for bottled water.

In the past five years alone, annual sales soared from $406 million to $624 million, concentrated on the Northeast. Poland Spring is the largest among a handful of regional brands — including Arrowhead, Ozarka, Deer Park and Great Bear — that make up Nestle Waters North America.

More than 50,000 Maine voters have signed petitions in hopes of forcing a referendum on the proposed extraction fee on water that businesses draw from the state's aquifers for resale in containers. Campaign organizers say a few smaller bottlers would be hit by the tax, but Poland Spring would bear the biggest impact.

The campaign, dubbed H2O for ME, was the brainchild of Jim Wilfong, a former legislator who served in the Small Business Administration during the Clinton administration, specializing in international trade.

Wilfong views access to clean, fresh water, as an emerging issue for the 21st century and worries about possible shortages in the long term if major aquifers are tapped. He foresees the day when water becomes a life-giving commodity that's delivered by supertankers and railroad cars to parched areas.

Revenues from the tax would flow into a Maine Water Dividend Trust, modeled after an Alaska fund that banks payments from oil producers. A small portion of the proceeds would be used to safeguard aquifers and promote the sustainability of water resources; much of the rest would be earmarked for small-business development. The trust's earnings would be disbursed to state taxpayers as annual dividends.

With Poland Spring drawing nearly 500 million gallons of water per year from its wells in Maine, the tax would amount to close to $100 million, a cost the company said would exceed its annual profits.

State election officials will determine by early next year if the petition campaign collected enough valid signatures. If the signature drive succeeds, the question would go to referendum in November 2006.

In Maine, Poland Spring has 550 employees, whose pay scales range from $14 to $25 an hour, according to Tom Brennan, a natural resource manager at the company.

"The manufacturing sector in Maine is disappearing," Brennan said. "This is a clean industry, based on a renewable natural resource. It provides good jobs with good pay and good benefits. I don't know why people would take issue with it."