JEFFERSON CITY — The state allowed tourists at the Lake of the Ozarks to swim in waters that officials knew were infested with harmful E. coli bacteria for two weeks at the beginning of the summer tourist season, Gov. Jay Nixon said Wednesday.

The stunning revelation is separate from a previous disclosure that the Department of Natural Resources withheld a report showing elevated bacteria levels in many coves at the lake just before the Memorial Day weekend.

The new information shows that Public Beach 1 at Lake of the Ozarks had four times the allowable level of E. coli as early as May 18.

Nixon called the failure to close the beach "unconscionable."

The governor, who said he had learned of the new information in the past 24 hours, had previously told reporters that the beach in question had been closed after an E. coli spike in May. In fact, it wasn't closed until June 5.

Nixon said he "unwittingly" passed on incorrect information.

Nixon blamed his director of the Department of Natural Resources, Mark Templeton, for giving him bad information, and he suspended him for two weeks without pay. Nixon blamed Templeton for a lack of "institutional control" over the department.

"Some Missourians were needlessly put at risk," Nixon said of the department's failure to close the beaches. "These were abysmal failures."

The earlier controversy over the withheld report spurred an investigation by the attorney general's office into alleged violations of the Sunshine Law and a separate state Senate investigation into the Department of Natural Resources' failure to inform the public.

The scandal has dogged Nixon for months, as he first denied, and later admitted, that his staff knew about the damaging report before it became public.

On Wednesday, Nixon said his new deputy director of natural resources, Bill Bryan, will begin an investigation into how the "false information" about E. coli testing at public beaches at Lake of the Ozarks was passed on to him.

That's in addition to an investigation being conducted by a Senate committee led by Sen. Brad Lager, R-Savannah. Lager has been critical of the Department of Natural Resources for being slow to share information with the committee.

"The public's trust has been violated and the public's safety has been put at risk," Lager said Wednesday in a statement after Nixon's announcement.

Lager said that he has unsuccessfully requested a conversation with the governor about what he calls the department's "roadblocks" to his committee's investigation.

The Department of Natural Resources regularly tests for E. coli at public beaches at Lake of the Ozarks. The bacteria can be harmful if swallowed, causing nausea and other sicknesses, and in some cases even death.

Testing at the lake's Public Beach 1 on May 18 showed more than 4 times higher than acceptable levels for public swimming, but the beach remained open. Further testing on May 27 also showed higher than acceptable levels, but the beach remained open until another round of testing on June 1 also showed high E. coli levels, according to a spreadsheet of testing results given reporters by the governor's office.

The beach testing is separate from a testing program coordinated by the Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance in coves around the lake. Those test results also are passed to the Department of Natural Resources. Testing in late May showed high E. coli levels in several locations, but the department didn't publish those results until late June, after E. coli levels had dissipated.

After the Kansas City Star reported in July that the testing results had been withheld despite numerous requests for them, Nixon condemned the decision and said nobody in his office knew about the damaging results. A spokeswoman for the department, who has since been replaced, told the Star the test results were withheld so as not to damage the tourism season.

E-mails and other records from former Department of Natural Resources deputy director Joe Bindbeutel — a longtime Nixon aide — indicate he was planning to meet with the governor's office as early as June 4 to discuss the results. Bindbeutel and Nixon's office said the topic of E. coli never came up in that meeting. Bindbeutel is no longer at the department.

But last week, former department spokeswoman Suzanne Medley told Senate investigators that she relayed the test results to Nixon aide Jeff Mazur on May 29, contradicting what both Nixon and spokesman Jack Cardetti have told reporters.

Nixon did not address that issue in his statement made in a phone conference call. He did not take questions.

Nixon and Cardetti have insisted that the first time Nixon's staff learned of the lake contamination was June 23, when staff members met with officials from the Department of Natural Resources.

On Wednesday, however, Cardetti conceded that he had been told about Mazur's communication with Medley.

Cardetti said he didn't know the full details of what Mazur and Medley discussed, and he should have been more careful about what he had told reporters.

"I should have flushed that out more clearly," Cardetti said.

At the same news conference, Mazur said he did not immediately tell "anyone in the governor's office" about the test results he received May 29.

Cardetti would not say, however, whether Nixon had known about Mazur's contact with the department during the time the governor himself was denying knowledge of the testing results.

Asked if he offered to resign, Templeton stammered on Wednesday, and then said no. Watson said there could be more personnel action depending on the results of the investigation.

Templeton is the second of Nixon's Cabinet members to end up in the governor's cross hairs recently. Earlier this month, Nixon accepted the resignation of his economic development director, St. Louis attorney Linda Martinez.

Around the same time, Nixon reassigned most of the liaisons with various state departments. Ironically, Mazur is now the staff member responsible for the Department of Natural Resources. At the time of the withheld report, Watson was responsible for that department.

At a news conference at Lake of the Ozarks last week, Nixon had said the closing of the beach at the lake in May is what spurred him to plan what he calls a "massive" and "unprecedented" cleanup of the lake.

It turns out that some of the information he shared was inaccurate. Watson said that the public's lack of confidence in the Department of Natural Resources could undermine the cleanup effort. He said the governor's office still didn't have any estimates of what the effort would cost, but he expected the department to use existing resources to make it happen.

Missouri Republican Party executive director Lloyd Smith has called last Wednesday's news conference a "cynical" attempt to distract from the E. coli controversy.