4.11   "That was the beginning of my participation in the action that led to the formation of the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle (Metro). My function was to feed information to those who needed and wanted it. The letter to Mr Ellis and an expanded version that I wrote later former the basis for one of my review papers." (WTE 22)

4.12    Since the decision to set up a new administrative body, Metro - almost exact equivalent of SILA in Annecy - required a public vote there followed a campaign of public education in which Edmondson played an active part. “I gave a few public talks and spoke on radio and television. Mostly I talked to individuals on the telephone and wrote letters.” (WTE 23) It is a fascinating thought to imagine that during those years Edmondson in Seattle and Dr Servettaz in Annecy were engaged in debating identical problems with a general public entirely unfamiliar with the issues.

4.13   Edmondson describes, in a little more detail than Servettaz, the detail of these discussions and in particular the kind of opposition he faced. And here is the heart of his book. He tells the story of the confrontation between science and pseudo-science and the range of tactics used by his opponents to deny, caste doubt, pour scorn on his scientific conclusion or, more subtly, to muddy the waters of the debate by introducing quasi-scientific details.

4.14    “A very active and vocal opposition to the idea of Metre developed……The opposition presented reasons against Metro which ranged from the political (it was creeping socialism and Big Brother government) to the scientific (sewage does not affect lakes that way, and if it does, it is too late to do anything about it).” (WTE 23) This led to a series of amusing episodes recounted by Edmonson as follows.

4.15    “On this occasion there was a fascinating exchange:

Pro-Metro: Are you aware of the work they are doing out at the University of Washington?

Anti-Metro: Oh, I am sorry you dragged Professor Edmondson’s name into this. [He had not mentioned my name] I don't want to get personal, but algae are plants, and Edmondson is a zoologist. Zoology is the study of animals confined in cages in zoos.

4.16   I am told that one of the anti-Metro people would show up at the debates with a textbook of zoology and show pictures of giraffes (maybe monkeys, too) to demonstrate that I could not know anything about ‘plants’. The anti-Metro people did not seem to know that there were such sciences as biology or ecology.” (WTE 23)

4.17   “My first personal contact with the anti-Metro side was with a lawyer in Renton who telephoned on 10 January 1958 when the legislature was considering the Metro legislation. He had organized the King County Taxpayers’ League Against Metro. He told me that he was opposed to Metro because it was a radical change in the form of government and would cost too much, although no cost estimates had yet been made. (I have since learned to be suspicious of any political organization that has ‘taxpayer’ in its title.) He expressed some strange ideas about pollution and Lake Washington. I thought something like ‘There’s a lot he doesn't know; I’d better straighten him out.’ So I wrote him two letters explaining eutrophication and the known condition of Lake Washington. His answer on 7 February 1958, transcribed exactly, was:

“Dear Professor,

In reply to your letters of January 16 and February 5, respectively, I wish to state that the substance of these letters have been examined by members of our committee and we very definitely wish to commend you for your excellent efforts, in view of the great magnitude of that task that has been set for you to determine whether or not there is pollution in Lake Washington and the related waters and how it can best be eliminated. Indeed we are rather surprised that you have been able to make a hypothesis to the effect that there is pollution in the Lake.

Such a hypothesis which of its very nature is most doubtful, no doubt, might be the starting point for a real scientific survey of the question of ascertaining whether or not there is pollution in Lake Washington and how it can be eliminated. To this end, therefore, in view of the fact that proponents of Metro are attempting to use the hypothesis you are making in order to bring about the establishment of Metro, which is an unwarranted, radical departure in the field of local municipal government, and principally because there is no true corroborating scientific determination that there is pollution in Lake Washington, King County Taxpayers’ League Against Metro proposed that as soon as it is feasible there be made available funds by the Governmental Agencies involved here to bring to the City of Seattle a Board of three eminent scientists in the field of botany to study the pollution problem in the Lake and surrounding water, and to make scientific findings establishing whether or not there is a pollution problem in the Lake and if so, how it can best be controlled.

Yours very truly." (WTE 26)

4.18    Edmondson comments on this letter “It was a new idea to me that there was doubt about the existence of pollution in Lake Washington. It was widely known that ten sewage treatment plants were contributing about twenty million gallons of sewage to the lake each day.” (WTE 26)  He continues:

4.19    "The Man from Renton telephoned me from time to time. I never met him in person but spent many hours on the telephone and wrote several letters. It eventually became obvious that he was not really after information. He seemed to be looking either for support for his position or for statements from me that could be shown to be incorrect and therefore could be used against the Metro idea. Nevertheless, every time he called, I stayed with him as long as he wanted to talk and tried to correct his misunderstandings, in a nice way, of course."  "One time I explained about the problem of the depletion of oxygen in deep water by excess biological activity. A few days later he called back and said something like, 'Professor, I have done some research on that oxygen problem and you are wrong. Water is H₂O and O means Oxygen, so if you have water you have oxygen'. In this case I doubt it would have made any difference if I had said dissolved oxygen."

