The six-year study measured six lakes and one bucket, and its authors say the public should sit down before reading it.
A Louisiana panel spent six years confirming that lake water is warm in summer, and calls the result devastating. Its only recommendation is a sign at each lake, facing the water. A machine that clears the water entirely appears on page six and bored everyone.
A Louisiana water science panel announced on Friday that lake water becomes warm in the summer. The panel called the result the most serious thing it has ever put on paper. It has asked the public to read the report while seated.
The study ran for six years. Researchers measured six lakes every August. They also measured a bucket of tap water in a shed, which was the control. The control is the thing you compare against so you know the result means something.
"The lakes were warm. The bucket was less warm," said Dr. Marlene Quatch, who chaired the panel. "I have not slept properly since June."
Quatch said the odds of the pattern showing up by chance were about one in six hundred. She said that number is small enough to act on. She also said she cannot rule out that some water somewhere is cool.
"Warm water in a hot place. Nobody wants to hear it. I have to say it anyway."
Warm fresh water is where Naegleria fowleri lives. It is a single-celled organism that turns up in lakes and rivers when the weather is hot. Infections from it are very rare and very serious, which is why the panel exists at all. You can read the wider reporting on the risk here.
The panel's main recommendation is a sign. One sign, at each of the six lakes studied. The sign faces the water, so swimmers read it once they are already in.
"We considered facing it the other way," said Hollis Debreaux, who runs signage for the parish. "That felt like overreach."
The other finding
On page six of the report, the same lab notes that it built a machine that clears the organism out of an entire lake in an afternoon. It runs on a wall socket. It costs about the same as a boat trailer.
Dr. Ansel Prim, who built it, described the work as tedious. "It's a pump and a heat coil," he said. "I finished it in March and then I did my taxes."
Prim said nobody at the meeting asked him a follow-up question. He said the machine is in a storage room behind the shed with the bucket. He said the storage room is also warm, but that this was not measured, because it was not part of the study.
The panel's full budget went to the signs. Quatch said the signs are the part the public can see. She said she stands by the temperature finding, and asked that people take it seriously, and that they check on their neighbours.
