Seminole County may call on EPA for 1,4-dioxane regulation
The elected head of Seminole County government, after seeking earlier this month to silence other county commissioners from commenting on 1,4-dioxane contamination in tap water, says she hopes the county can cleanse its water of the toxic chemical. The issue will be discussed during a commission meeting Tuesday.
In a letter published Sunday in Orlando Sentinel’s Opinion section, commission chair Amy Lockhart said, “Your Board of County Commissioners is addressing the 1,4-dioxane situation comprehensively, transparently, and thoroughly with regulatory, legal and scientific guidance.”
It followed her email to commissioners and senior staffers on July 14 – three days after the Sentinel began publication of its “Toxic Secret” series on drinking water contamination in Seminole – urging them not to speak to the media about the subject.
“I am confident that the propensity to publicly speak out individually stems from a desire to help, but moving forward, cameo interviews will be viewed (at least by me) as obstruction and/or interference,” Lockhart wrote in the email.
But in her guest column to the Sentinel, addressing the general public for the first time in preparation for Tuesday’s commission meeting, Lockhart proposed urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to quickly adopt regulations for the chemical in drinking water.
“I will ask the commission to approve a letter to Michael Regan, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, urging the EPA to take immediate action towards implementing comprehensive regulations on 1,4-dioxane to protect public health and the environment,” she said.
The U.S. EPA regulates the presence of 90 chemicals in drinking water but not 1,4-dioxane. A decade ago, the agency, which classifies 1,4-dioxane as likely to cause cancer, ordered water utilities across the nation to test for the chemical for research purposes.
A handful of Florida utilities found high concentrations in 2014 and 2015, including those of Lake Mary, Sanford and of Seminole County west of Interstate 4. Those findings were reported in the Sentinel’s “Toxic Secret” series of stories over the past two weeks.
Lake Mary eventually was able to construct a high-tech water treatment plant, and Sanford has aggressively pushed for a solution that would purify its tap water.
But Seminole County leaders lost track of the contamination issue largely, they said, because of turnover.
As reported in the series, Seminole County’s top level of government became aware of 1,4-dioxane only earlier this year when informed and questioned by the Sentinel.
Engaging the EPA
Lockhart’s proposal to call on the EPA to adopt regulations reflects a belated awareness of a chemical that has tormented many communities from North Carolina to New York and to Arizona.
The EPA plans to release a preliminary decision in the coming weeks on whether 1,4-dioxane poses “unreasonable risk” to the general population, an anticipated finding that has been years if not decades in the making.
This decision will be based on a draft supplement to a 2020 risk evaluation of the chemical. The draft supplement, released July 7, analyzed 1,4-dioxane exposures from air and drinking water.
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The EPA’s drafted conclusions will need to go through a round of public comment and peer review before being finalized.
If the EPA does officially flag 1,4-dioxane as an unreasonable health risk to the general population via any exposure route, the agency will have a year to propose new rules, which could include limiting the chemical in drinking water or consumer products. The EPA would have two years to issue a final rule.
The chemical has been on EPA’s radar for years, but action has been slow-moving. A 2016 update to the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act – the law giving the EPA the ability to regulate chemicals – jumpstarted the agency’s efforts to monitor and regulate it.
What local communities did
After discovering 1,4-dioxane, Sanford and Seminole County were able to reduce concentrations to less than the advisory concentration set by the U.S. EPA and Florida’s health department – 0.35 parts of chemical to 1 billion parts of water.
Lake Mary’s concentration remained elevated at nearly four times that of the federal and state advisory level. But its new treatment plant, which started in 2021, removes all but traces of 1,4-dioxane from drinking water.
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection has not conclusively pinpointed the source of 1,4-dioxane in the Seminole utilities’ drinking water, which is pumped from the Floridan Aquifer deep underground..
A known source of significant 1,4-dioxane ground and water pollution is a defunct telephone systems factory in Lake Mary that operated from 1968 to 2003 under several owners, including the last, Siemens Corp.
The chemical was first documented at the factory site in 2001, which poses the possibility that the cities’ and county’s drinking water has been contaminated for decades.
Seminole utilities struggled to address, pinpoint source of toxic chemical in tap water
Factory owners agreed to pay for Lake Mary’s treatment plant, which city officials estimate cost nearly $40 million. The owners said factory pollution “may” have migrated to wells of Lake Mary but otherwise have not admitted liability.
Sanford officials, however, hired two expert consulting firms that concluded it was likely the chemical migrated from the factory to the city’s water wells.
In Lockhart’s opinion column, she said Seminole County water’s 1,4-dioxane levels have not exceeded Florida’s Health Advisory Level of 0.35 parts per billion since April 2016. “If this element surpasses the state’s threshold, customers would be promptly notified,” she wrote.
There is no state or federal requirement for notification of 1,4-dioxane in drinking water whether above or below the advisory level.
When asked if Lockhart intends to adopt a county requirement for such a notification, county spokeswoman Ashley Moore said Monday in an email, “The Board will discuss next steps on 1,4-dioxane tomorrow [Tuesday]; to say that there’s an expectation for what actions will be taken would be speculative.
“The County has been, and will continue to be, in compliance with any and all state and federal guidance for notifications.”
What’s the right level?
Some states and other countries have advisory concentrations that are far higher than that of the U.S. EPA and Florida, underscoring a deep lack of research into the health effects of the chemical.
All previous studies have been conducted on laboratory animals. The first major research on health effects for humans, including from chronic exposures to low levels, began last year at Yale University and is to conclude in 2027.
Environmental and clean-water advocates contend that people already are persistently exposed to 1,4-dioxane in cosmetics and other consumer products, which is something that regulations for drinking water should account for.
The chemical is obscure to most people but a comprehensive book that covers many aspects is available: “Environmental Investigation and Remediation: 1,4-Dioxane and other Solvent Stabilizers.” It was written by Thomas K.G. Mohr, William DiGuiseppi, James Hatton and Janet Anderson. The first edition was published in 2010 and the second edition in 2020. It is technical but still accessible to nonprofessionals.
As a public service, the Orlando Sentinel purchased four copies at $200 each and donated them Monday to the reference sections of the Seminole County library’s central branch in Casselberry, north branch in Sanford and northwestern branch in Lake Mary, and to the Orange County library in Orlando. The purchases were with money donated to the Orlando Sentinel Community News Fund.
Tuesday’s Seminole County Commission meeting where 1,4-dioxane will be discussed can be attended in person or streamed on seminolecountyfl.gov/sgtv, youtube.com/seminolecounty, or viewed on Spectrum channel 498.
