EAST PALESTINE — The village’s water superintendent was given the floor of village council on Monday to answer questions from the public.

Superintendent Scott Wolfe fielded a few questions from residents concerned about water quality as a result of the Feb. 3 train derailment.

He said that village water is being tested on a weekly basis every Tuesday morning in conjunction with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and a Norfolk Southern contractor.

“Prior to the train accident we were only required to test for VOCs every three years,” he said of volatile organic compounds.

He added that testing was done “out of precaution” when hydraulic fracturing was happening more frequently as a result of oil and gas exploration in the area. “There has not been a single hit on anything yet,” he said, meaning any detection of VOCs.

VOCs are a group of chemicals used in agriculture, transportation, and household products and can cause a range of health affects, including cancer, if found in drinking water.

For example, vinyl chloride, a carcinogen that was one of the many chemicals released during the derailment, is a VOC.

Wolfe said that in addition to no detection of VOCs now or in the past, he doesn’t foresee any problems moving forward.

He went on to say that there is a “lot of action going on behind the scenes right now that will be put into place down the road” if something were to be detected that would be harmful for consumption.

While the public water system is being tested weekly for VOCs or SOCs, which are synthetic organic compounds, the routine testing is ongoing daily for things like iron, manganese, chlorine, fluoride and other routine water tests, he added.

The weekly testing for VOCs and SOCs will continue for quite some time, he said.

Test results are published on the EPA’s website.

The village’s water samples are sent to Cardinal Laboratory in Youngstown.

“There is no hiding anything,” Wolfe said.

Furthermore, four new monitoring wells were drilled over a period of five days and are already in operation.

He said two monitoring wells were drilled at the sewer plant, one at the exit of the park and one at Park Drive.

“I don’t want to speak for how often these are being sampled, but I would assume weekly as well,” he said.

Mayor Trent Conaway said that the village’s water is safe to drink, but those who rely on well water may want to consume bottled water until their water is tested.

Wolfe also said that the contaminants from the derailment cannot seep into the village’s water lines and that the closest water line from the derailment site is about 200 yards.

“It’s a distance. I don’t foresee that being an issue at all,” Wolfe said.