HAMMOND, La. (Louisiana Illuminator) – The Southeastern Louisiana University scientist who discovered alarming levels of toxic chemicals in Lake Maurepas was abruptly removed from her research position this week without explanation.
Fereshteh Emami, an analytical chemistry professor who served as a principal investigator on the Air Products Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project, was officially removed from the project on Thursday but is still employed by the university. Southeastern’s chemistry department has moved Emami into a full-time teaching role and will not allow her to continue the research she has been doing for the past three years, she said.
Emami said she received a vague email Monday from Kyle Piller, a biology professor and director of the Lake Maurepas research effort, saying he “terminated” her from the project. He did not include any explanation for the decision and gave a similarly vague response Wednesday when she asked why, according to emails Emami shared with the Illuminator.
“Your continued involvement is no longer in the best interest of the Air Products Lake Maurepas Monitoring Project,” Piller’s email stated.
Piller gave virtually the same statement in response to a reporter’s request for comment Thursday, adding that he could not comment on personnel matters.
For the past three years, Emami led a team of researchers who analyzed 400 water and sediment samples collected from multiple locations and depths in the lake from June through December 2023.
The results, which were recently published in two scientific journals, set off alarm bells in communities around Lake Maurepas. The samples showed dangerously high levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, copper, and manganese. The researchers also detected high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, both major components of fertilizers.
Emami developed new methodologies that traced many of the pollutants to industrial and agricultural activities along the Blind, Tickfaw and Amite rivers that feed into Lake Maurepas. The heavy metal concentrations found in the lake are similar to those detected after breaks in the waste containment levees at the Atlantic Alumina (Atalco) facility in Gramercy last year. Atalco’s toxic metals — which also included arsenic, cadmium and lead, among others — ended up in drainage ditches that flow into the Blind River Swamp of Lake Maurepas.
Right after the Illuminator published an article about Emami’s work in June, she said Southeastern’s communication officials told her to check with them before speaking with journalists in the future. On Monday, just before she learned of her removal from the research project, Emami said a campus media crew was scheduled to film her work for a university-sponsored documentary. The Lake Maurepas project director canceled the shoot, she said.
“This documentary was supposed to be about our results from the past three years ago,” Emami said. “It’s like they are wiping me out of the picture.”
University administrators say Emami’s removal from the Lake Maurepas research work was a routine adjustment.
“While we do not comment on issues related to specific individual personnel matters, changes such as these are common,” spokesman Mike Rivault said. “In order to manage the breadth and timeliness of our vast research projects associated with our new Center for Environmental Research, shifts in those conducting given projects are to be expected.”
As the university’s only analytical chemist, Emami’s removal from the Lake Maurepas project could disrupt or delay a new phase of research that involved analyzing fish and crab tissue samples for toxins. Emami said her team was on track to finish that analysis and publish their work in the coming months. Another research team, led by SLU biologist Chris Murray, trapped crabs that showed physiological signs of heavy metal poisoning. Chemical analysis would be required to actually confirm those symptoms.
It’s unclear when or if Piller, the project director, plans to pick someone to replace Emami on the research team. Emami has worked at Southeastern for eight years. Born in Iran, she left the country more than a decade ago to escape persecution and threats from religious authorities there.
“That was motivation for me to come to the United States,” Emami said.
After working as a research scholar at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and then as a post-doctoral researcher at Clarkson University in New York, Emami became an American citizen through an immigration program for high-achieving individuals who work in fields of national interest.
Southeastern has been monitoring Lake Maurepas since the proposal of a carbon sequestration project by Air Products & Chemicals. The company plans to use carbon capture technology to trap emissions from its $8 billion hydrogen manufacturing complex in Ascension Parish and take them by pipeline to Lake Maurepas. Air Products will have the capacity to inject an estimated 5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year about a mile below the lakebed.
In the first half of 2023, Air Products performed seismic testing to map the geological formations under the lake. In August of that year, the company moved a large temporary drilling rig into Lake Maurepas that served as a test well for the collection of core and fluid data, which ended in early 2024.
Emami’s team initially suspected but were ultimately unable to link any chemical pollutants to Air Products’ activity in the lake. Aside from providing a multi-million dollar funding grant, the company played no role in any aspects of the study, its design or the decision to publish the results.
Air Products did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
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