Maine’s water bottlers have been spared another round with the tax man, at least for now.

Supporters of a water tax on Maine’s largest bottlers fell roughly 1,400 signatures short of the number needed to place the proposal on the November 2006 ballot, Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap’s office announced Monday.

Dunlap invalidated 7,187 of the 56,287 signatures submitted in support of a referendum seeking a 20-cent tax on every gallon of water larger bottling companies remove from the state’s mostly sand and gravel aquifers.

The group, which has pledged to appeal the decision, needed 50,519 registered Maine voters to sign the petition to qualify for the ballot.

Dunlap spokesman Doug Dunbar said he couldn’t comment on whether a rejection rate of nearly 13 percent was high or low, adding that the number varies from campaign to campaign.

“Signatures are always disqualified for one or more reasons,” Dunbar said.

Regardless of the reasons, officials at Poland Spring, which was facing $100 million in additional taxes annually under the measure, said they were relieved the proposed water tax will not go to voters this November, absent a court reversal or a lightning-fast petition drive.

The deadline for gathering and submitting 50,000-plus new signatures for a ballot measure is Jan. 31.

Representatives of the world’s third-largest bottler said, however, that they remained “shellshocked” by the proposal and plan to discuss the business climate in Maine with state officials before moving forward with plans to open a third bottling facility. Poland Spring officials had predicted the tax could drive the company out of Maine, taking with it up to 600 jobs.

“We need to understand what just happened,” said Thomas Brennan, northeast natural resource manager for Nestle Waters, which owns Poland Spring. “It represented a real threat to our ability to do business in Maine, and it came out of the blue. We need to make sure it’s not going to happen again.”

Brennan also decried what he viewed as “misinformation” spread by the referendum campaign about the bottling industry and water supplies.

The tax proposal is one sign of growing concern statewide about Maine’s groundwater supplies. Residents in several communities are fighting plans by Poland Spring and other bottlers to build additional wells or withdraw more water from aquifers.

While Maine receives an average 24 trillion gallons of precipitation a year, some residents have voiced concern that the bottling industry could draw so much water from specific, isolated aquifers that nearby private wells could run dry or become compromised.

James Wilfong, a former state legislator who led the water tax initiative, has touted the 20-cent-per-gallon tax as a way for Mainers to recoup some of the untold amounts of money spent preserving and protecting the state’s water supply over the years.

Money from the tax would go into a special fund, with income distributed to state residents similar to Alaska’s oil fund.

Wilfong and others with the grass-roots organization H2O for ME said the issue was about “control and ownership” of Maine’s abundant water.

A group spokesman, Dick Dyer, said they plan to appeal the decision not because they believe Dunlap’s office did anything wrong “but because we owe it to our folks who signed.” They may also explore a legislative fix, he said.

If none of those channels work out, they will begin gathering signatures again in time for the November 2007 ballot, Dyer said.

“It’s definitely a speed bump, although I don’t want to make light of the situation,” he said. “We knew all along that this could happen. When you think about what we were up against, it’s absolutely amazing that we were even able to get these signatures.”

Dyer also defended the group’s motives and campaign activities.

“It’s never been our intention to drive any of the water companies out of the state,” Dyer said. “Our intention from the beginning has been about sustainability.”

Brennan countered that sustainable resources are critical to Poland Spring’s business.

“We are about as clean an industry as you can get and spend millions of dollars to protect these resources,” he said.

More than 4,400 signatures were rejected because local registrars could not certify they belonged to a registered voter, while 1,332 signatures were thrown out as duplicates.

H2O for ME has five days to appeal the secretary of state’s decision on individual signatures to Superior Court.