Southeastern Professor Research Sidelined after Revealing Toxic Metals in Lake Maurepas

LINK

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 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.”


Oligarchs running the show. At least she's still alive.