DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATIVE HEARINGS
DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION, STATE OF FLORIDA
SUGAR CANE GROWERS COOPERATIVE OF CASE NOS. 92-3038
FLORIDA, a Florida agricultural 92-3039
cooperative marketing association; ROTH 92-3040
FARMS, INC.; and WEDGWORTH FARMS. INC., 92-6796
92-6797
and 92-6799
92-6800
FLORIDA SUGAR CANE LEAGUE, INC.; and
UNITED STATES SUGAR CORPORATION,
and NEW HOPE SOUTH, INC.,
and
FLORIDA FRUIT AND VEGETABLE ASSOCIATION,
LEWIS POPE FARMS, W. E. SCHLECHTER &
SONS, INC., and HUNDLEY FARMS, INC.,
Petitioners
vs.
SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGMENT DISTRICT,
an Agency of the State of Florida,
Respondent,
and
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
MICCOSUKEE TRIBE OF INDIANS, THE
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION, THE FLORIDA WILDLIFE
FEDERATION, THE FLORIDA AUDUDON SOCIETY
and THE SIERRA CLUB,
Respondent-Intervenors.
_________________________________________/
DEPOSITION OF: MICHAEL JOHN MACEINA, Ph.D.
TAKEN: March 17, 1994
VOLUME 1
Accurate Stenotype Reporters, Inc.
DEPOSITION OF: MICHAEL JOHN MACEINA, Ph.D.
TAKEN AT THE INSTANCE OF: Respondent, South Florida
Water Management District
DATE: Thursday, March 17, 1994
TIME: Commenced at 9:00 a.m.
Concluded at 5:00 p.m.
LOCATION: 315 South Calhoun Street
Tallahassee, Florida
REPORTED BY: ANITA M. PEKEROL, CCR, RPR,
CP, CM. Notary Public in
and for the State of
Florida at Large.
APPEARANCES:
REPRESENTING THE PETITIONERS:
GARY V. PERKO, ESQUIRE
Hopping, Boyd, Green & Sams
123 South Calhoun Street
Post Office Box 6526
Tallahassee, Florida 32314
REPRESENTING RESPONDENT SOUTH FLORIDA
WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT:
JOSE A. LOREDO, ESQUIRE
Popham, Haik, Schnobrich & Kaufman, Ltd.
4000 International Place
100 Southeast Second Street
Post Office Box 019101
Miami, Florida 33131
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I_N_D_E_X _ _ _ _ _
WITNESS PAGE _______ ____
MICHAEL_JOHN_MACEINA,_Ph.D. _______ ____ ________ _____
Direct Examination by Mr. Loredo 4
CERTIFICATE_OF_REPORTER 97 ___________ __ ________
E_X_H_I_B_I_T_S _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
DEPOSITION_EXHIBITS: __________ ________
NUMBER DESCRIPTION PAGE ______ ___________ ____
1 Curriculum vitae of Michael John
Maceina 50
2 Notice of Taking Deposition Duces
Tecum 85
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1 (VOLUME 1)
2
3 P_R_O_C_E_E_D_I_N_G_S _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
4 - - -
5 The following deposition of MICHAEL JOHN MACEINA,
6 Ph.D., was taken on oral examination, pursuant to
7 notice, for purposes of discovery, for use as evidence,
8 and for such other uses and purposes as may be permitted
9 by the applicable and governing rules. Reading and
10 signing is not waived.
11 - - -
12 Thereupon,
13 MICHAEL JOHN MACEINA, Ph.D.
14 was called as a witness, having been first duly sworn,
15 was examined and testified as follows:
16 DIRECT EXAMINATION
17 BY MR. LOREDO:
18 Q Good morning, Dr. Maceina. My name is Jose
19 Loredo, and I'm an attorney with the South Florida Water
20 Management District. And, as you know, we're here in
21 the defense of the SWIM Plan, basically.
22 If you can, please state for the record
23 your name and home address.
24 A Michael John Maceina. I live at xxx
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1 Q And your business address?
2 A 203 Swingle Hall, Auburn University,
3 Alabama, 36849.
4 Q And are you presently employed?
5 A I am employed by Auburn University.
6 Q In what department?
7 A Department of Fisheries and Allied
8 Aquacultures.
9 Q And what do you do there?
10 A I'm an assistant professor of fishery
11 science.
12 Q Is that a teaching function, research
13 function?
14 A My employment is 85 percent research, 15
15 percent teaching. I am involved mostly in examination
16 of freshwater fish populations' relationships to water
17 quality, aquatic plants, in Alabama reservoirs.
18 Q What was the last thing you said?
19 A I am involved in freshwater fishery
20 research and factors related to freshwater sport fish,
21 including water quality, aquatic plants, in Alabama
22 reservoirs.
23 Q That was the last part I didn't catch,
24 Alabama reservoirs.
25 A Yes, Alabama reservoirs. Fifteen percent
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1 of my employment is teaching. I teach one class a year.
2 Q And what class is that?
3 A Well, I teach two different classes. I
4 teach alternate years. I teach a quantitative
5 assessment techniques and statistics, and I teach a
6 fishery science class.
7 Q The quantitative assessment techniques, is
8 that the statistics?
9 A A lot of statistics, yes. I would say
10 about half or three-quarters. And it is the application
11 of statistics to the fishery and limnology research
12 issues.
13 Q Fishery and limnology?
14 A Limnology.
15 Q What is that?
16 A Limnology is the study of abiotic and
17 biotic processes in freshwater systems; basically,
18 looking at water quality, plankton, invertebrates,
19 aquatic plants and all their interrelationships.
20 Q Are they one-year courses, semester
21 courses?
22 A We're on a quarter system, which is nine
23 and a half weeks.
24 Q And how long have you been teaching the
25 quantitative assessment techniques?
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1 A Since 1991.
2 Q And is it fisheries? I didn't catch the
3 rest of the fisheries part. You said the second --
4 A The second class is fishery science, which
5 is looking at vital quantitative statistics that
6 describe changes in fish abundance, involving management
7 of fish populations.
8 Q Are there any particular fish that you key
9 in on?
10 A Mostly freshwater, but we talk some about
11 marine, too.
12 Q And what type of quantitative statistics do
13 you apply?
14 A Chi-squared analysis, Kruskle-Wallis,
15 nonparametric tests.
16 Q Just a minute.
17 A I'm sorry, Kruskle-Wallis.
18 Q Can you spell that?
19 A K-R-U-S-K-L-E hyphen W-A-L-L-I-S. I said
20 chi-squared analysis, which is C-H-I hyphen square. I
21 teach one way, two-way and multifactor analysis of
22 variance, least squares multiple regression analysis,
23 and that's, basically, it.
24 Q And the quantitative assessment techniques,
25 are they the similar statistic science, or are different
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1 statistics applied?
