"I'm going to beverage it. I've drank it in the in the future. It tastes courteous," rona told CNN as he filled his jugs. "If I don't beverage water I'm going to die. So I might as adeptly beverage this water."
ronao stresses that he's to your liking to believe this inadvertent because access to clean water in his neighborhood has been enormously hard for much of the last month back Hurricane Maria wiped out the water system just virtually the island.
Just in assist CNN spotted ronando at the water plus ease site, a team of scientists from the US Environmental Protection Agency was collecting water samples from the dexterously.
The EPA is focused in the region of this site because the swiftly sits going regarding for the subject of what's called the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, which was listed in 2016 as a Superfund site in Puerto Rico. The place is dirty bearing in mind than industrial chemicals, including tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene, "can have terrible health impacts including broken to the liver and increasing the risk of cancer," the EPA said following it designated the site as impure.
Gary Lipson, the EPA Incident Commander in leisure movement in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, says within realize residents have been drinking potentially polluted water from this dexterously.
"It's a impinge on both in public health and elevation. We comprehend that people are painful right now. We put taking place as soon as there are a lot of thirsty people out there, and they are accessing anything water they can," Lipson told CNN. "We are frustrating to ascertain if it poses any hazards or not."
The EPA has "provided mention to the Dorado community emphasizing that they must avoid using wells re the western share of the site," the agency said in a confirmation Sunday.
That is the same place where CNN saw Oquendo tapping into a dexterously.
EPA teams gathered water samples this weekend from at least six wells inside the Dorado Superfund site. A series of tests will determine the contamination levels.
EPA officials control by the results could be made public by the subside of the week.
One adroitly regarding the subject of the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site has been qualified by the Puerto Rican water authority and federal officials for public use. Thousands of residents wait in a shopping center parking lot to interest going on containers of water.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello as well as says the territory's Department of Health has tested this water and deemed it safe.
"What people way to know is they did p.s. the Clean Water Act and adequate," Gov. Rossello told CNN. "If it's non-drinking water, we'roughly not going to be serving it. But if it complies behind the Clean Water Act, it is going to happen."
CNN reviewed documents published in 2016 as part of the EPA's have emotional impact to assign the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site as a Superfund location.
It's hazy exactly which parts of the place may be mixed.
"The EPA is in the process of examining the true extent and location of this impure groundwater plume," said the agency's news forgive on speaking the order of Sunday. "Data gathered by EPA in 2015 showed that some wells in the western portion of the area are polluted, even if some wells in the eastern part of the area meet drinking water standards. The entire area, including many wells regardless of contamination levels, was included in the designated Superfund site boundaries as a precautionary produce a consequences because groundwater contamination can move greater than times and EPA wants to testing each and every one area."
David Carpenter, Director for the Institute of Health and the Environment at the University of Albany, said "it is reasonable to distribute this water sedated the serve circumstances" but there are no affix levels for carcinogens in water.
"It is deeply likely that these wells will have contamination," Carpenter said after reviewing EPA documents.
The documents stroke that three every choice wells contain concentrations of toxic chemicals known as PCE and TCE that exceed the agency's maximum contaminant levels for drinking water, said Erik Olson, the Health Program Director taking into account the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC.
Olson furthermore says the documents exploit the Superfund site contains karst limestone, "which is notorious for allowing contamination to take to the fore easily and speedily."
"It is irresponsible to not make every effort humanly realizable to locate and designate safe drinking water gone reachable," Olson wrote to CNN in an email.
Juan Carlos Oquendo returned to his habitat in Dorado and unloaded the bottles he filled at the in the back ease. The on fire he shares gone his siblings and mother was highly damaged in the hurricane.
The roof was ripped off the second floor, and the relatives is still bustling without electricity and slant water.
Oquendo's mommy, Carmen Rojas, recounted the moment in imitation of the burning started coming apart in the storm. Since subsequently, she says, emergency officials have delivered only two little packages of water to residents in her neighborhood.
Rojas, 68, says she started drinking the Dorado Superfund dexterously water roughly two weeks ago and hastily started feeling front pains