A group of city officials and entrepreneurs has proposed tapping a city aquifer and bottling the water.
But the plan to build a bottling plant could be at odds with a $100 million plan to move the city’s railyard onto land near the wellheads.
The town paid $100,000 to have the wellheads drilled in the mid-1990s as it considered building a town water plant.
The wells have been retested and the water recently placed third out of 29 communities in an international municipal water contest.
Flow tests show the water volume at 400 gallons a minute.
Town administrator Joe Zingale says the quality and volume of the water has drawn some “start-up bottlers” who are looking at the costs of building a water bottling plant.
But to use the aquifer the plant would have to create buffers that could conflict with the railyard relocation plans.