In the 1960s and 1970s, industries ventured to Puerto Rico as the result of a now-expired federal tax incentive known, which exempted businesses from federal income tax profits earned by U.S. companies in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories.
In places like Salinas, a city on the island's southern coast, all of the drinking water comes from groundwater. Ruth Santiago, an attorney based in Salinas, Puerto Rico, and an environmental health advocate with Earth Justice, told ABC News. To exacerbate the issue, the cleanup and monitoring of these sites "take a long time," Carmen Guerrero Perez, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, told ABC News.
Water contamination has been rampant in Puerto Rico since the 1970s, environmental scientist Neftali Garcia told ABC News. "Eventually, that polluted water will get into the surface water of creeks, rivers and underground water," Garcia said.
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