Plant operator discovers hydrogen peroxide leak at Lake Mary water treatment facility

The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox.

Multiple crews stationed themselves along Rhinehart Road in Lake Mary on Friday after the chief operator of the city's water treatment facility noticed something was off when he got to work around 6 a.m.

"I could see some, I’m going to call it a mist. That’s not a normal situation so I evacuated myself out of the facility and called 911," said chief water plant operator Scott Rankin.

It turns out that one of the tanks with hydrogen peroxide, which is used to treat the water, was leaking. Emergency crews with Lake Mary Fire and Police, Seminole County Fire and HAZMAT, and the Department of Environmental Services wanted to monitor the situation since the concentration of this hydrogen peroxide is 50%.

"So this concentration is much higher than what somebody that would be putting it on their wounds. And so we would need to make sure that it's at a level that it cannot cause harm to anywhere," said Lake Mary Fire Chief Michel Johansmeyer.

For about eight hours, crews monitored the leak as the tank slowly emptied. They cleared the scene around 2 p.m.

"We have mitigated the problem," said Lake Mary Fire Marshal Lillian Sexton. "Our water treatment plant is fully operational. There was no hazards."

Chief Johansmeyer said the city's water has not been affected by this incident.

"The facility has redundancies for these types of things to happen," he said.

City officials said at no point was there imminent danger, which they wanted to make clear with Crystal Lake Elementary School nearby. They said there were no injuries and no contamination.

"Absolutely not that we're aware of at this time," said Johansmeyer. "So we're monitoring all of that. And the facility is built to collect any runoff up to 100,000 gallons of water and chemical, whatever would be released in a situation like this."

City officials said the tank that was leaking is no longer part of the treatment process, and they are now investigating to see what caused the leak in the first place.

"After this event, I know I'm already trying to get ahold of the manufacturer. I've already talked to our chemical provider. They're going to assist me getting ahold of the manufacturers so we can have a full investigation done in this tank, and more than likely, it'll probably be replaced with a brand new one," said Rankin.

He added that this is the first time this has happened since the water treatment facility opened up in 2021.