October 16, 2017 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (WENY) -- Hundreds of people in Puerto Rico continue to tap into a water source which has been federally designated as contaminated.

"It looks like you guys are sending help, but we’re buying it, we’re not getting it, at all,” Lucia Irrizary from Dorado, Puerto Rico says.

With no other water source to turn to, Puerto Ricans in the town of Dorado are left with one option. 

They are taking water from a federally designated Superfund site. That’s an area that has been designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as hazardous. But people in Dorado said the bottles of water being shipped to the Island aren’t getting to them.

“All we’ve seen is helicopters, no bodies passed by, this is the second time in a week that truck has come by. In other places in other sections they have water we still haven’t had water. We had water once. They said it was going to be one-day yes, one-day no. We still haven’t had anybody. We’ve been here more than 6 hours, there is a lady there that fainted, a little boy fainted, we’re not animals,” Irrizary added.

There are several potentially contaminated wells in the area and, although the EPA spent the weekend testing them, concern from residents and officials grow around the long-term effects of drinking from it.

At EPA Headquarters in Washington D.C., Administrator Scott Pruitt is urging Puerto Ricans to drink bottled water, but it’s hard to find.

“It’s a very, very difficult situation,” Pruitt said Monday.

Pruitt said Puerto Rico’s water infrastructure wasn’t in a good place prior to Hurricane Maria.  When the storm hit, he said, it made it even worse. But Pruitt
said he’s going to continue to work with government officials on the ground to make sure residents have access to safe drinking water.

“If you’re drinking from an area that is impacted or near a Superfund site that shouldn’t continue. What should be the focus is making sure they have the access whether its’ bottled water or otherwise we need to make sure as an agency working with DOD, working with FEMA, working with these other agencies that are responding to the situation there that they have access to safe drinking water,” Pruitt added.

Over the weekend the EPA re-installed fences to re-secure the hazardous wells.

They said they’re working with FEMA and local officials to ensure clean water are available to residents in the Dorado community.