Doug Green at the bottling line at Midas Spring.

Entrepreneur is bringing old Huntersville spring back to life.

Magical healing water, bubbling up from the ground in … Huntersville? If you believe ancient native American legends, or somewhat-less-ancient, Charlotte socialite legends, or even the armchair research of an international businessman from Davidson, the answer could be yes. On an obscure side road off Beatties Ford Road, just south of Latta Plantation, is a natural spring that is credited with producing one-of-a-kind water that can cure illnesses, help prevent conditions as disparate as heart disease and Attention Deficit Disorder, and once, long ago, revived a young man whose people had given him up as a goner. The science of all this is a little shaky, but at the very least, the stuff that bubbles up from through the rocks at Midas Spring is water with a distinctively good taste (especially on a hot summer day) and an unusual chemical composition. Whether Midas Spring water can actually heal is, and will probably always remain, the subject of some debate, but if the entrepreneurs who purchased the 39-acre site three years ago have their way,more people will get a chance to find out for themselves in the months and years ahead. Davidson businessmen Joe and Dominic Liburdi are putting some of their gold in Midas in an effort to revive one of Mecklenburg County’s legendary businesses. Midas water has been bottled and sold in the county since about 1871 and has, at various times,enjoyed celebrity status.But the past couple decades have seen a decline and the property was nearly sold for residential development. Indeed, that’s what Dominic Liburdi,who’s in the real estate business,was looking for when he discovered the property before Joe, a globe-trotting mineral water connoisseur,came to the rescue. Liburdi and company have refurbished the Depression-era bottling house at the site, added a new production line that can handle individual serving-size bottles and cleaned up the grounds around the old spring house.The latter was once a popular place for church picnics, weddings and other events. Joe Liburdi hopes it might become that again. More importantly, he is hoping to put Midas on the map. Or,get it back on the map.His travels with his primary business,Liburdi Diametrics, a specialty engineering firm, have exposed him to a wide range of bottled and mineral waters (they’re not the same thing). He thinks Midas could one day be a real player on the world market, a trove of near-perfect natural water that might draw people the way some of the great springs of Europe do. He even imagines pilgrimages to Midas the same way travelers from all over migrate to the medieval town of Fiuggi, in the hills south of Rome. “Michelangelo, the popes, they all drank at Fiuggi, and it is known for curing kidney stones,” says Liburdi. “The only difference is that our water may be better and no one has heard of us … yet.”

Brave’s new world

Once upon a time, spreading the word about Midas wasn’t necessary, at least not in Mecklenburg County. Wagons,and later trucks,carrying big, five-gallon bottles of Midas were a regular sight in downtown Charlotte.The water was bottled in the old spring house (the house and bottling pool were recently refurbished, but that particular spring is no longer Midas’ main source) and hauled down Midas Spring Road (beside Long Creek Elementary) to Beatties Ford Road and into Charlotte. It was a regular drink in turn of the century (19th to 20th) office buildings and in some of Charlotte’s finer homes. Some of the scions of society swore by the stuff. For instance, a member of the Blumenthal (as in Blumenthal Performing Arts Center) family claimed that bathing in the water cured a skin rash. In the 1960s, a 105-year-old woman claimed in a story in the Charlotte Observer that one reason for her longevity was drinking Midas water. And in the 1970s, Charlotte businessman and ex-gubernatorial candidate Harry Stokely volunteered his services as a business consultant to the spring’s owners because the water had cured his kidney stones 40 years earlier … or so he believed. Of course, the best Midas legend goes back long before the springs became a business. The story, incorporated on a Midas label for a number of years,told of a group of Indians migrating to their winter quarters one fall.A member of the group fell ill and couldn’t continue.They left him at the springs,so he’d at least have access to water during his final days. Passing through the next spring,however,the tribe found the cast-off not only still alive, but fitter and in better health than anyone could remember. “We don’t know if that’s true or not,” says Liburdi, “but we do know that the water is good for you.”

Light water?

Mineral waters have a number of potentially salutary affects.They can provide minerals that the body needs but often lacks, can work (as in the cast of kidney stones — Stokely’s story is at least based in truth) to negate the effects of other chemicals and can provide chemicals that act as a catalyst to produce useful effects.For instance, most mineral waters act as a diuretic, helping to cleanse the body by increasing urination. Beyond that, each mineral water has a particular content, created by the minerals it leaches from the surrounding rock in the underground aquifer where it resides.Liburdi says Midas water is especially good in this regard since it has a very low chemical content, but is in rich a few important elements. It is considered a “light”mineral water with less than 130 parts per million of mineral particulate and, as a result, doesn’t bloat. “You can drink it all day,” says Liburdi,“which,by the way, is a good way to diet. But it does have some minerals, and just the right ones as it turns out.” He points, for instance, to Midas’ high magnesium content. Some research shows magnesium intake can cut the risk of heart disease. It may also help with ADD, which is why Liburdi says his water ought to be served in schools. Of course, during the course of a 45-minute conversation, Liburdi winds up recommending Midas water (or, for that matter, any good mineral water) to just about every sub-group of the population. Liburdi says Midas is the baby bear’s porridge of bottled waters. It doesn’t produce the bloating and after taste of “heavy waters,” yet it retains some of the positive mineral properties missing from many off-the-shelf bottled waters that “cleansed”through a process known as reverse osmosis. “Midas is perfect, just right,” says Liburdi. He was frustrated to discover, not long after he took over Midas,that the United States government wouldn’t allow him to print a chemical analysis of Midas water on the bottle. It’s on every bottle in Europe. “I wanted to put on the outside,‘no fat, no carbs, no salt,’” says Liburdi. “But they wouldn’t go for that,either.” Without the label,Liburdi says he will just have to get people to taste it. Liburdi says the best way to compare Midas to any competitor is to take a swig at a room temperature. That’s when a water’s true “feel” and taste become apparent. Leaving a dying relative out at the springs over the winter is a good test, too.

The Midas touch

Midas Spring water is available at the site (9831 Beatties Ford Road, open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.- 3 p.m.) or at local outlets such as the Home Economist (nearest north Mecklenburg branch is on Griffith Street in Davidson).For more information, call 704-392-2150 or visit the Web site at www.midasspringwater.com.

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