A heavy truck toting a robust machine arrived a few months ago in a quiet Lake Mary neighborhood of medical offices, small shops and the city’s fire station No. 37.
At the back of the mobile drilling rig, workers lowered a steel snout to the ground and bored a pair of holes several hundred feet into the earth and into the Floridan Aquifer. It was a renewed effort to probe for the 1,4-dioxane that plagues the drinking water of tens of thousands of residents in Seminole County.
“This is a very positive step,” said Jake Varn, a former director of Florida’s department of environment and a lawyer now assisting the city of Sanford.
The pair of deep holes, or monitoring wells, were ordered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The wells could finally determine whether the source of the 1,4-dioxane deep underground is, as Sanford has repeatedly asserted, the contaminated Siemens factory site in west Lake Mary, Varn said.
“It’s the first major step to confirming what Sanford has thought for years,” Varn said.
Resolving who is at fault for 1,4-dioxane in drinking water has been a long time in coming.
How a toxic chemical infiltrated the Floridan Aquifer, tainting Seminole County tap water
The chemical was documented by state investigators as contaminating the ground beneath the Siemens factory in 2001. Sanford, Lake Mary and Seminole County found the chemical in their drinking water in 2013 and 2014.
The investigation into the fate of the Siemens factory’s 1,4-dioxane and how the chemical got into drinking water has been plodding at times, marked with unfulfilled assurances, detoured by lapses in institutional memory, and, according to state records, now hints at contention.
“The state has not determined the source of potential dioxane contamination in Sanford’s groundwater wells,” said a spokesperson for Siemens, the giant German corporation, in a statement.
The responses of the two cities and the county have amounted to on-the-job training, thanks to the nation being ill-equipped for obscure and unregulated chemicals such as 1,4-dioxane, according to groups pushing for protections.
“1,4-dioxane is just one of many harmful chemicals linked to serious human health problems with a long history of contaminating tap water across the country,” said Sydney Evans, science analyst with Environmental Working Group, a national not-for-profit focused on safe drinking water. “Yet the EPA continues to move far too slowly in regulating drinking water contaminants.”
“This unconscionable negligence is especially concerning when it comes to 1,4-dioxane because the only effective home filtration option is reverse osmosis, which is not accessible for most people. We urgently need federal action to ensure utilities protect the public from this and other dangerous chemicals,” Evans said.
Since 1996, no contaminants have been added to the list of those regulated by the EPA for drinking water. The agency faces obstacles in regulating new chemicals, advocacy groups acknowledge, including legal battles with manufacturers and users.
“Sometimes we throw all of our frustrations at the Environmental Protection Agency for being so slow,” said Sonya Lunder, a Sierra Club senior toxics policy advisor. “And then realize that everything goes to court these days.”
Missed warning
There were early warnings about 1,4-dioxane.
In 2000, Florida environmental authorities began to grapple with what to do about 1,4-dioxane and other chemicals spreading underground into a drinking water aquifer from a factory near Sarasota that had produced bomb parts.
In 2001, Thomas Mohr, then an engineering geologist in California and today a leading 1,4-dioxane expert, published a lengthy paper stressing that the nation’s sites contaminated with toxic chemicals like those at the Siemens factory should be re-evaluated.
“The presence of 1,4-dioxane should be expected,” he wrote, warning additionally that the chemical may have migrated a considerable distance from the original pollution site.
In 2006, the EPA warned that 1,4-dioxane can travel swiftly and widely through aquifers.
In 2010, the Florida Department of Health reported that 1,4-dioxane and other chemicals were being cleaned up at the Lake Mary Siemens factory but that 1,4-dioxane remained at high levels.
Finally, in 2013, the EPA required water utilities across the nation to conduct one-time testing for the presence of substances that weren’t regulated but were thought to be hazardous.
They included a metal, molybdenum; a pest-control agent, methyl bromide; PFAS chemicals; a hormone, testosterone; a virus, norovirus; and a synthetic compound, 1,4-dioxane.
Central Florida water utilities reported back. Among them, Leesburg, Titusville, Kissimmee and Winter Park found no 1,4-dioxane.
