NEW YORK—Louisiana municipalities are increasing chlorine levels in public water systems to combat a brain-eating amoeba responsible for causing three deaths in 2013, including that of a four-year-old boy.

Federal health official indicated the organism, Naegleria Fowleri, was living in water supply test sites in the DeSoto and the St. Bernard Parishes. Although the amoeba-contaminated water is safe to drink, if forced into the nose—by diving into a pool or other sites of warm, still water where the amoeba thrives—it can travel to the brain via the olfactory nerve and cause encephalitis.

A spokeswoman for the DeSoto waterworks system, which services nearly 5,000 customers, told Accuweather that the district is unaware of how the amoeba entered into the public utility's infrastructure, although more than 1,000 breaks in the system's lines were repaired after Hurricane Katrina.

Gene Devine, senior vice president of Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, Inc, said at the law firm's Annual Policyholder Advisor Conference held here yesterday that the amoeba could pose a product liability exposure to the water district selling its services to the parish.

Anderson Kill attorney John Nevius added, “Pollution exclusions have been extended on microbial transmissions since the SARS virus outbreak. It's up to the district's risk manager to work with a broker to tailor the coverage language so it doesn't preclude injury to customers caused by microbial or other infections.”

Since the infiltration was discovered, La. health officials advised 82 of the state's water systems to step up their chlorine disinfection strategies to kill the organism by increasing residual levels of the chemical to 0.5 milligrams per liter throughout their distribution lines. The DeSoto parish, which began a free chlorine burn on Thursday, said the burn will last two months after the water system reaches the required chlorine level.

Nevius warned the chlorine burn itself could pose a liability issue. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the disinfectant can react with naturally-occurring materials in water to form byproducts such as trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, which are harmful to humans.

He cited a situation that arose in Virginia when a municipal water supply syndicate was held responsible for raising chlorine levels above the EPA's recommended level—a maximum of four milligrams per liter.

According to Nevius, although chlorine levels of water are held at an average of 100 parts per million, an occasional spike does not disturb the running average. Thus, it is acceptable to occasionally raise chlorine levels in a public water system as a disinfection strategy.

However, the case raised by a group of pregnant women in the Virginia town argued that even an occasional increase in chlorine levels could harm residents' health.

“It didn't matter that the byproducts were caused by a natural phenomenon—organic material produced by leaves that had fallen into the sewers—or that the chlorine was added to protect human health,” said Nevius. Furthermore, “Virginia's Supreme Court ruled that chlorine byproduct pollution was a policy exclusion,” and so the town was on the hook for the loss.

Article has been corrected to state Gene Devine's title as SVP, Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, Inc., not an Anderson Kill shareholder.

Special Reports /

La. May Face Liability Issues as it Combats Brain-Eating Amoeba

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