Adding to the List of Worries: Brain-Eating Amoeba

The hot springs of Hot Ditch (Chron photo)

Another reason to limit your swimming to the ocean and chlorinated swimming pools:

Headline: This popular California hot spring reportedly still has brain-eating amoeba present in the water

Recent water testing of a popular California hot springs destination called Hot Ditch in Bishop (Inyo County) reportedly found that the same brain-eating amoeba that killed an 8-year-old boy in 2018 remained present in the water.

Dutch Benjamin Abbott and his parents visited Hot Ditch, a series of man-made water ponds in Bishop in October of 2018. Several days after they returned to Los Angeles, he experienced pain that he described feeling as if a “drill was going through” his head, according to the family’s lawyer, Scott Boyer.

He died a few days later.

Health officials confirmed he was infected with Naegleria fowleri , an amoeba that primarily enters through the nose and spurs an infection that’s fatal is 97% of cases, according to the CDC.

It's tragic enough that a boy died in 2018, but it's worse that nothing has been done by the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power in the intervening four years, according to a lawsuit:

The lawsuit claims DWP has failed to properly monitor, regular and chlorinate the water, warn visitors to the danger, and utilize a filtration system capable of protecting them...The lawsuit alleges that Keough’s Hot Springs’ practice of dumping their waste water into what’s called a diversion, which then mixes with the natural water, has created a breeding ground for the amoeba.

No one will be fired, and any damages will be covered by the ratepayers. It's good to work in the public sector.