The testing that Ohio authorities relied on to declare the municipal water in East Palestine safe to drink after a disastrous train derailment was funded by the railroad operator itself and did not initially comply with federal standards, HuffPost has learned.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) on Wednesday afternoon announced that new testing from five wells that supply the towns municipal drinking water showed no evidence of contamination after a Norfolk Southern freight train loaded with tons of hazardous materials derailed in the area on Feb. 3.

With these tests results, Ohio EPA is confident that the municipal water is safe to drink, DeWines office wrote in a news release .

On its web page about the derailment, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency links only to railroad-funded preliminary test results, which it said so far confirm that there is no indication of risk to East Palestine Public Water customers.

The Columbiana County General Health District separately sampled East Palestines public water system last week. But as of Friday, the countys testing results had not been made public. Laura Fauss, the public information officer for the Columbiana County General Health District, told HuffPost it did not receive preliminary results of its sampling from the lab until about 5 p.m. Wednesday approximately two hours after the governors office sent out its water quality update.

DeWines office did not respond to HuffPosts request for comment Friday, other than to send links to the governors press conference that day and the Ohio EPA website.

Although the drinking water in East Palestine may indeed be safe, as officials have repeatedly stressed in recent days, independent experts argue the initial batch of samples that a consulting firm hired by the rail company collected and submitted to the lab should not have been used to make such a determination. The lab report on the railroad-funded sampling indicates the samples were not handled in accordance with federal Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Sam Bickley, an aquatic ecologist at Virginia Scientist-Community Interface, an advocacy-focused coalition of scientists and engineers, alerted HuffPost to the sampling errors and called the report extremely concerning.

Their results that claim there were no contaminants is not a reliable finding, he said via email. I find this extremely concerning because these results would NOT be used in most scientific applications because the samples were not preserved properly, and this is the same data they are now relying on to say that the drinking water is not contaminated.