The University of Washington Tacoma’s newest go-to guy has arrived. He is professor Joel Baker, hired brain, or scientific director, of Urban Waters, future think tank and centerpiece of UW Tacoma’s planned Center for Urban Waters, a $40 million Foss Waterway project.
Officially, Baker, 48, is the first appointment to the Port of Tacoma chair in environmental science, a position supported by a $3 million endowment.
That might seem like a pile of money, but the income earned annually won’t go far beyond Baker’s annual salary.
Even so, Baker said the backing will “prime the pump,” making it easier for him to drum up the resources to hire graduate students to carry out the research.
An environmental chemist, Baker landed at UWT earlier this month after 20 years at the University of Maryland, where his laboratory’s research focused on human-made organic chemicals.
“His specialty is really how do chemicals move through ecosystems,” said Tracy Collier, an aquatic toxicologist and environmental conservation division director of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
In Maryland, Baker worked in a laboratory on Chesapeake Bay, where complicated cleanup efforts have dragged on for years. He and his students helped analyze the bay’s problems.
Baker also has done research on the Great Lakes and has lent his expertise to efforts to assess pollution in New York Harbor and in Europe, among other places.
At its peak, Baker said, his Maryland laboratory shouldered multiple research contracts generating between $2 million and $3 million in annual revenue. The money covered multiple faculty-level salaries, plus grad student stipends.
Whether Urban Waters attracts that much support could depend on Baker’s abilities as a rainmaker.
Cheryl Greengrove calls him “the designated hitter.” Greengrove is UW Tacoma’s interim director of interdisciplinary arts and sciences and chairwoman of the committee that hired Baker.
His job is to develop the UW Tacoma’s capacity for scientific research by focusing on problems of local interest, she said.
“It was tough to find a really good scientist who has collaborative people skills and is politically savvy,” said Greengrove, an oceanographer. “This is what makes him special.”
J.J. McCament, Urban Waters’ executive director, concurred.
“He had practical experience in working with communities to solve issues,” she said. “So much of what we need to do right now has to do with the policy end of things, bolstered by science.”
Collier said he came to know Baker as leader of a committee of eight scientists who evaluated a proposal to dredge the bottom of New York’s Hudson River, a Superfund site. The committee’s 2001 report concluded dredging would reduce the risks associated with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, a toxic industrial chemical that taints the sediment. Next year, General Electric Corp., the responsible party, is scheduled to begin dredging.
Baker said he wasn’t looking for work when he happened upon the UW’s help-wanted advertisement in a science magazine. “It was an easy sell,” he said.
On the plus side, the Center for Urban Waters construction project is “moving at a very fast pace,” Baker said. Although groundbreaking isn’t likely until summer, the laboratory should be ready for occupancy in about two years.
Beyond that, Baker said he’s pleased to be the beneficiary of solid community backing for a scientific approach to conservation.
Already, Baker has been appointed to the science panel of the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency charged with restoring the Sound. Its offices also will be housed in the planned Center for Urban Waters.
“The Puget Sound has a lot of support. It’s a real national treasure. We have to protect and preserve it,” Baker said.
Baker grew up in Ohio. As a boy, he lived near Lake Erie, where fish kills were routine and the shoreline frequently was littered with the remains. “It was a sewer, an awful place,” Baker recalled.
Later, he graduated from high school outside Columbus and accepted a scholarship from the local paper mill. He planned to study paper science, but ended up in environmental chemistry.
His approach to pollution is holistic. “Land use and how you manage land use is absolutely critical to the water quality story,” he said.
Similarly, Baker said air pollution cannot be divorced from water quality.
“If you clean up the air, you begin to clean up the water. How much impact that has on water quality depends on where you are,” he said.
Susan Gordon: 253-597-8756