2 A I don't understand the question. I think
3 the first question you asked me is what I taught, what
4 statistics I have taught in my quantitative techniques.
5 So, I think your question is redundant.
6 Q Actually, when I asked it, you had said in
7 the fishery science.
8 A Fishery science.
9 Q And that is where I was headed. That's
10 where I asked you, and I guess we got it reversed.
11 A We got it reversed.
12 Q So, the answer that you gave, and I don't
13 know if I could pronounce it --
14 A Is for the quantitative techniques and
15 assessment class. That is what we call an advanced
16 level class. The other class is a senior level entry.
17 Q The fishery science?
18 A Fishery science, right.
19 Q I was worried what I was going to hear when
20 I asked you about the quantitative assessment, and I
21 thought that was for the fishery science.
22 A I apologize. I misunderstood the question.
23 Q That's fine.
24 Where did you obtain your Bachelor's
25 degree?
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1 A University of Florida.
2 Q And your doctorate?
3 A Texas A&M University.
4 Q And what was your thesis about?
5 A My thesis was evaluation of stocking a
6 unique strain of large-mouth bass in a Texas reservoir,
7 and assessing changes in or the success of the stocking
8 over time.
9 Q Assessing changes for --
10 A Assessing changes in the fish population
11 over time to see if that stocking was successful or not.
12 Q And was it?
13 A Yes, it was.
14 Q And who, I guess, oversaw the thesis?
15 A I had two co-chairmen. One was named Dr.
16 Brian Murphy, and the other one was Dr. Wallace
17 Klussmann.
18 Q Can you spell the last name?
19 A K-L-U-S-S-M-A-N-N.
20 Q What types of techniques did you do or
21 apply for your thesis?
22 A Biochemical, allozyme techniques. Looking
23 at protein structure differences between the native fish
24 that were in the population and the transplanted fish.
25 There are structural differences, and certain proteins
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1 are encoded on the chromosomes of the fish.
2 I, also, used what we call earstones or
3 otoliths to age the fish. O-T-O-L-I-T-H-S, to age the
4 fish, which tells us when they were hatched, how fast
5 they're growing. What kinds of changes we're seeing in
6 the stock fish compared to the native fish in the
7 population.
8 Q What was the result?
9 A The result is that the fish from Florida
10 performed well and integrated well into the population,
11 and overall we deemed that the stocking was successful.
12 Q With the fish in Texas?
13 A Yes, that they were compatible with the
14 fish in Texas.
15 Q Was that the goal of the thesis, to
16 determine whether the stock fish could cohabitate with
17 the native fish?
18 A Yes, that's right, to see if the stocking
19 was successful.
20 Q So, they allowed more fishing in Texas?
21 A Fishing is like everywhere else. They
22 allow it if you buy a fishing license.
23 Q You have been an assistant professor since
24 1990?
25 A Yes.
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1 Q What did you do before that?
2 A I was a senior environmentalist for the
3 South Florida Water Management District.
4 Q And what did you do there?
5 A My primary responsibilities was some
6 contract administration on the large Lake Okeechobee
7 ecosystem study. So, I served as liaison between the
8 Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, the
9 district and, primarily, the University of Florida, who
10 was doing contract research on the lake, to address
11 mostly impacts on nutrient loading into the lake, as
12 well as possible effects of lake stage alterations, and
13 the effects of droughts and water levels on aquatic
14 biota in the lake.
15 Q This is Lake Okeechobee?
16 A This is Lake Okeechobee.
17 Q Where is the nutrient loading coming from?
18 A Primarily, the northern basins; Kissimmee
19 River, Northern Taylor Slough, 133 structure.
20 Q Is that above Lake Okeechobee?
21 A Yes, it is north of Lake Okeechobee.
22 Q Was any of it coming from the EAA?
23 A Some at times, when back-pumping was
24 occurring. But it made up a minor component compared to
25 the northern basins.
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1 Q What do you base that on?
2 A On district data, based on loading data
3 that was documented by people in the district that did
4 those computations.
5 Q And who at the district did the
6 computations?
7 A The person I worked with when I was there
8 was Dave Soballe.
9 Q Could you spell David's last name?
10 A S-O-B-A-L-L-E.
11 Q And what kinds of relationships did you
12 find in your research?
13 A Well, again, I was not directly involved in
14 the research. I was doing the contract administration.
15 We never had, while I was there, a final synthesis. The
16 report was not completed. It was a five-year project,
17 that just got completed in 1993. I left the district in
18 1990, before that project was terminated. Or, excuse
19 me, before the project was finished.
20 Q When you say contract administration, was
21 that the subcontract out to other consultants? I'm not
22 sure what your duties there were.
23 A We had one big larger contract with the
24 University of Florida. We had different principal
25 investigators that were doing various tasks in the lake.
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1 We had a person doing wading birds. We had a person or
2 group of people doing the water quality. We had a
3 certain group of people doing the aquatic invertebrates,
4 the zooplankton. We had somebody doing the
5 phytoplankton. So, we had different components of that
6 study. As well as we had an understanding or memorandum
7 of understanding with the Florida Game and Freshwater
8 Fish Commission to do the benthic macroinvertebrates in
9 the fresh water in the lake.
10 Q What are those?
11 A Those are the tiny invertebrates that live
12 in the soils on the bottom of the lake.
13 Q Did you, personally, conduct any data
14 analysis?
15 A Yes, I did, using district data.
16 Q And what kind of data are we talking about?
17 In what areas? Because you have set forth different
18 areas that were done by other consultants?
19 A Basically, I have done two major works, I
20 guess, of data analysis using district data. One is, I
21 looked at the impact of wind speeds and phosphorus
22 resuspension in Lake Okeechobee.
23 Q Wind speeds?
24 A Wind speed, wind velocity, and resuspension
25 of phosphorus in Lake Okeechobee.
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1 And I published a paper in 1990 in lake and
2 reservoir management on that topic.
3 Q You said there were two?
4 A The second paper examined the effects of
5 lake levels and algal bloom formation on Lake
6 Okeechobee.
7 Q What?
8 A Algal bloom.
9 Q Algal, like in algae?
10 A Yes.
11 Q What would cause the algal bloom?
12 A What would cause the algal bloom?
13 Q Yes.
14 A When you have certain nutrient levels and
15 the right light conditions, you get algae bloom
16 formation.
17 Q I have heard of black algae, and green
18 algae and I guess there is a whole table full of algaes.
19 I was just trying to figure out, was this a normal
20 reoccurring thing or is this due to nutrient loading?
21 A It was hard to contribute, or I couldn't
22 find a direct relationship between nutrient loading and
23 algal bloom formation, but I did find a relationship
24 between lake stage. When the lake got over 15 feet MSL,
25 just a higher water level, during the summertime, what I
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1 showed was there was movement of phosphorus and deep
2 water sediments on shore. The other particulate
3 sediments dropped out of the system, leaving phosphorus,
4 and with good light conditions, you had algal bloom
5 formation.
