On Sunday afternoon, officials in Philadelphia withdrew their recommendation for residents to consume bottled drinking water in the wake of a toxic spill in the Delaware River.

City officials had issued alerts for bottled water as a precautionary measure following the spill from a chemical plant upstream in Bucks County on Friday night, NBC News reported.

However, testing conducted later determined that there was no contamination present in the river near the intake for the city’s water system, nor in the system itself, according to Michael Carroll, a city deputy managing director, during a video news conference on Sunday evening.

The intake had been temporarily shut down, but reopened early Sunday to ensure the system had sufficient water for firefighting and other uses.

At the news conference, officials declared that tap water was safe to drink at least until midnight, and urged citizens not to hoard bottled water, as reported by NBC News.

They recommended that people use clean, empty containers to store tap water in case the situation changes, and stated that they would provide further updates on social media.

Written by staff