The mysterious “bubbling” action at Lake Peigneur was present again Saturday and Sunday, making about a half-dozen times since Jan. 11 the bubbling — which dissipates and turns into a long line of foam-like froth on top of the water, then disappears — has been reported.

Heeding concerns of residents of the lake just north of Delcambre, District 13 Iberia Parish Councilman Larry Richard said he is wondering how to address the problem — if it even is a problem.

Richard has placed the item as an expansion on tonight’s agenda to talk about how to deal with the issue, but he doesn’t want to be an alarmist without knowing the cause of the bubbling action.

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The agenda item reads: “A motion to expand the agenda to discuss and consider a resolution requesting the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to limit access to Lake Peigneur to those personnel who have official business in this area.”

So far, no one has been hurt by the bubbling.

“As far as we know,” lake resident Nara Crowley said.

However, alerting the public with “caution” or “danger” signs at the lake might be going too far, because no one really knows what the bubbles are about, Richard said Tuesday.

Some lake residents are concerned the two salt-dome caverns filled with natural gas and owned by AGL Resources are causing the bubbling.

But the company took samples Jan. 11 and though there were traces of a “weathered diesel component” from the foamy area, AGL Resources’ Keith Poston said nothing found in preliminary tests “lead us to believe our facility is the source of the bubbling.”

The bubbling action can cause water to bubble a foot high above the surface, eyewitnesses have said. The bubbling turns into a froth that streams for hundreds of feet and lasts for several hours. The bubbling action is about a half-mile from AGL’s two underwater natural gas caverns.

The diesel is possibly from some of the trucks and barge parts still on the bottom of the lake, Poston said, stemming from the 1980 salt-mine collapse and subsequent whirlpool that sucked down equipment across 70 acres of the lake and made national news.

“Very small amounts” of methylene chloride also were detected, but that’s a fairly common chemical used in industrial processes such as paint stripping, metal cleaning and pharmaceutical manufacturing, Poston said.

The state Department of Environmental Quality has taken samples, but those results are not yet available, DNR spokeswoman Phyllis Darensbourg said Tuesday.

Darensbourg said DEQ has the lead on water sampling from the lake.

The State Land Office owns the lake bottom. No one from that office was able to return a phone call by press time today.

Richard, who attends Thursday night meetings of Lake Peigneur residents and speaks to Crowley “just about every day,” is trying to be careful about the problem. One thing the parish doesn’t want to do is “terrorize folks.”

“I’m concerned about the bubbles there. It could be a safety issue, but we don’t have any idea where they’re coming from,” Richard said Tuesday.

“We’ve contacted all kinds of folks,” he said. “We have DEQ looking at it. We’ve got Sydnie Mae Durand (state representative) at the meetings. We’ve had (chemist) Wilma Subra (of New Iberia) at the meetings — just a whole host of folks that have issues with this.”

Richard said “we’ve got to be careful” about placing danger signs at the lake.

“We can’t make you (users of the lake) aware of something and terrorize folks, but you don’t want to not do something, either, and then something happens,” Richard said. “We don’t want to alert them and not have much going on. Nothing’s happened yet, besides the bubbling.”