6 I could not find a direct relationship
7 between phosphorus loading and bloom formation in the
8 lake except in the northern drainage, by the Kissimmee
9 River and the Taylor 191 slough. There was a
10 relationship between phosphorus loading and higher bloom
11 formation. But we restricted this to the northern part
12 of the lake.
13 Q What was the mean sea level there?
14 A It didn't seem to matter. During the study
15 period, it ranged anywhere from a low of 9.6 in 1981, up
16 to a high of 17.5 in 1983, 1984. So, it seemed to be
17 independent of water levels. But the rest of the lake
18 seemed to be more sensitive to the water level changes
19 in algal bloom formation.
20 Q How did you come up with -- was it 15 feet
21 mean sea level?
22 A Right.
23 Q How did that number come about?
24 A There seemed to be an exponential increase
25 in algal bloom formation right about 15 feet. It
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1 definitely increases. There is a linear relationship
2 between stage and algal bloom formation, but around 15
3 feet there seemed to be a curvilinear response and that
4 seemed to be a critical threshold.
5 Q You did that analytical analysis to come up
6 with the 15 feet threshold?
7 A Yes, I did.
8 Q Did anyone else collaborate on that?
9 A Dave Soballe and I, right before I left,
10 were working on it. I left the district and got a new
11 job. I let it sit for a while. I had some time, and I
12 finished up the analysis in 1991, submitted it for
13 publication and it came out in 1993. It was peer
14 reviewed.
15 Q By whom?
16 A One fellow was Hunter Carrick.
17 Q Can you spell the last name?
18 A C-A-R-R-I-C-K.
19 And the other two were anonymous. I don't
20 know who they were.
21 Q Now, the resuspension of phosphorus in the
22 lake, what does that mean?
23 A When phosphorus comes into a system, most
24 of it is deposited into the sediments. Lake Okeechobee
25 is an extremely shallow lake. About 45 percent of the
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1 bottom is made up of very soft flocculent muds. When
2 the wind blows approximately 12 to 14 miles per hour,
3 these sediments are resuspended. And with the
4 sediments, the phosphorus comes up with the sediments,
5 causing high phosphorus levels in the water column.
6 Q You mean, just the wind speed, when it
7 increases past 12 miles per hour, it causes the bottom
8 to churn up?
9 A That's right.
10 Q That is interesting. Is that because it is
11 causing the water to create wakes?
12 A Waves, energy. You have to remember that
13 the lake is very shallow. And the bigger the lake, the
14 more force the wind will have on the bottom sediments,
15 because of the energy that it creates.
16 If you had the same wind speed in, say, a
17 one-acre lake, you wouldn't see the same phenomenon.
18 But Lake Okeechobee pulls almost a half million acres,
19 so the energy seems to be magnified as you move across
20 the lake. And with the water depth, so that the mud is
21 only 12, 14 feet, resuspension easily occurs and is a
22 very common phenomenon in lakes that are similar to Lake
23 Okeechobee.
24 Q So, would phosphorus tend to, I don't know
25 how to put this, stay longer in the lake because it was
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1 resuspended, instead of, I guess, accreting down further
2 into the core?
3 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
4 You can answer.
5 MR. LOREDO: You are going to hear Mr.
6 Perko say, "I object to the form" a lot. And
7 that's because I'm trying to get a question out
8 to see if you can understand me and then finally
9 answer the question.
10 THE WITNESS: Restate the question, again.
11 BY MR. LOREDO:
12 Q I guess what I'm trying to understand is
13 the resuspension and what its effect with phosphorus is.
14 And that's what I'm really getting at.
15 So, you were looking at a relationship
16 between wind and the resuspension of phosphorus, and I'm
17 trying to understand why are we looking at the
18 resuspension of phosphorus.
19 A When you get a wind event, the phosphorus
20 usually stays up in the water column about two to three
21 weeks, and then it would settle back down, again.
22 And, basically, my interest in looking at
23 that is that phosphorus concentrations varied twofold in
24 Lake Okeechobee from 1974 to 1990. And the concern was,
25 well, what is causing this change in phosphorus? And
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1 annual wind speed was able to explain a great proportion
2 of the annual variation of phosphorus concentrations in
3 Lake Okeechobee.
4 Q So, you found that in windy time periods
5 you had an increase in phosphorus?
6 A Yes.
7 Q If there is no wind, what would happen to
8 the phosphorus levels?
9 A With low wind speeds, you would find a
10 decline of open water phosphorus concentrations in the
11 lake.
12 Q Where would phosphorus end up going? Just
13 keep accreting downward? I am trying to figure how it
14 happens, the phosphorus.
15 A It eventually settles out and accretes into
16 the hydrosoil.
17 Q Why did you leave the district?
18 A I am more of a hands-on type of research
19 investigator, and I wanted to get back into direct
20 research, instead of contract research and
21 administration.
22 Q So, other than really the data analysis
23 that you did with Lake Okeechobee, you really didn't
24 have any other hands-on involvement?
25 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
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1 THE WITNESS: As the SWIM Plan was
2 developed for Lake Okeechobee and was passed, I
3 was getting involved in the Everglades SWIM Plan
4 and development of that.
5 And I guess my major duty was that Walt
6 Dineen and Pete Rhoads asked me, in the fall of
7 1989, to get with Ken Rutchey and assemble all of
8 the phosphorus data that had been collected in
9 Conservation Area 2A.
10 And my main task there was, one, to
11 determine if, in fact, there was a valid
12 statistical relationship between the distance
13 south of the L-39 canal and increase in
14 phosphorus concentrations. There had been some
15 grass produced showing that the phosphorus level
16 had increased. And the question was, is that
17 statistically valid? In the past, the data was
18 not statistically analyzed, and I was asked to do
19 that.
20 The second thing I was asked to do was try
21 and determine what causes wide variation in total
22 phosphorus concentrations in Water Conservation
23 Area 2A.
24 BY MR. LOREDO:
25 Q This is the fall of '89?
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1 A I started that task in the fall of 1989.
2 Q Let me back you up a little bit. You said
3 one of the tasks was to look at the relationship between
4 the distance from the S-10's or the L-39?
5 A Specifically, the S-10's, south of the
6 L-39s, where the district had major sampling efforts in
7 five projects.
8 Q And you said something didn't make sense.
9 There was phosphorus, and that's where I lost you.
10 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
11 BY MR. LOREDO:
12 Q We can either go back and read back your
13 answer, or I can try to jog your memory. You started to
14 say that one of the tasks was to see the relationship
15 between the distance from the S-10 south of the L-39 in
16 the phosphorus concentrations.
17 A Right.
18 Q And then you said something didn't make
19 sense, and that is where I lost you. There might be
20 phosphorus concentrations in a particular area that
21 didn't --
22 A You will have to read it back. I don't
23 recall saying anything didn't make sense to me.
