A company that makes metal parts for the United States military and defense contractors stored cyanide plating waste in unlabeled, open containers for years, never trained workers on what to do if something went wrong, and hid it all from the emergency responders who would have had to walk into that building in a crisis.

The Facility That Served the Military and Buried the Evidence

Peninsula Metal Finishing Inc. operates out of 2550 Dinneen Avenue in Orlando, Florida. According to the EPA’s own findings, the company provides electroplating and metal finishing services to the automotive industry, theme parks, defense contractors, and the military. This is not a small, fly-by-night operation. This is a company embedded in some of the most resource-rich sectors of the American economy.

The company generates more than 1,000 kilograms of hazardous waste per calendar month, which under federal law classifies it as a Large Quantity Generator (LQG). That classification comes with strict legal responsibilities: detailed labeling, container management, employee training, emergency planning, and regular reporting. Peninsula Metal Finishing failed at nearly every single one of them.

The EPA and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection conducted a Compliance Evaluation Inspection on July 14, 2021. They found serious violations. They documented them. They sent the report to the company on September 16, 2021. Then they came back on August 9, 2023, and found that most of those violations were still there.

Two Inspections. Same Violations. Zero Urgency.

That single sentence from the federal document tells you everything. The EPA showed up, handed this company a list of ways it was poisoning the people who worked there and the community around it, gave it two years to fix the problems, and came back to find the same containers, the same missing labels, the same open drums of hazardous material sitting untouched.

One container near the chromate plating line area carried an accumulation start date of September 16, 2016. When inspectors arrived in 2021, that container had potentially been sitting there for five years. The legal limit without a permit is 90 days. That is not a clerical oversight. That is a policy.

By October 30, 2024, when the company submitted an updated waste inventory to the EPA as part of settlement negotiations, it listed waste containers that were still stored longer than 90 days as of that date. More than three years after the first inspection. More than a year after the second.

What Was Actually Inside Those Containers

The EPA document catalogs nine distinct hazardous waste codes present at the Peninsula Metal Finishing facility. These are not vague categories. Each code represents a specific, chemically identified danger with documented health consequences for anyone exposed.

Cadmium (D006) and chromium (D007) show up repeatedly throughout the EPA’s findings. Cadmium is a heavy metal carcinogen that accumulates in the kidneys and is linked to bone disease and lung cancer. Chromium (specifically hexavalent chromium) is the chemical made infamous by the Erin Brockovich case. It causes cancer. Both were stored in unlabeled, unsecured containers across multiple areas of this facility.

Cyanide compounds appear under waste codes F007, F008, and F009. Spent cyanide plating bath solutions and cyanide-contaminated plating bath residues are acutely toxic substances. At high concentrations, cyanide gas can be lethal in minutes. The company kept these materials on-site in containers labeled with nothing more than “cyanide lab waste” staged on the floor in corners.

The F-series solvents, including toluene, benzene, and methyl ethyl ketone, round out the chemical picture. Benzene is a known human carcinogen. Toluene causes neurological damage with prolonged exposure. These were sitting in containers across multiple process line areas, without hazard indicators, without accumulation dates, and without any documentation that workers knew what they were handling.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Measure

The federal document records a release of hazardous waste, specifically cadmium-containing material with EPA Hazardous Waste Number D006, directly on the floor of the Central Accumulation Area in the cadmium line area when inspectors arrived in 2023. This was not a contained spill. This was waste that had already escaped its container and was sitting on the floor of an active workspace. Workers at that facility walked past it, worked near it, and breathed the air above it while it sat there. That is a documented human exposure event, and the people most directly exposed were the workers on that floor.

Peninsula Metal Finishing employed people who worked around cyanide, cadmium, and chromium compounds daily. The EPA found that the company had not provided adequate RCRA hazardous waste training to its employees, and had not conducted annual refresher training for at least three of the employees responsible for managing those hazardous materials. This means workers handling the most dangerous materials on the floor had not been formally taught what those materials could do to their bodies, how to protect themselves, or what to do if something went wrong. They were left to figure it out on their own, or not at all.

