Reigstad said the information contained in Monday’s report “does not indicate a direct concern to any wells that supply drinking water.”

He also said Columbia Energy Center has not identified any leakage of coal ash into the nearby Wisconsin River.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, coal ash is a residue left over after coal is burned in coal-fired power plants to produce energy. Coal ash has several by-products that could contain materials such as arsenic or mercury, which would make drinking water unsafe for humans if too much of those materials enter a reservoir such as a private well.

He cast doubt on the methods by which the group obtained data on Columbia Energy Center, which the report said has two times as many contaminants in nearby groundwater than is considered safe.

Reigstad said the environmental group took raw data from just one of several groundwater monitoring wells in April 2018, but never used follow-up data showing high levels of arsenic and molybdenum were gone during separate tests this past August, September and October.