24 MR. PERKO: I don't recall him saying that,
25 either.
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1 THE WITNESS: It makes sense to me.
2 MR. LOREDO: Okay. Why don't we go back to
3 where he started talking about the relationship
4 between the distance and the phosphorus
5 concentration?
6 If you can read it back.
7 (Requested portion read.)
8 BY MR. LOREDO:
9 Q I guess where we found it, you said where
10 there was grass produced, that there was an increase in
11 phosphorus?
12 A There was a front, a shiftal front, further
13 south of increasing phosphorus concentrations.
14 Q Could you explain that a little bit?
15 Elaborate a little more on that?
16 A It is in the SWIM Plan, I guess on page
17 167. Basically, what the graph showed was that 1985 and
18 1986 had phosphorus concentrations at a given distance
19 south of the S-10's which was higher than it was in 1978
20 and 1979. And I was asked to statistically analyze that
21 data to see if, in fact, they were statistically
22 different.
23 A lot of times you can have a lot of
24 variation data. If there is a lot of variation in the
25 data, then there is no statistical differences. So, the
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1 question, and it is a valid criticism, is, well, is this
2 statistically true or not? And I was asked to address
3 that, which I did.
4 Q And you were looking particularly at the
5 '85 and '86 period?
6 A I looked at all of the data compiled,
7 basically, from 1976 through September of 1988.
8 Q And what did you find?
9 A I found that, in fact, there was an
10 increase in the nutrient front south of the S-10's
11 between the mid to late 1980s, 1978, 1979. Because of a
12 lack of data before 1978, that there couldn't be much
13 done with the data. There were not many samples
14 collected before 1978.
15 Q What area of the WCA-2A are we talking
16 about?
17 A We're talking about the north or the
18 northeastern portion of WCA-2A, below the S-10D, the
19 S-10C and the S-10A.
20 Q Am I correct that you did not complete
21 these studies in the two areas that we talked about, the
22 cause of the variation and the relationship between
23 distance and phosphorus concentration, while with the
24 district?
25 A I finished it, and I wrote a memo dated
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1 March 30, 1990. I completed that assignment.
2 Q We will be taking a look at the memo. When
3 did you finally leave the district?
4 A It was probably around June 15, 1990, plus
5 or minus a few days.
6 Q Did you leave on good terms?
7 A I felt I did.
8 Q Did anyone feel otherwise?
9 A No.
10 Q To back you up a little further, what did
11 you do before the South Florida Water Management
12 District?
13 A I was completing my Ph.D. degree at Texas
14 A&M University.
15 Q I'm going through your vitae, and I am
16 looking at that you were a biologist at the University
17 of Florida. Was this as a student?
18 A No. I completed my Master's degree in
19 1979, and I worked as a research biologist from 1979
20 through November of 1983.
21 Q If you could summarize what you did there
22 during that time period?
23 A My primary duties were looking at impact of
24 aquatic vegetation on fish populations and water
25 quality.
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1 Q Were you looking at relationships between
2 the impact of vegetational water quality to fish?
3 A All three of those, those
4 interrelationships, basically.
5 Q What kind of relationship did you find?
6 A Mixed. We worked in many different
7 systems, and in some systems we found that certain
8 levels or high levels of aquatic vegetation were
9 necessary for viable sport fish populations. And in
10 some cases, complete removal of vegetation had no impact
11 whatsoever.
12 We found that aquatic vegetation,
13 primarily, submersed vegetation, acts as a nutrient
14 sink. It will take phosphorus out of the water, and you
15 will find that you will reduce your algal levels when
16 you have high levels of submersed macrophytes in
17 systems.
18 Q When you say nutrient sinks, can you
19 expound on that a little bit for me?
20 A Aquatic plants take up nutrients.
21 Q So, the more aquatic plants we have, the
22 more nutrient sinks?
23 A Particularly with the submersed aquatic
24 plants, the plants that live under water and complete
25 their life history under water, they remove or tend to
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1 take nutrients out of the water column.
2 Q What kind of aquatic plants are we talking
3 about?
4 A Mostly, I was working with hydrilla.
5 Q Excuse me?
6 A I was mostly working with hydrilla.
7 Q Could you spell that?
8 A H-Y-D-R-I-L-L-A.
9 Q What does that look like?
10 A It is just a plant. It is green. It is
11 kind of bushy, with leaves growing off of the side of
12 it, is the best way I can describe it.
13 Q You don't have any pictures with you, do
14 you?
15 A No.
16 Q Nothing like a four-leaf clover or
17 anything?
18 A No.
19 Q So, you really could find no correlation or
20 anything between the impact of vegetation, the water
21 quality and fish?
22 A Yes, we did find an impact of vegetation.
23 When you have high levels of hydrilla, it would tend to
24 clear the water, remove algae from the system. The
25 plant response to fish was variable. In some lakes, it
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1 seemed like the sport fish did fine without any plants.
2 And in some systems, it seemed like it was somewhat
3 dependent on plants.
4 Q Did you do any closed system analysis? I
5 guess by closed system I am referring to big, large fish
6 tanks.
7 A No. I was not involved in any experimental
8 type of work. I always work in natural systems.
9 Q So, you have never done any closed systems?
10 A Not in relationship to aquatic plants and
11 fish, no.
12 Q Anything else?
13 A Yes. Back in 1979, 1980, I looked at
14 physiological response of grass carp, the salinity. And
15 I looked at feeding. I looked at survival. And I
16 looked at blood salt ion and metabolic readings in grass
17 carp in relationship to salinity. And those were
18 controlled experiments in the laboratory.
19 Q I'm not sure which way you went. Did you
20 go high in salinities, or you went down in low
21 salinities?
22 A Well, the basic concern was that the stock
23 grass carp, which controls aquatic plants, will they go
24 to the estuaries and eat the vegetation? So, the
25 question was, there was no data on grass carp.
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1 And what I did was, I went ahead and
2 examined that phenomena, so that we knew or could
3 predict how far grass carp would go down in estuarine
4 areas, because they always seem to get loose, and what
5 kind of impact or potential impact they may have.
6 They're adapted to freshwater, so I made
7 pretty good estimates of what their salinity tolerance
8 was. I tested those, and got results that are useful
9 for people who stock grass carp. I was trying to
10 address the impact of what they may have in their
11 estuaries.
12 Q They could actually survive in freshwater,
13 almost?
14 A Well, they're adapted to freshwater. They
15 can survive, and grow, and eat up to six parts per
16 thousand, which is about one-sixth of seawater. So,
17 they're not very tolerant to saltwater conditions. They
18 would die after four days at 14 parts per thousand,
19 which is about 40 percent seawater. So, they're not
20 tolerant of saltwater conditions.