The company also failed to make any emergency response arrangements with the local police department, fire department, emergency response contractors, and local hospitals, despite handling materials that can cause acute poisoning, chemical burns, and death. It never submitted a quick reference guide or an updated contingency plan to the Local Emergency Planning Committee. If there had been a fire, an explosion, or a sudden release of cyanide gas, the first responders who ran into that building would have had no idea what they were walking into. They would not have known to bring the right equipment. They would not have known what antidotes to carry. They would have been walking blind into a chemical emergency that this company spent years keeping secret from them.

The inspection findings also reveal a systematic erasure of accountability through missing paperwork. Peninsula Metal Finishing failed to keep signed manifests for hazardous waste shipments for the required three years. It failed to maintain written inspection documentation for three years. And it failed to file the 2017, 2019, and 2021 Biennial Reports with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. These reports are the primary mechanism by which regulators and the public track how much hazardous waste a company is generating, where it is going, and whether it is being handled correctly. By not filing three consecutive cycles of those reports, Peninsula Metal Finishing essentially disappeared from the regulatory map. The public record had a gap where this company should have been, and nobody noticed for years.

Legal Receipts: What the Document Actually Says

These are direct statements from the federal Consent Agreement and Final Order. No paraphrasing. No softening.

“During the 2023 CEI, the EPA found that Respondent had yet to resolve many outstanding violations stemming from the 2021 CEI.”

— Findings of Facts, Paragraph 64

“At the time of the 2023 CEI, the inspectors observed a release of hazardous waste (EPA Hazardous Waste Number D006) on the floor of the CAA in the cadmium line area.”

— Findings of Facts, Paragraph 78

“At the time of the 2021 CEI, the records reviewed by the inspectors indicated that Respondent had not made arrangements with the local police department, fire department, other emergency response teams, emergency response contractors, equipment suppliers, and local hospitals, taking into account the types and quantities of hazardous waste handled at the Facility.”

— Findings of Facts, Paragraph 80

“At the time of the 2021 CEI, the records reviewed by the inspectors indicated that Respondent had not provided adequate RCRA hazardous waste training to its employees.”

— Findings of Facts, Paragraph 82

“Based on Respondent’s substantiated ability to pay claim, Respondent consents to the payment of a civil penalty, which was calculated in accordance with the Act, in the amount of $1,000.00, which is to be paid within thirty (30) days of the Effective Date of this CAFO.”

— Terms of Payment, Paragraph 119

“At the time of the 2021 CEI and 2023 CEI, the records reviewed by the inspectors indicated that Respondent had failed to submit 2017, 2019, and 2021 Biennial Reports to the FDEP.”

— Findings of Facts, Paragraph 87

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Workers and First Responders at Risk

The most immediate public health threat documented in this case is the exposure of Peninsula Metal Finishing’s own workers. The facility operated as a Large Quantity Generator of hazardous waste that included cadmium, hexavalent chromium, cyanide compounds, and toxic solvents including benzene and toluene. Workers in the cadmium plating area, nickel plating area, chromate conversion coating area, and wastewater treatment system area were routinely in proximity to these materials. The company failed to train them on what those materials were or what to do in an emergency.

Cadmium exposure is linked to kidney damage, lung cancer, and a bone disease called itai-itai disease. Chromium (VI) is a Class 1 carcinogen. Benzene causes leukemia. Cyanide at sufficient concentrations causes rapid death by preventing cells from using oxygen. These are not theoretical risks. These are the materials that were sitting in unlabeled, open containers in active work areas of this facility while employees moved around them every day. When inspectors found cadmium waste on the floor of the cadmium line area in 2023, that was direct evidence of an uncontrolled exposure pathway. The material was no longer in a container. It was on the floor of a space where people worked.

The failure to coordinate with local hospitals and emergency responders means that the public health risk extended beyond the facility walls. If a cyanide release, fire, or explosion had occurred, the surrounding Orlando neighborhood would have faced a chemical emergency with no pre-established response protocol. First responders would have arrived without knowing the specific chemical hazards present, without pre-arranged equipment, and without a hospital system that had been briefed on what antidotes or treatments to prepare.