Orlando Utilities Commission, the region’s biggest water provider, did get a positive hit. OUC detected a very low level in April 2013 but tested six months later and found none.
In all, there were relatively few findings of significant concentrations of 1,4-dioxane in Florida drinking water, according to a database kept by the Environmental Working Group.
The city with the highest concentration of 1,4-dioxane was Lake Mary. Seminole County had the second highest, while Sanford ranked sixth, according to the group’s data.
For drinking water safety, the EPA pairs with the Florida departments of environment and health, which then provide rigid guidance to local water utilities on what to do, how and when.
Outwardly and ordinarily, the partnership conveys confidence and trustworthiness.
But when 1,4-dioxane was documented in tap water of Lake Mary, Sanford and Seminole County in 2013 and 2014, the county and cities were left adrift, according to government documents and recent interviews.
In essence, since there are no rules for 1,4-dioxane in drinking water, it wasn’t specifically in the job descriptions of the Florida and U.S. environmental agencies to immediately assist the two cities and county.
With little direction from above, Lake Mary, Sanford and Seminole County opted to go it alone in solving their shared plight, rather than to consider benefits of collaboration, and to quietly pursue markedly different solutions.
Lake Mary hit hardest
Lake Mary was especially sucker punched by what it didn’t know about 1,4-dioxane.
“I had never even heard of it before,” said Bruce Paster, public works director for Lake Mary who retired this spring after a nearly 40-year career.
In 2001, the city drilled a drinking water well – well No. 5 – just south of the Siemens factory property. Before it was put to use, the water in well No. 5 was found to be stewing with carcinogenic solvents.
Siemens factory owners eventually paid for an upgrade at the city’s water treatment plant that would remove the solvents.
In late June, a Siemens spokesperson described that history: “Siemens voluntarily entered into publicly-available agreements with both the city and state to fund and support remediation efforts.”
By 2006, the treatment plant had been equipped and Lake Mary turned on well No. 5.
Water wells that extend down into the Floridan Aquifer are prized by water utilities – they are costly and challenging in a number of ways but are essential for a community’s water supply.
No. 5 proved to be a reliable workhorse, or so it appeared. It produced prodigious amounts of drinking water, from 1 million to nearly 2 million gallons daily, according to state records.
Nearly eight years later, in 2014, 1,4-dioxane was found in No. 5 – a lot of it.
Well No. 5 would turn out to be the most contaminated with 1,4-dioxane by far among the city’s wells. It was taken out of service and is now partly dismantled with an uncertain future, according to city officials.
After No. 5 was turned off, Lake Mary’s other wells and drinking water still contained several times the limit of 1,4-dioxane recommended by state and federal guidelines.
The city asked the Florida Department of Health if its drinking water was safe.
In 2016, the health department said it found even higher concentrations of 1,4-dioxane in city drinking water than was first discovered during EPA-mandated tests in 2014 and 2015.
“Ingesting water with the highest level of 1,4-dioxane,” as documented by the health department, “would cause, at most, an ‘extremely low’ increased risk of cancer,” the Department of Health stated in July 2016.
Later in 2016, underscoring the uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding 1,4-dioxane, the department issued statewide guidance for the chemical with a more cautious tone.
The guidance noted that “the health effect of chemical exposure can range widely from one person to the next” and concluded that “the public health goal is to stop the pathway of exposure for 1,4-dioxane as soon as possible.”
Lake Mary officials relied on the 2016 health department statement to buy time, understanding it could not continue to provide drinking water tainted with a toxic but poorly researched chemical.
“Although not required to do so, Lake Mary decided that it needed to identify and install a treatment system to address this new contaminant of concern now before it could become an issue for the public,” city officials stated in an internal memo.
City officials said their new water treatment plant is unlike any other in Florida. It injects water with hydrogen peroxide, blasts it with ultraviolet light and finishes with carbon filtration, all to remove the vast majority of 1,4-dioxane.
The water treatment plant was costly, estimated at nearly $40 million. It was paid for “voluntarily” by owners of the telephone equipment factory as part of a 2017 agreement with the city and state. The owners of the Siemens factory declined to disclose a specific price.
The water plant went into service in 2021, or two decades after 1,4-dioxane was found at the Siemens factory site.