21 Q Have you overseen anyone for their thesis?
22 And I guess the relationship is, you -- I'm not sure
23 what the terminology is, but it is just like, I guess,
24 working and reviewing someone else's thesis?
25 A Yes, I have completed four Master of
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1 Science students at Auburn University.
2 Q And what were they about?
3 A The first thesis was looking at
4 hybridization between black crappie and white crappie in
5 a reservoir in northern Alabama, which were two
6 different fish species that were hybridizing. They were
7 an important sport fish.
8 Q In where?
9 A In a reservoir in Alabama, where I work
10 now.
11 Q And what was the second one about?
12 A The second one was using different
13 collection techniques to assess crappie populations.
14 Q The next one?
15 A The third one was using organized bass
16 tournament fishing data.
17 Q Bass what?
18 A Bass tournament fishing data, by organized
19 anglers. They supplied voluntary information. And what
20 I did was, I built broad-based, empirical models to try
21 and explain why we had a lot of differences in catch
22 rates and size of fish caught in these reservoirs. And
23 I looked at things like water quality, reservoir
24 hydraulics, aquatic plants, and, also genetic features
25 of populations, to come up with these empirical models.
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1 Q And the fourth one?
2 A The fourth one was looking at early
3 spawning and life history of large-mouth bass in
4 relationship to reservoir limnology and water level
5 fluctuations.
6 Q Did rainfall play a factor in that?
7 A It is directly related to water level
8 fluctuations.
9 Q Evapotranspiration?
10 A Again, that is climatic.
11 Q Excuse me?
12 A That is climatic. Just like Lake
13 Okeechobee, when we are in drought conditions, our
14 reservoirs come down. When we have high water
15 conditions, our reservoirs come up. So, I suppose ET
16 plays an indirect role. That is something I didn't
17 directly measure for.
18 Q What are some of the other hydraulic
19 factors which affect water level?
20 A Regulation schedules. Our panels in
21 Alabama are controlled by three major entities. The
22 Tennessee Valley Authority. Alabama Power has 14
23 reservoirs in the state that they use for hydroelectric
24 generation. And, also, the Army Corps of Engineers.
25 And so they regulate these reservoirs for
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1 hydropower, obviously, discharge of turbines. Another
2 constraint of these systems is navigation, so you have
3 to maintain a certain water level in these systems.
4 Q Anything else that you can think?
5 A That regulates hydrology?
6 Q Yes.
7 A Other than that, climatic factors. As we
8 talked about before, rainfall.
9 Q No snow in Alabama?
10 A Last year, we had 12 inches up in
11 Birmingham and 20 in Chattanooga.
12 Q That's a climatic factor.
13 MR. PERKO: Mike, if you need a break, let
14 me know.
15 MR. LOREDO: Yes, I'm sorry I didn't tell
16 you before. Anytime you want to stop, just let
17 us know.
18 BY MR. LOREDO:
19 Q I'm still going through your resume, and
20 I'm looking where you list other professional
21 activities. You set forth that you were technical
22 reviewer for papers published in the following journals,
23 and you list several journals. To avoid going through
24 each one, what I would like you to do is tell me what
25 papers you reviewed which touched on water quality.
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1 A I reviewed many papers over the last
2 probably 10, 12 years. And I, certainly, couldn't
3 recall all of the water quality papers that I reviewed
4 back then. The most recent paper that I reviewed was a
5 district publication, looking at nitrogen phosphorus
6 ratios in Lake Okeechobee.
7 Q Do you know who that was from?
8 A One of the co-authors was a fellow I know;
9 Chuck Hanlon. It seemed like the senior author was a
10 fellow named Thomas. I can't recall exactly, but Chuck
11 Hanlon was on the paper.
12 Q Do you recall what the paper was about?
13 A It was looking at nitrogen phosphorus
14 ratios in Lake Okeechobee in relationship to algal bloom
15 formation.
16 Q Was it consistent with your memo of March
17 1990?
18 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
19 THE WITNESS: March 1990 was Water
20 Conservation Area 2A. The paper was about Lake
21 Okeechobee.
22 BY MR. LOREDO:
23 Q Were similar analyses done? I guess it is
24 very broad.
25 A No. I never looked at algal bloom
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1 formation or algae growth in Water Conservation Area 2A.
2 In the lake, they looked at that. They looked at the
3 concentration of algae in relationship to phosphorus and
4 nitrogen in the lake. So, I never addressed algal
5 levels in Water Conservation Area 2A.
6 Q What type of relationship did they find in
7 Lake Okeechobee with respect to the nitrogen and
8 phosphorus to the algae bloom?
9 A There was some evidence that they presented
10 saying that algae were nitrogen limited and not
11 necessarily phosphorus limited.
12 Q Did you agree with that?
13 A No.
14 Q Why not?
15 A Because they ran a series of 100
16 correlations. They tested at the .1 level. They had 20
17 that were significant at the .1 level. By normal
18 probability of statistics, if you ran a hundred
19 correlation coefficients and tested at .110, it would be
20 significant, anyway.
21 And I felt, based on looking at their data,
22 that there was a little bit of nonsense. That this
23 didn't seem to make sense. And that was because 10 out
24 of a hundred of their statistical significant results
25 were based, or more than likely based, on the statistics
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1 that one out of 10 should be significant.
2 Q Were they running Monte Carlo tests?
3 A No. They were running, basically,
4 chi-squared type of analysis and correlation
5 coefficients.
6 Q Did they look at stage?
7 A No.
8 Q Would that, also, be a disagreement of
9 yours?
10 A It is two different data sets. And that
11 was my other concern. They only used the eight open
12 water historic stations that they have been sampling,
13 like, since 1974.
14 The data that I used in my paper included
15 all district data, both from the open water area of the
16 lake, as well as the in-shore littoral areas. So, it is
17 hard to make a comparison because you are dealing with
18 different data.
19 Q When we started talking about papers, you
20 said this was a recent paper. Was it the most recent?
21 A This is the most recent water quality paper
22 that I have reviewed.
23 Q Can you explain a little more? When you
24 say tested at the .1 level, I wasn't sure what you were
25 talking about.
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1 A Okay. You know, in statistics, we test at
2 different probability levels, and there is always a
3 possibility of some error. The higher the significance
4 level, the less likely you are going to make an error in
5 either accepting a hypothesis or rejecting a hypothesis.
6 Medical researchers use very, very high
7 levels of probability, one over 10,000, because,
8 obviously, you are dealing with human life. And as we
9 deal more in the biological and natural resources,
10 normally, we test at .05, or a one out of 20 chance of
11 making an error. Sometimes you test at .1, which is one
12 out of 10
13 Q And you think .1 is high?
14 A I use .1. I think it is okay. I think it
15 is okay to use that.
