Change due in water sampling
Posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/236135/
SILOAM SPRINGS — Intensive water sampling on the Illinois River will continue this year, but it’s likely to be replaced by something cheaper and less aggressive in 2009.
Marc Nelson, who headed the Arkansas Water Resources Center’s water quality lab at the University of Arkansas, studied water near the Arkansas 59 bridge and measured how much phosphorus, nitrates and other substances flowed into the river.
His focus was on storms that caused the river to rise quickly and fill with sediment and phosphorus from nearby farm fields.
Nelson’s research gave less attention to the dry summer and fall seasons when infrequent rain left the river’s flow dominated by the treated water that came from sewer plants in Northwest Arkansas.
“It’s the only place where we get a full picture of what’s happening on this river,” Nelson said as he stood on a gravel bar below the bridge that’s steps from where he’s sampled water for 13 years. Now the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission expects to change the way water samples are collected at the site to focus less on storms like the ones Nelson tracked so closely in the past.
Nelson’s protocol at the Arkansas 59 bridge costs about $ 45, 000 a year, and less intensive water sampling costs less than $ 30, 000 a year depending on how often the samples are taken and tested.
“We don’t feel like spending an inordinate amount of time just on the storm data is helping us that much,” said Tony Ramick, the nonpoint source management program supervisor for the Natural Resources Commission. “We’re getting just as much good information by getting once-a-week samples at other places.”
Nelson, who left UA this summer to start Nelson Engineering, thinks it’s a mistake to change the water-sampling protocol he established. It showed how much phosphorus the river carried during those storms, and he said water sampling done by state and federal agencies on the river doesn’t provide nearly the same detail.
“I think it will be a big loss,” Nelson said.
Other issues about the sampling site and the water resources center concern Nelson, too.
He thinks the July 1 shift of the water resources center from UA’s division of arts and sciences to the division of agriculture sets up a scenario in which supervisors are more likely to influence the publication of research.
Deans and vice presidents in the division could someday prevent the publication of information that puts poultry companies in a poor light.
Arkansas poultry companies, which are accused of polluting the river’s watershed in a federal lawsuit filed in 2005 by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, are among donors to the division and to the UA as a whole.
Springdale-based Tyson Foods, one of the companies Edmondson sued, will give the university more than $ 20 million as part of UA’s Campaign for the 21 st Century, and poultry companies provide money each year for the agriculture division’s researchers to do things such as study bird diseases and improve chicken’s weight gain.
Nelson believes the water resource center’s research was less likely to be influenced when it was in the arts and sciences division.
“The water resource center and water lab had 20 plus years of showing objective data that was available, and it got thrown out the window,” Nelson said. “Their function was to provide objective data, and now it’s in the hands of people who have a potential conflict.”
Milo Shult, the UA System’s vice president for agriculture, said the university hasn’t prevented or modified information published by its researchers and it won’t.
“We don’t tell our folks what to say,” Shult said. “If we are going to be worth a flip to the people of Arkansas, the last thing we can do is sell our soul.”
Brian Haggard, who became the center’s director when it moved to the agriculture division, said he’s surprised Nelson would say the university’s honesty about its research could be compromised by the poultry gifts.
“It never even crossed my mind that someone would have this perception,” Haggard said. “I’ve never had the administration direct my research.”
Tyson Foods spokesman Gary Mickelson said the company provides money for research projects and to the university overall because the work of students and researchers can benefit the poultry industry.
“Any suggestion our support would unduly influence the outcome of any agricultural research is simply wrong,” Mickelson said. “Such comments are also an affront to the integrity and credibility of university administrators and researchers.”
Nelson, in fact, said Indrajeet Chaubey, who’s now at Purdue University after six years at UA, was told he couldn’t let it be known he participated in Nelson’s research project in 2002. That project showed 60 percent of the phosphorus in the Illinois River stemmed from poultry farms and golf courses, and 40 percent came from sources like sewer plants.
Chaubey in a telephone interview said he was never prevented from releasing research or participating in projects.
“I don’t blame him for not wanting to say he was told not to be involved at the last minute or had direct pressure,” Nelson said. “It was what he told me.”
Those at UA paint Nelson as a disgruntled former employee who’s bitter because his company wasn’t picked ahead of the university’s center to do the sampling at the Arkansas 59 bridge.
Nelson did receive federal money this year channeled through the Natural Resources Commission to use his sampling protocol to collect samples on the White River for the Beaver Water District and on Osage Creek for the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority.
The Illinois River Watershed Partnership, however, picked the UA center ahead of Nelson and two other applicants to continue the Arkansas 59 bridge sampling.
Delia Haak, the watershed partnership’s director, said the group’s technical advisory committee aimed to keep the sampling with the water resources center. By staying with the center, Haak said, there’s “greater opportunity” to see the water sampling results incorporated into UA research.
“We want there to be continued research on our watershed,” Haak said.