Health department defends lake amoeba alert

The Minnesota Department of Health said the finding that an Alexandria, Minn., teenager died from a bacterial infection last month — and not from a brain-eating parasite after swimming in Lake Minnewaska — does not come as a surprise.

Minnesota health officials had warned the public in early July after preliminary tests showed that 14-year-old Hunter Boutain died of an infection that could have been caused by a freshwater parasite known as Naegleria fowleri. The parasite has been confirmed as the cause of death in two Minnesota children in the past five years.

But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week the 14-year-old died from a bacterial infection.

State health commissioner Ed Ehlinger says Boutain's symptoms and early lab results pointed to a possible amoeba infection. And the teen had potentially been exposed: He had been swimming in Lake Minnewaska near Alexandria in the days before he fell ill.

Because the disease couldn't be immediately ruled out, the health commissioner says it was important to be transparent with the public so people could make their own decisions about the risk of swimming in the lake.

"There's always this dilemma about making information available when you don't know exactly what's going to happen down the road," he said. "So it's a sort of dammed if you do, dammed if you don't kind of thing."

Ehlinger announced the Boutain case findings during a meeting Monday with officials and businesses in Glenwood, Minn. The town borders the eastern side of Lake Minnewaska.

Mayor Scott Formo said people were pleased to hear that they didn't have an amoeba case. But he said the media coverage of the investigation hurt a lot of businesses in town.

"It had a very big impact and it was very widespread," he said.

Formo says resort owners reported many cancellations during peak summer weeks and far fewer people used the beaches for swimming. No one has tallied the extent of the losses yet, he said.

Formo says local officials didn't get much information from the health department in the first 24 hours of the crisis to help them soothe anxious community members. He says he used his authority as mayor to close the public beach until he learned that wasn't necessary.

"I agree with the transparency of letting people know. I wish that things could have been done maybe a little bit differently," Formo said.

Gary Swenson, mayor of Starbuck, Minn., on the western shore of Minnewaska, also closed his city's beach for about half a day. Swenson said good information about the amoeba was hard to come by and some media stories only made the situation worse.

"The fact that it was only a suspected case — I think some of that was glossed over and not emphasized enough. So I think it struck fear in a lot of parents' minds," he said.