16 It all depends on your sample size, too.
17 If you have a low sample size, .1 might be legitimate.
18 But if you have a massive sample size, of many thousands
19 of data points, you can get almost anything to be
20 significant at the .1 level. So, it becomes a judgment
21 of the analyzer which significant level he is using.
22 And, also, the type of experiment that he is conducting.
23 Q And I guess since the larger the sample
24 size you would like to reduce it would be .5?
25 A .05 would be an acceptable level in this
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1 field. One out of 20, basically.
2 Q Have you reviewed any publications
3 regarding the Everglades water quality?
4 A No scientific publications regarding the
5 Everglades water quality.
6 Q You have reviewed substantial reports on
7 the water quality of the Everglades?
8 A Yes. While I was a district employee, as
9 well as in preparation for this deposition. Work I'm
10 doing for my client.
11 Q What type of consulting work did you do for
12 the Tennessee Valley Authority?
13 A What I'm doing with them is, I am assisting
14 them with sampling designs of fish populations in the
15 Tennessee River.
16 Q What do you mean by sampling designs?
17 A Setting up types of sampling that are
18 statistically valid, that will, also, give them the
19 types of information they need to assess their fish
20 populations in their system.
21 Q Is this freshwater?
22 A Freshwater.
23 Q Is this a present activity that you are
24 doing now?
25 A Yes.
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1 Q If you can, give me a summary of what you
2 are doing.
3 A What I'm doing, basically, I'm working with
4 them in the field, as well as technical exchange on
5 setting up a sampling design for adequately determining
6 large-mouth bass density and biomass in reservoirs.
7 Q What does biomass mean?
8 A Biomass means it is a measure of weight per
9 unit area.
10 Q Is this of the water or the fish?
11 A Of the fish.
12 Q So, it is how much fish we can put in the
13 particular reservoir?
14 A No. How many fish we have in the
15 reservoir.
16 Their past sampling design did not
17 adequately address this, and I have developed a new
18 technique that gives what we believe is a better
19 estimate of what the population is in their reservoirs
20 on the Tennessee River.
21 Q That is interesting.
22 Do you go diving, fishing, or is there
23 another way to sit and count the fish?
24 MR. PERKO: Do you understand the question?
25 THE WITNESS: Yes, I understand the
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1 question.
2 BY MR. LOREDO:
3 Q What I'm trying to do is elicit a little
4 more information on how you went about determining the
5 biomass.
6 A What we need to do is -- the large-mouth
7 bass, primarily, is a shallow water inhabiting fish. In
8 the springtime, it comes into shallow water to spawn.
9 Most of the adults come in to spawn.
10 In the past, their sampling was conducted
11 in the summertime. In the summertime, the fish leave
12 the hot water, and they move to the deeper waters of the
13 lake, where they're more inaccessible to what we call
14 electrofishing gear. It is a type of device that you
15 put electricity in the water and the fish come up. It
16 is only effective down to about eight to 10 feet. Once
17 the fish get past eight to 10 feet, you can't collect
18 them.
19 And they were doing some creel work on the
20 lake, where they were finding that they were getting
21 creel estimates of six kilograms per hectare in their
22 reservoirs. But they were doing the sampling in the
23 summertime, and getting only six kilograms per hectare
24 of fish.
25 And based on the fish population that I had
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1 there, they felt that they were way underestimating the
2 size of their population. So, what I did was, I
3 developed a technique with them to sample fish in the
4 springtime, using electrofishing gear, by blocking off
5 coves that were six to eight acres in size, and using a
6 statistical technique to remove a portion of the fish
7 out of the cove, put them outside of the net, and using
8 a statistical technique, come up with an estimate of the
9 population density and the biomass. That gave them, I
10 believe, based on what I know about fish populations, a
11 better estimate. All of these things we do are
12 estimates of the fish population.
13 Q Thank you for taking the time to explain
14 that.
15 A We can provide the paper, if you want to
16 get it. It is in review right now.
17 MR. PERKO: Do you want to take a break?
18 MR. LOREDO: Sure.
19 (Brief recess.)
20 BY MR. LOREDO:
21 Q Continuing to go through your resume, I
22 notice that you have here consultant to the South
23 Florida Water Management District. That was prior work,
24 or are you still doing consulting work for them?
25 A I only did one job with you down there. I
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1 got on your side. I was invited to join your scientific
2 pool in the summer of 1992, when that was getting going.
3 The Division of Research Appraisal was formed, I guess
4 headed up by Garth Redfield. And I guess in talking to
5 some people down there, they felt that I was a pretty
6 good data analyzer.
7 I addressed a wide variety of different
8 scientific issues. And I was invited by the district to
9 provide scientific expertise and got on your scientific
10 pool, I guess, October 1, 1992, as the new fiscal year
11 started. The only work that I have done for you was
12 that Peter David asked me to come down to help him
13 analyze and write a paper on the relationship between
14 wading birds and hydrology on Lake Okeechobee. He
15 requested my statistical expertise to help him write
16 that paper.
17 Q Did you complete that paper?
18 A David completed the paper. I completed the
19 task and provided a report to David sometime at the end
20 of May, 1993.
21 Q Were you ever asked to do any work with the
22 Everglades, other than -- we have already talked a
23 little bit about, I thought we had talked about it --
24 you did some work with WCA-2A?
25 A While I was at the district, yes.
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1 Q While you were at the district?
2 A Yes.
3 Q Other than that, have they asked you to do
4 any work with anything with respect to the WCA's or the
5 Everglades?
6 MR. PERKO: "They" meaning the district.
7 THE WITNESS: In September of 1992, Steven
8 Hill, from the Research Appraisal Division,
9 contacted me. We talked probably a half-hour, 45
10 minutes. They were looking for a statistician to
11 help them set up a sampling design to examine
12 changes or densities of aquatic plants in the
13 Everglades nutrient removal project.
14 I talked to Steve extensively. I said
15 things sounded pretty good. We talked about some
16 of the work that I had done in looking at
17 repeated measures; sampling fixed stations
18 repeatedly over time.
19 I sent him a draft copy of a paper that was
20 published just recently on that. The paper was
21 accepted at the time, but sometimes it takes six
22 months for these papers to come out.
23 I sent him the paper, and he said he would
24 get back with me, and I never heard anything from
25 him after that. And that was my only contact
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1 with anybody on the district about doing any
2 work, any other work for that matter, in the
3 Everglades.
4 BY MR. LOREDO:
5 Q What is the title of the paper that was
6 just recently published?
7 A I can give you the exact name. Go down to
8 the middle of page 5. Meceina, Bettoli & DeVries, 1994,
9 Use of a split-plot analysis of a variance design for
10 repeated measures fishery data. Which, also, applies to
11 any type of sampling you that use with fixed stations
12 over time. It does not necessarily have to apply to
13 fish data, but we put fish data in there because we
14 published it in a fish journal.
