Officials said about 2,000 gallons of liquid chlorine spilled onto nearby ground at Lee County's Lehigh Acres wastewater plant on Sept. 18, without reaching drains or waterways. Possible effects on soil and the shallow aquifer remain unclear.
State incident records said a manager discovered the release at about 8 a.m. and linked it to a chlorine tank drain. The operator stopped the leak; by 10:20 a.m., crews were working to recover as much of the material as possible. Florida Governmental Utility Authority spokesperson Alexis Mejia said chlorine on soil would be diluted with water and called the incident “nothing to worry about.”
Southwest Florida's sandy, porous ground raises questions about whether chlorine seeped toward the shallow aquifer. Calusa Waterkeeper emeritus John Cassani said the effects were difficult to assess without details such as exposure time and concentration; he said the chlorine would likely sterilize the upper soil it contacted, while cautioning that specifics were hard to determine. The utility and Florida's environmental department had not immediately answered questions about how far the chlorine may have moved into the soil.
