Southeastern Center for Environmental Research advances Lake Maurepas understanding

Southeastern Louisiana University has posted a three year annual report with information that updates the work being done on environmental monitoring.

The research is being conducted through Southeastern’s Center for Environmental Research, a unique, and innovative academic research unit. The center builds on past and ongoing research efforts to monitor and investigate the health of the environments of the Lake Maurepas region and more.

As new industries and technologies come to area regions, the research center strives to serve as the independent environmental monitoring entity for industrial activities and to make that data available to the public in real time.

Research findings were discussed as part of the presentation “Science in Action: Research and Education on Lake Maurepas,” in Manchac recently.

Part of the findings showed that metal levels in the lake have declined significantly since the 2023 study, when heavy metal concentrations in the sediment and water above the Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold for safety were discovered.

According to Director of the Center for Environmental Research Kyle Piller, they found low levels of arsenic, but no mercury, lead, or cadmium, a little bit of chromium, and no selenium in water samples.

“The levels that these metals were found at in the water and sediment were below EPA’s value that would warrant concern for an ecological risk,” Piller said.

Researchers gathered samples from nine lake sites that are sampled weekly and nine river sites that are sampled every other week. 

Piller said that currently external labs are used until the project’s labs are Department of Environmental Quality-certified and their quality assurance and quality control protocols for the labs are developed and refined. However, the project is installing new equipment in the labs so that they will be able to run labs in-house once certifications are obtained.

Interim Dean of the College of Science and Technology Daniel McCarthy emphasized the importance of transparency the project strives to maintain with the public.

“In order to make informed decisions and have the community know what is going on, we need science behind it,” he said. “That has been and continues to be the goal or our center.”

The project has also installed seven chemical monitoring buoys near the mouth of the rivers and the middle of the lake that are in the process of calibration before collecting chemical data. The information from the buoys will be posted on the project’s website.

Additional aspects of the project include wildlife, wetland, physiological ecology monitoring and education outreach.

“The Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project is not involved in any aspect of the seismic survey or carbon capture research,” Piller said. “The project’s objectivity is to monitor the lake’s biology, water quality and chemicals in the environment independently.”

The report is available on the website at https://www.southeastern.edu/maurepas.