15 Q Just to avoid questions down the line, can
16 you explain the split-plot analysis of variance to me?
17 And, remember, I'm a layman.
18 A It is not going to be easy. We find that
19 our graduate students have to have two advanced courses
20 in graduate statistics, and then we work on it for two
21 weeks for about eight hours. So, five minutes. Are you
22 ready? Ten, 15?
23 Q Whatever it takes you, because I have
24 reviewed some of your work and you seem to use the
25 split-plot analysis frequently. So, this is probably a
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1 better time.
2 A Sure. Let's do it right now. You have got
3 to think about a station, no matter what you sample. It
4 is kind of analogous to being a human subject. Let's
5 say, and medical people have used this a lot, if you
6 have a human subject, and you are doing some kind of
7 psychological analysis or you are doing some kind of
8 drug treatment, that each patient is going to respond
9 differently to a drug treatment. That is
10 understandable, right? People have different
11 physiology.
12 When you think about a station, whether it
13 contains fish, whether it contains some kind of
14 nutrient, water quality parameter, stations, in
15 themselves, inherently have their own characteristics
16 that are unique. And if you repeatedly sample those
17 over time, you need to take into consideration that
18 variation. You may manipulate the system somehow, there
19 may be some response to that, but certain stations may
20 respond differently to a manipulation than other
21 stations.
22 So, the analysis, when you think about
23 analysis of variance, what you are doing is you are
24 taking a variable that you are trying to understand and
25 you are partitioning it into different components.
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1 The second thing the analysis does is it
2 takes into account the temporal correlation of a
3 parameter that you measure over time.
4 If you get a high density of a plant in
5 August, if you go back there in September, and nothing
6 else really happens, you're going to get a high density
7 of that plant in September. It takes into consideration
8 the temporal correlation that you measure over time. It
9 takes into account the interactions that you are looking
10 at. It takes into account the temporal correlation, as
11 well as what we call the main effects, or what you are
12 trying to do or manipulate, which may be important.
13 At certain times, a manipulation may exert
14 a differential effect than at other times. So, the
15 analysis is very comprehensive. It is much more
16 comprehensive than, let's say, a one-way analysis of
17 variance or two-way analysis of variance, because it
18 takes in a lot of different components and factors out
19 that variation. It leaves you, of course, with the
20 error, which is your unexplained variance.
21 And, again, not to get into too much
22 detail, the procedures that tests for is main treatment
23 effects or manipulation effects, temporal effects and
24 then the interactions that are involved in that, as
25 well, too.
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1 I didn't come up with anything new here. I
2 mean, let the record show that this is nothing new.
3 People have been using this for about 30 years. I am
4 just applying it to a field that, normally, has not used
5 this in the past. And trying to say we should be doing
6 this, because we get more comprehensive analysis and it
7 is, also, more accurate. So, I didn't design this.
8 This has been around for a long time. I just tried to
9 promote the application of it. And that's what that
10 paper is about.
11 Q Is this, like, maybe second or third order
12 analysis? Not even close?
13 A No. This is analysis of variance. And in
14 many statistical texts that are used in the country, you
15 can find the procedure in there. It has kind of been
16 tucked away and not used very much.
17 Q Do you believe there was a general field --
18 that it was used more often in one field versus maybe
19 water quality issues?
20 A It was more used, again, in the medical
21 field, is where it got its start. Doctors noticed that
22 patients respond differently to different drug
23 treatment, so they had to do something about it. And
24 they got with statisticians and worked it out.
25 One thing you have to understand about the
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1 medical field is that they have kind of had the jump on
2 doing statistical analysis. They have had to. In many
3 cases, they have worked very, very close with
4 statisticians. People in the biological and natural
5 sciences sometimes don't work as closely with
6 statisticians. Because of the nature of the subject,
7 human life is very important. The funding is, also,
8 just tremendous in medical science, as compared, let's
9 say, with other fields of science.
10 Q Now, is this analysis important because you
11 are going to be comparing the stations? You said that
12 one of the important things was the understanding that
13 each station is fixed.
14 A Well, it is fixed. It is chosen and it is
15 fixed. And those stations may have phosphorus
16 concentrations unique to themselves. And if you are
17 sampling over here in a slough, compared to sampling in
18 cattail or sampling in sawgrass, then they might have
19 characteristics of water quality that are unique, above
20 and beyond anything that might be happening.
21 Q And this analysis uses that as a premise,
22 and allows you to determine relationships between
23 stations?
24 A The way I used it is, where I have used it
25 in the past is to determine changes over time,
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1 basically, by saying you've got a certain time interval
2 here. We have manipulated the system to something
3 different. We have kind of a before, which is a
4 treatment, which is what we're, primarily, interested
5 in, and then an after, which is a treatment effect. So,
6 that's how I, basically, use the analysis in much of my
7 work.
8 Q But you are looking only at that station,
9 it sounds like?
10 A No, I'm looking at all of the stations. I
11 mean, I take into account the variations associated with
12 that individual station, but I'm interested in --
13 depending on how I group the stations, in certain areas,
14 certain sections of a place, I will use a certain group
15 of stations and all of that, kind of as replicates. You
16 know, in statistics, we have got to have replication.
17 So, the station serves as a replicate. A time or area
18 may serve as a treatment.
19 And we put the data all together. And,
20 ultimately, it is not the station effects so much. We
21 hope our stations are somewhat similar. Not all of the
22 time are they, but we have got to take that variation
23 out. We are mostly interested in our main treatment
24 effects when we do the analysis.
25 Q Okay. In your resume, I'm looking at the
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1 refereed scientific publications. Are they set forth in
2 reverse order?
3 A Yes. Typically, people, when they look at
4 this, they like to see what you have done most recently.
5 I start in 1994, and go back to my first publication in
6 1979.
7 Q In looking at this, your most recent
8 refereed scientific publication was titled, Effects of a
9 minimum flow release on the community structure of
10 shoreline fishes in the Tallapoosa River, Alabama?
11 A That's correct, Tallapoosa.
12 Q Now, where were these flow releases coming
13 from?
14 A From a hydroelectric facility.
15 Q And what effect did the flow have?
16 A Basically, what we looked at there was
17 trying to institute a minimum flow back into a system
18 and restore fishes that are adapted more to flowing
19 conditions. And we had some data from 1988, 1989, that
20 had no minimum flow conditions. In 1991, the Federal
21 Energy Regulatory Commission ordered Alabama Power to
22 discharge a minimum of 1200 CFS as a minimum flow, and
23 we measured the effects or the impact that minimum flow
24 had on the fish community structure below the dam.
25 Q Did you look at vegetation, the effect on
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1 vegetation?
2 A There is no vegetation in the system.
3 Q Doctor, so I don't have to go through all
4 of your publications, really what I'm looking for is to
5 see where you did a similar analysis such as I think
6 we're going to get to. Your work with the Everglades,
7 which had to do with flow, cattail vegetation and I
8 believe stage played a factor. If I can get you to
9 review the refereed scientific publications and check
10 them off. And instead of me going through each one,
11 we'll save some time.
