(CNN)Water drawn from wells at a hazardous waste site in hurricane-hit Puerto Rico meets federal drinking water standards and is fit for consumption, the US Environmental Protection Agency said in a news release on Tuesday.
The water being pulled from wells at the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, which is part of the Superfund program for hazardous waste cleanup, meets federal drinking water standards for certain industrial chemicals, as well as for bacteria, Elias Rodriguez, an EPA spokesman, told CNN.
"Sampling at the site has found chemical contamination that is impacting wells used to supply drinking water to the local communities," the agency said at the time.
To the surprise of some people at the EPA, Rodriguez said, some of the wells located on the Superfund site actually were collecting water from an aqueduct system that is not sourced from groundwater at the contaminated site.
The EPA did find between about 1 and 1.5 micrograms per liter of tetrachloroethylene, a chemical linked to risk of cancer, in water sampled from the Santa Rosa well.
More tests are forthcoming, Rodriguez said, but the test results released on Tuesday covered the chemicals of concern at the Superfund site, as well as bacteria that tend to cause illness following hurricanes and floods, he said.
On October 19, CNN published the results of those university water tests, which also found the water to meet safe drinking water standards for certain industrial chemicals.
"I would drink" the water based on those test results, Professor Marc Edwards said at the time.
The wells that do contain a mix of water from wells on the hazardous waste site are located away from an area that is thought to have more-problematic levels of chemical contamination, he said.
That distance is not especially comforting given the karst geology of the area, which allows contaminants to move more rapidly than through some other soil types, said Olson, from NRDC.