Maine scientist to head water institutes

loading...

ORONO – Steve Kahl is about 60 percent water.

So are you.

But unlike most Americans, Kahl recognizes the fragility of this critical resource, even in soggy, snowy Maine. Without the clean water in our lakes, rivers, aquifers and, yes, snowbanks, there would be no life on Earth as we know it.

“What is the one thing that’s essential for human life, that is absolutely not replenishable?” Kahl asked. “Water.”

Now, as president-elect of the National Institutes for Water Resources, Kahl will have the chance to inform the national debate on everything from acid rain to red tide to dry wells. It’s not a duty that the University of Maine geochemist takes lightly.

While serving as director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the university – one of 54 such research institutions nationwide that make up the NIWR – Kahl has developed a keen awareness of the links, and the gaping chasms, between water science and water policy.

Part of Kahl’s new role will be to testify before Congress and to work with natural resources agencies to ensure that lawmakers are provided with the science they need to make good water policy.

The current administration’s focus on oil shortages and energy needs has dwarfed significant problems with the nation’s water resources, Kahl said.

In the Pacific Northwest, farmers and fishermen are battling over river water while salmon and crops die. Wildfires have raged through California. Here in New England, mercury and acids from air pollution have polluted even the most remote streams. And most of America has just emerged from one of the worst droughts in recent memory.

“It’s incredible to me that a president from Texas, a water-deprived state, isn’t paying attention to this,” Kahl said. “Water is irreplaceable.”

Kahl’s plans for a proactive NIWR are no surprise to Dave Courtemanch, a water resources specialist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“I always speak of Steve as an entrepreneur,” said Courtemanch, who has worked with Kahl in many capacities over the years. “He’s a thinker. He brings together new ideas.”

Robert Ward, immediate past president of NIWR, agrees.

“He doesn’t accept things the way they are without asking questions first. I think that’s going to be a real strength,” said Ward, a professor of civil engineering who directs Colorado’s institute in Boulder.

Kahl had been asked to run for the office twice before but declined, saying he was too busy conducting research, leading the Mitchell Center and teaching. But this third time, he decided not to pass up his chance to influence the education of new water scientists as well as lawmakers and the public.

As baby boomers retire, state and federal agencies are losing water scientists faster than they can replace them, so there’s a real need for training new hydrologists, chemists and geologists, Kahl said. Once he takes over the presidency, he plans to focus on writing a giant grant to create a national graduate education network through the institute’s 54 campuses.

More than 700 graduate students – including 21at UMaine – already are studying through the institute, but coordination of research among various campuses is limited.

Students in Maine will be better scientists if they understand not only the eastern part of the country’s concerns about the mercury content of lakes, but also the western part’s struggles over scarce water resources, Kahl said.

“The more globally you can view things, the more effectively you can act locally,” Kahl said.

Scientists, too, should understand how to explain their work to a wide audience, said Kahl, who in three years at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has gained an appreciation for the applied research that can lead to the best environmental policy.

“Scientists have been content to do their research, then sit back to see if anyone asks them about it,” he said. “[They] should be more engaged in the public arena.”

In Maine, the Mitchell Center is the only game in town. Most major water research projects in the state are connected with the center in some way, so the institute has a great deal of local and regional influence.

But Washington, D.C., is a very different place. In the nation’s capital, “good science” is too often whatever a lobbyist wants it to be, and testimony from NIWR’s researchers may not always be well-received.

“It’s not a simple thing to deal with, but for my money, we’ve got to be an unbiased source of information,” Kahl said. “Reality is reality, and ethically, you’ve got to go with what you know is there.”

No science is black and white, particularly not the dizzying web of causes and effects that is environmental science, but researchers have a duty to lay out what they do know, and to be honest about the unanswered and unanswerable questions, he said.

“You’ve just got to say, ‘This is our best guess, and it’s a darned good educated guess,'” Kahl said.

He also expects to spend a substantial amount of time in Washington lobbying for funding and in cooperation with the four members of Maine’s congressional delegation, all of whom sit on the Mitchell Center advisory board.

Though NIWR’s total budget is only $6.5 million, the funds have been cut from, then reinstated in, the federal budget countless times in recent years. When the institutes were created in the 1960s, each center received $100,000 annually. Today that number, not adjusted for inflation, has fallen to $90,000.

“Survival itself is sometimes a challenge,” Kahl said.

Nationwide, the institutes receive between 5 percent and half of their funding from the U.S. Geological Survey. At UMaine, the number is about 10 percent. Yet the institutes manage to thrive by focusing on important local problems and supplementing their efforts through additional state and federal grants.

“Frankly, the federal government ought to look at this as a model of how to spend money,” he said.

A Maine native and UMaine graduate, Kahl will be the first NIWR president from New England and just the second to hail from a state in the East. Maine’s priorities could get more attention on the national stage because of his position.

“This gives us a spot at the table,” said Nick Houtman, a University of Maine spokesman who serves on the Mitchell Center’s advisory board and once ran the center on an interim basis.

But Kahl believes the NIWR centers’ autonomy and their ability to apply grant funding to real local problems is at the heart of the group’s success.

“That’s how things ought to be done,” Kahl declared. “That’s one of the messages I want to take to Congress.”