4.20   “He had alternative solutions. One was to fill the lake in, or better, drain it because that would make farmland and eliminate the algae. One time he called to say he had a brilliant idea; use atomic energy. I asked him what we should use it to do and he said: 'I don't know; that’s for your scientists to decide.'   This kind of thing is very frustrating to someone who works for an educational institution."

4.21   In Dr Servettaz’s account, although his campaign took place over more years than Edmondson’s, he does not talk about any specific details of opposition such as the above.  It seems the worst of his opposition was a profound lack of interest in the question. Certainly there was never any talk of organised opposition in Annecy.  What would have happened, had there been, is an interesting question.

4.22   Edmondson has a nice conclusion to the demand from the Man from Renton for a panel of botanists to investigate pollution in the lake, rather than an unqualified zoologist like Edmondson.  “Anyway, after all this fuss about getting a panel of botanists to study the situation, it was a matter of some amusement when the International Botanical Congress met in Seattle in August 1969, attended by 4600 botanists from all over the world. In his opening address, the president of the congress, Professor Kenneth V Thimann of the University of California at Santa Cruz commented about the ‘remarkable achievement of clearing up Lake Washington as a tribute to what can be done when biologists and citizens collaborate.’ " (WTE 28)

4.23    A much more sophisticated and powerful opposition arose when it was understood that phosphate was the principal driver (limiting factor) of eutrophication in Lake Washington (and many other lakes) and that household detergents were based on phosphates. This got the powerful Detergent Industry lobby involved, who recruited the best lawyers and scientists to defend them and preserve a highly profitable use of phosphates. These included eminent scientists, such as W. J. Oswald, professor of sanitary engineering at the University of California, who testified before the US House of Representatives in 1972:

“In the pristine environment phosphate is quite often a limiting factor for aquatic growth but, in the case of bodies of water into which nutrients of sewage origin are introduced, phosphorus is usually in vast excess. In these and many other cases phosphorus contributes less to algal growth than do carbon, nitrogen, iron and perhaps other crucial elements, all of which much be present in minimum concentrations if algae growth is to approach phosphate limitation. Thus, in bodies of water receiving sewage effluents phosphates are rarely the limiting factor and methods other than detergent phosphate limitation must be sought for their control.” (WTE 100)

4.24    Edmondson ridicules the ‘upside down thinking’ of such an argument. “This seems to say that if you load up a nice clear lake with so much sewage that it is no longer limited by phosphate, you cannot help the problem by reducing the input of phosphate back to what it was before, an astonishing conclusion.” (WTE 100)  He could also have referenced a paper by Richard Vollenweider demonstrating the decisive role of phosphate in eutrophication – the most cited paper in limnological history – which had been published three years earlier and was so well known to the scientific community that the OECD had commissioned the largest study of lakes ever undertaken to determine the scale of the problem and how it could be tackled.

4.25    The most brazen example Edmondson gives of abuse of science by apparently respected scientists paid handsomely for their defence of major corporations, is in his discussion of presentations to the Federal Trade Commission by Paul F Derr and others. Edmondson summarises these. “Some can be classified as either true or false. Most of the true ones are irrelevant red herrings, having nothing to do with the case. The most clearly false ones are simply misstatements in contradiction to well-demonstrated facts, or are misquotations. In between the true and the false are vast numbers of misunderstandings, misrepresentations of facts, misapplications of concepts, simple mistakes, and much fuzzy thinking.” (WTE 99)

4.26    He quotes Paul F Derr’s evaluation for the Federal Trade Commission.

“I wish to emphasize that no one – no government, no scientist, no one anywhere – has ever demonstrated that a reduction in the phosphate added to a lake will have any effect whatsoever on the growth of algae in the lake … No one has ever demonstrated that restriction of the input of phoshates to a lake will have any effect whatsoever on the growth of algae in that lake. In fact every time scientists have attempted to show a correlation between phosphate added to a lake and algae growth they have obtained the opposite answer – there is no correlation!”  (WTE 104)

To which astonishingly brazen false statement Edmondson comments quietly  “I wonder what he had in mind."   So, apparently, did Commissioner Mary Gardiner Jones who said to Derr unbelievingly, "I have never heard anybody say what you said before". (WTE 104)

4.27    It is worth reminding ourselves here of what Richard Vollenweider had concluded three years earlier in that 1969 paper for the OECD:

“It became progressively clear that 1) nitrogen and phosphate are the motors of the process [of eutrophication in lakes] 2) phosphorous is normally the more important factor 3) nitrogen and phosphorus load to lakes provides the basis for explaining the degree of eutrophication, and 4) as a consequence, control of these factors would lead to the solution of the problem.”

