A brain-eating amoeba was detected in the water that has been blamed for the death of an OH teenager who fell out of raft during a visit to the Whitewater Center earlier this year.
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The U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte has permission to begin treating the water whenever it is ready, Mecklenburg County Health Department Director Marcus Plescia said at a news conference Wednesday. The water will be chlorinated and dechlorinated before being drained through the Whitewater Center’s lower pond.
Mecklenburg County officials considered dumping the water into the Catawba River.
In an interview provided by the county, one of the officials supervising the operation, Lisa Corbitt, said, “The operation is going smoothly to introduce the chlorine”. “This is going to be a real jolt into the water source”. “We do feel that the whitewater center is an important asset to our community”, Plescia said.
After the water is treated, Plescia said health officials will work with the whitewater center to install a system to control the amoeba and more closely monitor the water quality. That’s when county officials decided the best and safest way to get rid of this infected water was to dump it into the river.
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Plescia told WBTV Wednesday afternoon if the process goes as planned the water could be discharged Wednesday night. From there it will flow through the soil and wetland, into Long Creek, then into the Catawba River. But he said that will be a challenge because the 6 million gallons of rushing water on the whitewater course are much more complicated to treat than a swimming pool. Plescia noted that the treated water not only would be diluted, but also treated again before it’s sent into the water supply. “But I want people to understand we’re really tried to put multiple components in this to make sure people can feel secure about this and feel that there’s not any danger to public health, or to the environment.”ukh said”.