“It’s definitely the most modern way to clean water,” Paster said, adding that 1,4-dioxane at any concentration should not be in drinking water. “Our fear is what would happen if levels would grow and if it would migrate to more wells.”
Seminole County’s response faltered
Seminole County’s initial response to 1,4-dioxane was to adjust flow rates of its wells to reduce concentrations of the chemical to below the recommended limit.
That was eight years ago. Since then, the county apparently had not taken or planned any steps to get rid of the chemical entirely from drinking water. It tacitly accepted its presence at those reduced levels.
This week, however, Seminole officials posted a brief explanation of 1,4-dioxane on the county’s website and assured the public that its water was safe to drink. This came a day after the Orlando Sentinel published online the first part of this series, revealing the toxic chemical has contaminated drinking water wells in northwest Seminole for years.
It is the first time in eight years that Seminole has publicly disclosed that its drinking water has 1,4-dioxane.
The message on the website states that through August county staff will collect samples from all 25 potable water wells and “the points of entry for all five potable water systems” on a monthly basis.
The county also has started working with a consultant to assist with developing short and long-term plans “to address internal protocols and processes related to sampling, monitoring and reporting,” according to the website.
County officials concede the history of its response is murky because senior leadership, with the passing of time and with turnover, lost track of the matter.
Seminole’s water utility consists of nearly a dozen separate service areas. The most affected by 1,4-dioxane is the largest geographically, the Northwest Service Area.
With some of Seminole’s most affluent developments, including the gated, 2,200-home Heathrow, the service area takes in an area from Interstate 4 to the east, the county’s border to the west, Wekiva Springs Road to the south and the St. Johns River to the north.
A test in August 2013 of the service area water found I,4-dioxane at nearly twice the concentration of the recommended limit. As with Lake Mary and Sanford, there likely is no way of knowing when the chemical first infiltrated drinking water of the Northwest Service Area.
The county responded by modifying flows from three wells: the Heathrow wells 2, 5 and 6 located along the west side of I-4 less than a half-mile from the Siemens plant. By 2016, the concentrations of 1,4-dioxane were hovering around half the recommended limit.
This spring, the Orlando Sentinel reached Kim Ornberg, who was hired as the county’s environmental director late last year. New to her role, she had not heard of the 1,4-dioxane contamination.
Since learning of it, Ornberg has not been able to unravel the intent or actions of previous county administrations, she said.
Lee Constantine, a Seminole county commissioner for the past 10 years and before that a state senator for a decade, has prioritized water issues in Seminole.
He, too, learned of 1,4-dioxane for the first time when interviewed by the Sentinel in June. He then held meetings with the county manager, Darren Gray, who was hired this spring and also had not been told of the matter, and Ornberg.
What they concluded was that the county has had no means or proposal for removing 1,4-dioxane from drinking water. That needed to be rethought, Constantine said.
“I cannot tolerate that chemical in our homes,” Constantine said. “The conversation that I had with the county manager is that they can’t either. And they’re going to put together a plan of action to minimize this exposure. This is the health, safety and welfare of citizens.”
Sanford’s push for answers
Compared to Lake Mary and especially to Seminole County, Sanford has been persistent and at times aggressive in seeking to rid itself of 1,4-dioxane. The city also had been tormented by the slow pace of results.
Urgently wanting help in 2016, the city of Sanford urged the state Department of Environmental Protection to engage and confirm whether the Siemens plant was the source of its water contamination. The department answered that it would.
The state agency will gather data, wrote Paula Cobb, a deputy secretary then, in a letter to Sanford officials “to develop a comprehensive approach to determine the potential sources of 1,4-dioxane, identify responsible parties, and evaluate an appropriate resolution.”
That didn’t happen and Sanford decided it had to protect itself by taking on the tasks and expenses it thought the state should have been pursuing.
Sanford hired two expert firms to determine the source of 1,4-dioxane found in several of its water wells, and in one in particular, the Twin Lakes No. 2 well in a grassy field next to Sam’s Club, 1.6 miles northeast of the Siemens factory.
In March 2013, the EPA testing found slightly more 1,4-dioxane than the recommended limit in Twin Lakes No. 2. Pumping from that well was curtailed to reduce the city’s drinking water concentrations of the chemical to less than the recommended limit.
