Ohio Sen. Michael Rulli (R-Salem) has warned anyone living within ten miles of East Palestine not to drink or bathe in the water.
“It is not safe,” Rulli affirmed.
In an interview with Breitbart News, Rulli said: “Anyone within ten miles, I am begging you not to drink the water.”
“I am begging you not to bathe in the water. It is not safe,” he said.
“Now that we’ve had this disaster, and fortunately for us, no one got killed on the initial explosion, but we got to worry about cancer in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years,” Rulli continued.
“So what I’m suggesting is that everyone goes as far away as you can and get a hotel room,” he added. “We got people that are fighting with Norfolk Southern. Norfolk says they’re going to pay for it. We got to hold their feet to the fire.”
The state senator went on to say that “nobody showed up” within the first days of the train derailment.
“In all fairness to the governor, he sent some really nice crews down there that were working on it, but the feds were nowhere to be found,” Rulli said.
“We’re day 14 and [Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)] just comes yesterday, and then the FEMA guy came the day before and he’s telling everyone to drink the water,” Rulli continued. “I mean, give me a break. These are my people. These are the people I go to church with.”
“We brought in six trailer loads of water two days ago. I got four more trailer loads coming down on Tuesday,” he added.
He also noted there are “over 48 farms within an eight-mile radius of ground zero, and no one’s even talked about doing the soil samples there. So these guys haven’t even put the seed in the ground, and they’re about to lose millions of dollars.”
“I got quite the problem over here in my district,” the state senator declared.
Rulli added he has “been down there five times in the last 13 days.”
“Every time I leave there I get a sore throat,” he said. “And I have a sore throat for the rest of the day. The next day it starts clearing up, but it is what it is.”
The state senator said that it felt like “a zombie apocalypse” when he was at ground zero.
Last week, Ohio officials claimed the water for the town of East Palestine was safe to consume after completing tests on wells that lead into the town’s municipal water system. The Hill reported.
In a release, Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) office said that tests on five wells detected no contaminants in “raw” water. Officials also tested “combined, treated water” from the five wells and did not detect any contaminants related to the derailment.
“With these tests results, Ohio [Environmental Protection Agency] is confident that the municipal water is safe to drink,” the release states.
READ MORE: Trump to Visit East Palestine Train Disaster Site While Biden Remains Silent
