Seminole County water plant malfunction prompts boil water advisory

Seminole County lifted a precautionary boil water notice for the Southeast Water System Service Area on June 9 after a malfunction at the Southeast Regional Water Treatment Plant was resolved. The county had warned residents to boil water before drinking it, using it for food preparation, brushing teeth or making ice until testing showed the supply was safe again.

The advisory was triggered after the plant malfunction caused water pressure to drop below safe levels. Seminole County’s boil-water guidance says that kind of pressure loss is one of the conditions that can prompt a notice, because water must be tested before the advisory can be lifted and normal use can resume.

The affected area was the Southeast Water System Service Area, which relies on the Southeast Regional Water Treatment Plant. That left households, schools, restaurants and medical offices in the zone having to switch to boiled or bottled water for basic daily needs until crews restored treatment conditions and cleared the system.

The county’s guidance is clear that the precaution is not limited to drinking water. Until the notice is ended, residents are told to use boiled water for food prep, oral hygiene and ice, because those uses can also put people in contact with untreated water.

The malfunction also served as another reminder that water-system reliability is a local public-health issue, not just a storm-season concern. Similar advisories have been issued in Central Florida after pump malfunctions and water-main outages, and ClickOrlando previously documented a Seminole County boil-water notice in April 2021. In this case, the county said the notice was discontinued once the treatment plant problem was fixed and the water could be cleared for normal use.