It’s been nine months since Seminole officials promised the county would be more transparent to its residents about the amount of 1,4-dioxane — a suspected carcinogen — in their drinking water.
But in that time, they’ve done almost nothing to communicate what their regular tests of drinking water wells, some of which are known to have been previously tainted, have found.
Finally that seems about to change. County officials on Friday provided the Orlando Sentinel with months of data showing that the water from one of its five treatment plants continues to contain significant levels of 1,4-dioxane, but at only about half the federally recommended level, which the officials insist is safe. Measurements at the other four plants mostly showed negligible contamination.
County officials also said they will begin posting those test results online, which would fulfill a promise first made last July. They acknowledged questions from the Sentinel spurred that decision.
Why the stalling? Officials say they have been working on a plan to incorporate water quality data on an interactive map they believe will be more understandable to the public. Seminole Commissioner Lee Constantine said he wishes the data had been posted on the county’s website sooner, but he supports the effort to create a simple and clear way to communicate the information.
“We are going to get it done,” he said Friday. “But we want to do it right.”
Broad concerns about the presence of 1,4-dioxane in Seminole County water stem from a Sentinel investigation, “Toxic Secret,” published in July, 2023. The investigation revealed that for decades, tens of thousands of people in northwest Seminole have been drinking water containing 1,4-dioxane, and that in some areas in Lake Mary, Sanford and unincorporated Seminole County the concentration exceeded recommended levels for significant periods of time.
The 1,4-dioxane has been linked to a long-shuttered telecommunications factory, once operated by Siemens, between Interstate 4 and Rinehart Road in west Lake Mary. The pollution from the factory seeped hundreds of feet underground into the Floridan Aquifer, the region’s source of drinking water.
Officials in the three jurisdictions learned of the 1,4-dioxane contamination through federally-mandated testing in 2013, but did not clearly alert the public. Once the Sentinel’s series published, they promised to do better.
But for Seminole County in particular, change has come slowly.
Last summer, the county placed a one-sentence statement on its website about the amount of the industrial chemical in drinking water: “In May 2023, internal sampling of all potable water systems at the point of entry confirmed minimal-to-no-detection of the contaminate.” The statement has not been updated since then, even as new the results of new tests rolled in.
The county website refers to 1,4-dioxane only as a “contaminant of concern,” without mentioning possible cancer risk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been much more explicit, deeming 1,4-dioxane likely to cause liver and kidney cancer and other illnesses.
Nevertheless, the EPA does not regulate 1,4-dioxane, meaning notification and cleanup is not required. The state and federal governments have established recommended health advisory limits for the presence of the chemical in drinking water of 0.35 parts per billion or ppb. An attempt to establish a firmer statewide limit failed in the state legislature earlier this year.
Seminole county officials did begin regular testing of drinking water in mid-2023, and they have now provided those results to the Sentinel.
The tests show that the Markham Regional Water Treatment Plant — which receives water from about half-a-dozen wells in the northwest quadrant of the county — distributes water with concentrations of 1,4-dioxane ranging from less than 0.04 ppb in September to 0.187 ppb in November.
The other four water treatment plants have shown levels consistently less than 0.04 ppb.
On Friday, county officials defended the county’s delayed response in making the data available to the public. They said the county has been working with several consultants in gathering and analyzing the testing data. They also have been meeting with representatives from the cities of Sanford and Lake Mary and the state’s Department of Health to compile all the information.
In the coming weeks, likely by mid-May, the county said it plans to post all the data into an interactive map on the county’s website where the public can click on a spot and learn about their water provider, information about the source of the water and testing results for that specific area.
“We’ve been compiling lots of information, and now we’re to the point of OK, we need to start putting this repository of stuff and making it available in a format that makes sense…That is easy to read,” said Kristian Swenson, assistant county manager. “But just piling a bunch of things on the website in a cluttered fashion would probably make things more confusing than not.”
Swenson acknowledged the county has indeed received calls about the lack of test results on the county’s website.
But he added that “this is a much larger topic than just doing tests.” He noted, for example, that the groundwater tests at the Siemens site show contamination of ten times more polluted than tests from the county’s wells. Consultants with the county and Sanford and Lake Mary are looking into that.
“That was a bit shocking to us,” Swenson said. “So what does that mean long term? What are the depths of things? What are our partners seeing? Things like that.”
Constantine said the county is “moving in the right direction” in regards to the contamination. Seminole also recently hired GrayRobinson law firm, and the county is working with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in regard to going after the polluters and continuing the testing of the wells in northwest Seminole.
“The important thing is that the dioxane is below the health advisory levels,” Constantine said.
Commissioner Andria Herr, who represents northwest Seminole and who last July called on the county to provide a dashboard of water quality test results for its residents, did not respond to requests for comment. A Herr aide said Friday that any questions would have to go through county staff because of the “legality.” But she did not elaborate.
Seminole spokesperson Chris Patton said Friday that “the ultimate goal is to get a dynamic map” the public can click on to get data from all sources.
“You’ll be able to see a directory of what’s going on closer to your home rather than test results from the water treatment plants that may be farther from your home,” he said.
