Something In The Water

Water expert Owen Lind recently discovered a 38-year-old photo that offers perspective on Baylor's current research. The 1966 picture shows the five students who made up the University's first class in limnology, the study of fresh water. The class was small, its equipment spare. 
"We had a tiny, little scrap boat that somebody had abandoned at the old Baylor Camp," says the professor of biology. "For a field vehicle, someone had donated a Cadillac limo. There's this long black limousine with great big fins, a 1956 or '57 model, pulling this beat-up old boat and these five students."
Today, there is the Center for Reservoir and Aquatic Systems Research, an impressive partnership among different Baylor academic departments and between the University and the City of Waco, formed in 2003 expressly for the purpose of studying aquatics. The center will have lab space in Baylor's new science building when it is completed in 2004, and it will be available to students and professors involved in studying what lives in Lake Waco, a 7,270-acre man-made body of water developed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1965. Those involved have the opportunity to enrich their education, enlarge the body of knowledge about lake aquatic systems and help improve Lake Waco's overall quality.
Creating and stocking a wetlands to replace land lost to wildlife when the city began raising the level of the lake seven feet last October was one of the center's first major projects. Robert Doyle, associate professor of biology, developed the plant list for the wetlands and involved students in its physical development. The wetlands serves several purposes, he says. It's a habitat for wildlife, a classroom for students and researchers and a purifying agent for the lake as it filters pollutants out of the water before it flows back into the lake. 
"Most of us [Baylor researchers] are interested in basic research, understanding how aquatic systems work," says Doyle, who came to Baylor in 2001 and heads the aquatic center. "Waco has an interest in making Lake Waco better. The center fosters that overlap." 
The city supplies drinking water from Lake Waco to about 150,000 residents in Waco and surrounding areas. For years, Waco has battled owners of upstream dairies, citing their runoff into the North Bosque River, which feeds into the lake, as a source of water pollution. While that battle continues, University researchers are sampling different parts of the lake during various seasons to determine the existence and nature of possible pollutants and to see what kinds of living organisms might be in the lake. They also helped the city map the shoreline before the lake was raised and will check it again to see where certain lake inhabitants have relocated. With the city conducting a $2 million assessment of the water, Baylor researchers from different academic departments contributed to a little more than half the work, Doyle says. 
Calling the Waco wetlands project a "low-tech" method of aiding the environment, Doyle says it could have application for developing countries that will never possess the kind of water treatment systems found in the United States. "One of the reasons I came to Baylor was that it was easier to imagine getting back and doing this kind of work in developing countries," says Doyle, who grew up in Brazil as the son of Baptist missionaries. "Baylor has a mission view of the world religiously, and I feel that just as strongly. So going to Brazil and to Mexico and encouraging good stewardship of natural resources is part of the attraction of coming to Baylor." 
It is a view that resonates with his colleague Lind as well. For decades, his limnology study has focused on Lake Chapala, the largest lake in Mexico. He and his research team -- including his wife, Laura Davalos-Lind, program coordinator for the Chapala Ecology Station -- have studied its pollutants. Currently, though, they are more concerned about its quantity than about its quality. "It is now less than 20 percent of its full capacity," he says. "Water is being pumped out of the river that supplies the lake so rapidly, for agriculture irrigation, that the lake is drying up." Lake Chapala supplies drinking water for the 5 million people who live in Guadalajara, but it will be dry by 2010 at the rate it is dropping, says Lind, who is trying to help Mexico find the money to stop the decline. 
Together and separately, the professors use fundamental science to help make people's lives better. "What we learn has applicability around the world," Doyle says.
For Lind, the reality of the center is the fulfillment of a long-held hope. He remembers talking with Baylor administrators in the 1970s about establishing an aquatic center. Today, he says, the center "provides a focus and a recognizable body that allows us to grow."