U.S. National Whitewater Center officials have closed the park’s water channels after investigators detected the waterborne amoeba suspected in the death of an Ohio teen who died after visiting the center.
State and county health departments “believe the facility should be closed until the source and solution can be identified,” county manager Dena Diorio wrote in an email to commissioners Friday.
Health officials will ask the center’s CEO, Jeffrey Wise, to voluntarily close the facility, Diorio wrote. If not, she said, they will order the facility to close temporarily.
The center “has made the decision to shut down their white water channels effective immediately,” Dr. Marcus Plescia, the county health director, told the Observer by email.
In a Friday press conference, Plescia said county officials will work over the weekend to decrease the concentration of the amoeba, although it could be days until the county knows next steps. He emphasized that the amoeba is commonly occurring in large bodies of water and that it would likely be impossible to totally eradicate it from the Whitewater Center’s channels.
“We want the public to feel safe in going there, but we also need to be realistic about what can and can’t be done," he said. “We need to weigh this particular threat against what people might see in the real world if you go to a river or a lake or even some swimming pools.”
Lauren Seitz, 18, died Sunday, a few days after rafting at the Whitewater Center. Her death was from a form of meningitis caused by an amoeba, Naegleria Fowleri, that is commonly found in warm, open bodies of water.
The amoeba rarely causes infections – only 37 were reported in the U.S. between 2005 and 2014 – but they are nearly always fatal when they do occur.
Contact with the amoeba can be fatal if forced up a person’s nose. Seitz was in a raft with several others that overturned June 8 at the whitewater center, health officials said.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating her death and took water samples at the whitewater park on Wednesday. The amoeba was found in most of the 11 samples taken on that day, Plescia said.
Mecklenburg County officials have likened the whitewater park to other open bodies of water, like the Catawba River that flows beside it in western Mecklenburg, and initially said they didn’t expect to close it.
Whitewater officials said they added chlorine to the water on Tuesday, after being notified that Seitz had died. The center normally relies on a filtration system and ultraviolet radiation to treat the 12 million gallons of water that recirculate in the concrete channels.
At least three other reported deaths have been tied to the amoeba since 1991 in North Carolina, in Pitt and Wake counties.
Source :www.charlotteobserver.com/
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