Environmental Degradation: Untracked Waste, Unknown Destination

The failure to file Biennial Reports for 2017, 2019, and 2021 creates a significant gap in the public record of where Peninsula Metal Finishing’s hazardous waste actually went during those years. Biennial Reports are the primary tool regulators use to track the cradle-to-grave journey of hazardous waste: how much was generated, what type it was, which transporter moved it, and which licensed disposal facility received it. Without those reports, there is no publicly verifiable record of what happened to years of cadmium sludge, cyanide bath solutions, chromium-contaminated wastewater, and toxic solvents generated at this facility.

The failure to retain signed manifests for at least three years compounds this problem. Manifests are the paper trail that proves hazardous waste reached a licensed disposal facility rather than being dumped illegally or improperly handled along the route. Without those manifests, it is impossible to verify the chain of custody for the facility’s waste during the periods in question. The regulatory system depends entirely on documentation. When a company destroys or fails to maintain that documentation, the system cannot catch illegal dumping, improper disposal, or waste that simply disappears.

The presence of a container with an accumulation start date of September 16, 2016, observed during the 2021 inspection, and the facility’s documented pattern of storing waste well beyond the 90-day limit in multiple areas, raises serious questions about environmental releases at the site itself. Waste stored for years in rusted, unlabeled containers in a facility that also failed to maintain adequate aisle space and documented a cadmium release on the floor is a facility with a measurable risk of soil and groundwater contamination.

Economic Inequality: The Price of Compliance Depends on Who You Are

The EPA reduced the penalty to $1,000 ($1,000 — less than the average American pays in monthly rent) based on the company’s “substantiated ability to pay claim.” This is how environmental enforcement works in America for small and mid-size companies that successfully argue they cannot afford the full penalty. The logic sounds compassionate on the surface: you do not bankrupt a business over regulatory violations. But the practical outcome is that a company can operate dangerously for years, receive a federal citation, and pay less than the cost of a used car to make the matter go away.

Compare this to the enforcement reality faced by individuals who violate environmental laws. A person who illegally dumps a drum of hazardous waste can face criminal prosecution, substantial fines, and imprisonment. A corporation that stores dozens of containers of cyanide, cadmium, and chromium waste without labels, trains no one, tells no one, files no reports for three cycles, and continues the same violations for two full years after a federal inspection, pays $1,000. The economic inequality embedded in this outcome is structural. Workers at this facility who were never trained on what they were handling cannot sue the EPA for the reduced settlement. The neighbors who lived near this facility and were never told what chemicals were present cannot appeal the penalty. The firefighters who were never given an emergency plan have no legal recourse.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now: Names, Watchlists, and Next Steps

Who Signed This Agreement

The Consent Agreement was signed on behalf of Peninsula Metal Finishing Inc. by its President, whose printed signature on the document reads as A.S. Lake HMA, with the title listed as “PRESIDENT” at the address 2550 Dinneen Ave, Orlando FL 32804. The company’s contact for EPA correspondence is listed as Francis Coachman, Peninsula Metal Finishing Inc., reachable at fscoachman@bellsouth.net and (407) 291-1023.

The EPA’s enforcement action was brought by the Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, EPA Region 4, and signed by Keriema S. Newman in that capacity. The Final Order was ratified by Regional Judicial Officer Tanya Floyd on May 1, 2025.

The Regulatory Watchlist

These are the agencies with jurisdiction over Peninsula Metal Finishing’s ongoing compliance. If violations continue or new concerns emerge, these are the bodies that hold the enforcement authority:

Under the terms of this settlement, Peninsula Metal Finishing must submit an updated waste container inventory within 5 days of the order’s effective date, complete all hazardous waste disposal within 180 days, and submit a compliance certification within 210 days. Monitor those deadlines. If they are missed, the EPA has authority to assess additional penalties and refer the matter to the Department of Justice.

What You Can Actually Do

If you live or work near 2550 Dinneen Avenue in Orlando, you have the right to request public records from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on this facility’s compliance history. You can file a complaint directly with EPA Region 4 if you observe ongoing violations. Local mutual aid networks and environmental justice organizations in Central Florida are already doing the community monitoring work that underfunded regulators cannot. Find them, support them, and share this record. The public version of this consent agreement exists precisely so that people outside the regulatory system can read it and hold these companies accountable when the system hands them a $1,000 ($1,000 — less than two months of the average American’s utility bills) ticket and calls it justice.