May 30, 1999
Waterway quality expert leaves post
By Cathy Willoughby
Staff Writer
The creator of a major source of information on the quality of the state's waterways will be leaving his post.
David Baker, director of Heidelberg College's Water Quality Laboratory since its inception in the 1960s, will be retiring effective June 30. An interest in biological research of rivers grew to the creation of the self-supporting research facility, called upon for data analysis from such varied sources as local well owners to the federal government.
Baker has been a part of Heidelberg for more than 33 years. He was a student there, and returned in 1966 as an assistant professor of biology. After progressing from assistant, to associate to full professorship, Baker gradually became the lab's full-time director in 1969.
"I left Rutgers to come back to Heidelberg to focus on full-time teaching," he said, "rather than doing the combination of teaching and research. When I got back to Heidelberg, I taught Introductory biology. And during that I introduced a river laboratories section.
"While undergoing those studies, samples would need to be sent to Bucyrus and to Fremont to be analyzed. We received some interesting results that led to summer research due to federal grants that we received. And that led sooner or later to extensive grant programs to study the rivers going into Lake Erie."
The staff of the lab experienced a growth spurt in the late 1970s due to an expansion of their studies to tributaries of Lake Erie. "We were involved in some major river studies," Baker said. "We added two senior staff and a lab crew, which gave us the opportunity to be involved in determining the USEPA's research vessel for two years."
Then, the staff grew to 12 people, including the addition of Ken Krieger, Barb Merryfield and Pete Richards, who will become the new director.
After the large project was over, the lab's staff dropped to what remains now, eight full-time people with several part-time employees. Students are also involved in work during both the academic year and the summer, when they work longer, more full-time hours.
The studies involve chemical, biological and bacterial studies from Lorain to Ashtabula along the Lake Erie shore, including the Cleveland waterfront. And Baker said Krieger is undertaking a major study of mayfly recovery at the lake.
"It involves a core of volunteers," he said, "and they are making records of mayfly emergences or emergencies. They had died out, but now they are recovering."
One of the major programs of the lab has been studying the impacts of agricultural pollutants to the rivers, especially nitrates and phosphorus, and their subsequent delivery to the water systems and to Lake Erie. "We have data sets that are unique in their duration and intensity," Baker explained. "Just from the Fremont station, we have collected 11,000 samples over the past 23 years. That allows us to really document the progress made on agricultural runoffs."
He is proud of the fact that since the lab has begun the study of the rivers flowing into Lake Erie, the amount of extended sediments, particulate phosphorus and soluble phosphorus have contributed to improvements to both Lake Erie and the Maumee River. "We used to track the issue of phosphorus loading into Lake Erie," Baker said. "We were going by target loads set in the 1980s, that no more than 11,000 metric tons of phosphorus could enter the lake. We are now well under that during the last six years. But now we have the zebra mussels without the phosphorus. Maybe the 11,000 metric tons is not the right amount. The data gathered shows how much is going into the lake."
Baker said the state has seen fit to grant funds to expand the studies to more southern river systems, such as the Muskingum, Scioto and Great Miami rivers.
"With automatic samplers, we can document the runoff for more than 51 percent of the land in Ohio," Baker said. "We are providing a lot of useful information on the amount of substances such as metals and pesticides in the waterways. These data sets are very useful in many settings."
He will not leave the water quality arena entirely. He has set up a home office to continue working in education and research. "But I won't mind getting out from under writing grants," Baker said, smiling.
The lab is totally grant funded for about $600,000 a year, giving the staff the freedom to work with flexible hours, free of most teaching duties. It allows them to travel, to meet with government officials and to give talks to interested groups.
"I have been blessed with an extremely competent and dedicated staff," Baker said. "We have not had a lot of turnover and they do a fantastic job. We collect a lot of samples, and do the analysis ourselves, and also all of the interpretation. We publish our results and are writing our grant proposals."
"There are many advantages to this," Baker added. "It is greatly to our benefit to know how samples are collected and that we can interpret the data. This is an organization that covers the gamut."
He said that he was also thankful to be at Heidelberg College, which he said was unique in supporting this type of program. "We don't have the political pressures there might be at a state university," he said. "We have the freedom to set our own course. And our work's course is to focus on the interrelationship between our food resources and our water supply. Our work is extremely important, and will be even more important in or future as we seek to produce more food with limited resources."
As for the future, more trips to visit the grandchildren are on his horizon. Or he might be seen out on the Sandusky River, testing the water in a different manner. "Maybe I will learn to fish the Sandusky," Baker said. "I wouldn't mind testing the rivers with a fishing rod."