Stolen Springs Film Synopsis

Stolen Springs is an unsettling exposé that asks the audience why they pay for water they could get for free when the true cost of having it conveniently served up in a plastic bottle carries a hidden cost for health, safety and the environment.

Seventeen-year-old filmmaker Houston Diaz sets out on a journey from his hometown of New York City to the picturesque state of Maine after his favorite high school economics teacher gives a lecture on the” free rider” problem - where a company reaps massive profits while creating unexpected costs for the rest of us. He believes that water industry giant Poland Spring is an obvious free rider because it produces plastic bottles that saddle us with pollution and waste. But he wonders what else he’ll find if he digs deeper by visiting the town in Maine attached to their slogan: “Greatness Springs From Here.”

Instead of finding “greatness,” Houston reveals that we are paying the company for groundwater they get for almost nothing, that Poland Spring damages public infrastructure with their heavy trucks, and pollutes the air by unnecessarily trucking water long distances, and threatens our safety by producing microplastics and dangerous chemicals. 

As Houston traces the history of Poland Spring, from its humble origins to becoming a corporate powerhouse, he exposes a troubling pattern: a few small contributions to local communities—like funding baseball field lights—mask the billions in profits extracted at the cost of Maine’s natural resources. He talks to local activists and officials and all the people on the ground who watch their local community sell off their local assets at their expense.

The film climaxes with striking environmental revelations and a thought-provoking experiment: a blind taste test showing that regular people - whether in Maine near the water source or in New York where bottled water is ubiquitous - can’t even tell the difference between the quality tap water in their home and the bottled water they buy at the corner store.