The two firms determined 1,4-dioxane likely had plunged deeply into the Floridan Aquifer at the Siemens factory and, hitchhiking along with the natural movement of water in the aquifer, drifted north and slightly east under Interstate 4 and to the city’s Twin Lakes No. 2 well.
In 2018, Ardaman & Associates concluded it is “highly probable” the Siemens factory is the source of contamination and that still higher concentrations of the chemical in the Floridan Aquifer would eventually reach Sanford’s wells.
Two years later, another expert hired by Sanford, Liquid Solutions Group, reviewed Ardaman’s investigation, findings and conclusion and stated “the Siemens site is a likely source of dioxane contamination affecting the city of Sanford wellfields.”
This June, Sanford’s city commission opted for a new but uncertain strategy: seeking a treatment plant like that in Lake Mary – only much larger – to be paid for by state and federal agencies.
Its projected cost at nearly $80 million is staggeringly high relative to conventional plants. “It will basically take care of everything,” said Art Woodruff, Sanford’s mayor.
This month, however, results came back from the drilling of monitoring wells this past spring near Lake Mary’s fire station 37. Sanford officials say that what one of the wells encountered may go far in determining who is responsible for 1,4-dioxane in the Floridan Aquifer and in the city’s drinking water.
Drilling those wells occurred after some dispute.
Steven Siros, a lawyer for one of the factory’s past owners, General Dynamics, told the state in February the monitoring wells were “not technically justified.”
Tim Bahr, director of the department’s waste management division, responded to Siros in March that the state would contract for the wells to be drilled and reserved the “right to seek the full costs” from the Siemens factory owners – as much as $400,000.
One of those wells drilled in April detected a high concentration of 1,4-dioxane.
To city of Sanford officials, it’s a smoking gun, making it increasingly clear that 1,4-dioxane migrated in the Floridan Aquifer from the Siemens factory to Sanford drinking water wells.
Sanford’s lawyer, Varn, said the state Department of Environmental Protection now has enough evidence to press Siemens factory owners to mount a comprehensive investigation of 1,4-dioxane in the Floridan Aquifer.
“We’ll be very anxious to find out what the department’s plans are,” Varn said.
Toxic Secret: Our series about 1,4-dioxane in Seminole water
- Part 1 – A toxic chemical, 1,4-dioxane, has infiltrated waters of three utilities
- Part 2 – Local water utilities have struggled with how to address 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen
- Part 3 – 1,4-dioxane has a seemingly sinister ability to invade the Floridan Aquifer
- Part 4 – 1,4-dioxane in Seminole water has been a virtual secret. How one family found out
Know more about this issue?
Do you have pertinent information about the 1,4-dioxane contamination in Seminole County water you would like to share with us for our reporting? If so, please email us at toxicsecret@orlandosentinel.com.
About the journalists who reported this series
- Kevin Spear is the Orlando Sentinel’s environmental reporter. He has been with the newspaper for 34 years and for most of that time has covered key issues relating to water, wildlife and land use. He can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com
- Caroline Catherman is the Orlando Sentinel’s health reporter. She joined the newspaper in 2021 after previously working in public health research. She can be reached at ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com
- Martin E. Comas is the Orlando Sentinel’s Seminole County reporter. He started at the newspaper in 1988 and has covered key Seminole stories including the death of Trayvon Martin and its aftermath, and the controversies surrounding disgraced Tax Collector Joel Greenberg. He can be reached at mcomas@orlandosentinel.com
- Joe Burbank is the Orlando Sentinel’s senior photographer. He joined the newspaper in 1988 after working for Agence France-Presse news. He has spent more than three decades covering Central Florida with his visual reporting. He can be reached at jburbank@orlandosentinel.com
- Rich Pope is the Orlando Sentinel’s videographer. He joined the newspaper in 2003. He has received Emmy nominations, along with recognitions from the Online News Association and Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. He can be reached at rpope@orlandosentinel.com
Help support our investigative reporting
Contributions to the Orlando Sentinel’s Community News Fund helped us produce this series. Please consider supporting our reporting by donating to the fund at OrlandoSentinel.com/donate
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