4.28    Interestingly,  Vollenweider complains in a 1987 summary he wrote on the history of his paper that although it became one of the most cited papers in limnological history and was to earn him amongst other recognition, the 1986 Tyler Prize – it was inexplicably never approved for publication by the OECD who commissioned the report. Indeed the OECD had to go to the trouble to recopy the article repeatedly to satisfy the demand from upward of 10,000 requests worldwide. Vollenweider cannot understand this. “Why wasn't the report published in an established journal? The OECD has never given me permission to publish it elsewhere.  Overall the report’s history has been bewildering.”

4.28  Non-publication by the OECD however, may have helped representatives of major detergent manufacturers such as Paul F Derr to continue to make statements such as the one above, for as long as they did, with a straight face.

4.29    These and many other examples in Edmondson’s excellent account demonstrate the importance of independent scientists working in good faith with their local communities to educate public opinion so that decisions are taken in the interest of those communities and their environment and not in the interests of major corporations, the financial remuneration of their senior executives and the profits of their shareholders.  Dr Servettaz faced opposition from ignorance and apathy, against which he campaigned with determination and reasoned arguments. Edmondson, and the ecologists for whom he is an eloquent spokesman, have to deal with a much better organised, and financially and politically more powerful, opposition.   I will leave it to Edmondson himself to summarise his position on the proper Uses of Ecology here in relation to the participation of environmentalists in environmental protection:

4.30  "From the foregoing comments, it is clear that industrial activities can create severe environmental damage, much of it unnecessary except as a component of a program to maximize profits. It appears that few if any major industries operate voluntarily with an effective balance between production and protection. Much of the protection accomplished has been imposed by law, and evasion of legal restraints is common. It is only natural that people with an active interest in maintaining acceptable living conditions should react against such activities. They are called environmentalists.  (They are not be confused with people who oppose the capitalistic system for political, moral or religious reasons.)  Some of their reactions will take the form of reasoned talks or written articles. It is inevitable that some environmentalists who hold strong opinions may take much more vigorous action than sober talks or writing; they are known,  pejoratively, as environmental extremists or activist environmentalists (Ray 1990). Sometimes, instead of discussion, debate and evaluation of priorities, there is a confrontation. Groups may make their point by waving signs and chanting slogans as in political rallies. I have been embarrassed by such activities, especially when the people are identified as ecologists. But while some the antics are indeed childish and extreme, they may be the only technique the people know for a problem they consider important. Some of their protest are against extreme activities by industry but I do not recall ever seeing the term industrial extremist."  (WTE 298)

4.31   I wonder what Dr Edmondson would have made of Dr Servettaz’s cementing shut the sewer outlet of the Imperial Palace Hotel back in 1969!

4.32   It seems fitting to conclude this section with an extract from an obituary written by his great friend and fellow academic, J.T. Lehman." (Hydrobiologia 435 1-3, 200. For a moving biographical memoir see here.)

4.33   "In January 2000, W.T. (Tommy Edmondson) finally succumbed to injuries and paralysis resulting from an automobile accident months earlier. His passing depressives us of one of the thoughtful minds which created a modern synthesis in limnology by blending the field with ecological and evolutionary theory. His gifts of methods, scientific ideas and careful studies have indelibly imprinted the scientific discipline which he loved.

"The job of a scientist is to find things out and tell people about them. And have them printed somewhere" (pers. comm., 1996). Characteristically succinct, direct and unpretentious is how Tommy assessed his societal role. During his career, he succeeded brilliantly, publishing concise and thought-provoking analysis, and sharing his invention of methods that would revolutionise the study of zooplankton population dynamics. Buoyant and perpetually youthful in spirit, he found everything in his world interesting. Edmondson's academic gestation traced to a time when science was the province of individual scholars drawn by the magnet of natural mystery and its corresponding beauty. Organisms held a special charisma for him, so much so that when he no longer led field trips on Lake Washington, he insisted on receiving a live net collection the instant the crew set foot back in the lab. He poured each new sample with earnest anticipation, and exclamations of pure joy greeted each diminutive but familiar representative in the dish. "If I took you through high school, college and graduate school I would tell you that always the centre of the universe was the room with the microscopes and right next to it was the library" (Edmondson, 1989, p. 3).

4.34  Tommy Edmondson's memory is irrevocably linked with the story of Lake Washington that he so faithfully documented for half a century.  It might seem  surprising, therefore, to learn that in his own mind he did not count the work he did with that lake among his most cherished contributions. Tommy said that he reckoned himself lucky because he had had three good ideas in his life.  Firsts and foremost, he relished the spark of inspiration that guided him in placing time markers of carmine and charcoal on the tubes of Floscularia because of the revelations they unfolded (Edmondson 1945).  Those experiments were in fact the conceptual springboard to the Egg Ratio Method (Edmondson, 1960,1965), his second 'good idea' and the one which became Tommy's greatest intellectual gift to zooplankton ecology.  Third was his introduction of a graphical method for tracking reproductive schedules of plankton in an elegantly simple and direct analog of matrix algebra (Edmondson, 1968).  These creative stirrings from the inside of one's one head, occasionally called the 'Eureka experience', are the most meaningful rewards of a life in science.

Continue Reading   Chapter Five