12 A Sure.
13 I think, also, paramount to this is my
14 expertise in statistical analysis. I published one
15 paper on using repeated measures for fixed stations,
16 which applies to just about any kind of field in the
17 natural sciences.
18 I have, also, published a paper using
19 regression to analyze differences in growth rates in
20 fish, which is, also, applicable to any other animal,
21 and the plants, as well, too. So, I'll highlight those.
22 Q Okay.
23 A I am bringing in the aquatic plants here,
24 too.
25 MR. PERKO: Counsel, you are asking for
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1 papers that are related to his analysis, but not
2 necessarily papers he's relying upon; is that
3 correct?
4 MR. LOREDO: That's correct.
5 THE WITNESS: Some of these are reaching,
6 but I'll give you the benefit of what I believe
7 to be related.
8 MR. LOREDO: Let's mark his resume as
9 Exhibit 1.
10 (Deposition Exhibit 1 marked for
11 identification.)
12 BY MR. LOREDO:
13 Q Now that you have marked your resume, to
14 help us out, so that we can discuss some of the
15 publications and how it relates to what we're doing here
16 with respect to the Everglades.
17 The first one that you marked was a 1994
18 publication. This is Use of split-plot analysis of
19 variance design for repeated-measures fishery data. I
20 think we talked about this.
21 A Yes.
22 Q And this was for the Alabama water? Where
23 was this?
24 A The examples that I used were both from
25 Alabama or from Texas, but it is the analysis that I
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1 used to analyze changes in total phosphorus
2 concentrations in WCA-2A.
3 Q Who are the other authors?
4 A Dr. Bettoli is an assistant professor at
5 Tennessee Tech University, at Cookeville, Tennessee.
6 Q And what does he have his Ph.D. in?
7 A Fishery science.
8 Q From Texas Tech? I'm sorry, Tennessee
9 Tech?
10 A He's a professor at Tennessee Tech. He
11 earned his Ph.D. at Texas A&M University.
12 Q How about D. R. DeVries?
13 A Assistant professor with me at Auburn.
14 Q Do you know what his Ph.D. is in?
15 A Fish ecology.
16 Q Is the publication that we're talking about
17 here, the first one, is it titled Fisheries?
18 A The title of the journal is Fisheries.
19 Q And in this particular analysis, you were
20 using data from Alabama. What were you trying to do in
21 this publication? Explain your method, the split-plot
22 analysis?
23 A One, to explain it. And, of course, since
24 it was published in Fisheries, we wanted to use fishery
25 data. And we had some data from Alabama and, also,
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1 Texas, that we had collected and we used those as an
2 example. The paper, I consider it more of a teaching
3 paper. It is scientifically-based.
4 Again, the method has been around for 30 or
5 35 years. We wanted to present application. And it is
6 written in quasi-technical terms, I guess. Somebody has
7 to know about statistics to understand it, obviously.
8 But it is, also, not geared towards the theoretical
9 statisticians.
10 Q It is geared for the --
11 A No, it is not geared towards the
12 theoretical statisticians. I am not a theoretical
13 statistician. I'm an applied statistician.
14 Q Who was the first one to use the split-plot
15 analysis for fisheries?
16 A For fisheries, we found a few people in
17 1983, 1984, I can't recall them, but we looked at the
18 literature, that were doing controlled experiments in
19 tanks, where they repeatedly measured fish over time in
20 tanks and used the technique.
21 But in our review of the literature, we
22 found very, very sparse or hardly anything at all about
23 using it in natural ecosystems. And, again, the people
24 who did it in fisheries were coming from the
25 experimental, mechanistic control system type of
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1 approach, laboratory, versus those doing it in the
2 natural field.
3 Q When do you think the first application to
4 the natural field was used?
5 A In some the ecological studies that have
6 been done on vertebrates and interactions, we can find
7 stuff as early as the 1970s.
8 Q Now, are you, also, looking at vegetation?
9 It seems like in this paper that we're talking about you
10 weren't using vegetation. When did you first use
11 vegetation with this type of analysis?
12 A The first time I used it for
13 macrovegetation was in the analysis of Water
14 Conservation Area 2A water quality data.
15 I'm sorry, you said vegetation, right?
16 Q Yes, I did.
17 A I have not used it to analyze changes in
18 vegetation. I have only used it for fishery data and
19 water quality data. I got confused by the question.
20 Excuse me.
21 Q Have you thought about using it for
22 vegetation?
23 A Yes, I did. I talked to Steven Hill, at
24 the Water Management District, trying to set up a
25 sampling design for looking at the plant changes in the
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1 Everglades nutrient removal project. I thought about it
2 for a while. It could be used.
3 Q To your knowledge, do you know if anyone
4 has tried to use it?
5 A For vegetation?
6 Q Yes.
7 A Not to my knowledge.
8 Q You do think it can be used?
9 A Based on what I know about characteristics
10 of water quality, animal populations, what I know about
11 plants, it would be a very apropos type of test for
12 looking at changes in plant abundance over time.
13 Q And when you previously answered with your
14 analysis of WCA-2A, what you thought you referenced to
15 was water quality?
16 A That's what I used it for, in WCA-2A. I
17 used it to analyze changes in phosphorus over time in
18 Water Conversation Area 2A.
19 Q Is there fish life in the WCA-2A?
20 A Yes, sir.
21 Q Have you used it to analyze the fisheries?
22 A I have not analyzed or collected any fish
23 data from Water Conservation Area 2A.
24 Q For any of the Everglades?
25 A No.
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1 Q I'm going to move to the next publication
2 that you marked off here. If you can, just give me the
3 summary. This one is where you co-authored it with Dr.
4 Bayne and Reeves, in 1994, titled zooplankton, fish and
5 sport fishing quality among four Alabama and Georgia
6 reservoirs of varying trophic state.
7 A We looked at four reservoirs in the State,
8 varying trophic state, the highest being a eutrophic
9 reservoir. We had some lower trophic reservoirs, some
10 moderately trophic reservoirs and we had one mesotrophic
11 reservoir. And what we did was, we made broad-based
12 comparisons on all the biomass, phytoplankton
13 concentrations, zooplankton and fish biomass in
14 community structure in these four reservoirs.
15 Q Take me through those, again, the trophic
16 stages. There was one that it was the first time that I
17 had heard about it. I think it started with an M.
18 A Mesotrophic.
19 Q What is that?
20 A It means middle, middle trophic state,
21 being a moderately productive reservoir.
22 Q I guess that is somewhere in the middle
23 between oligotrophic?
24 A That's right.
25 Q What is on the high spectrum?
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1 A Eutrophic.
2 Q Were you looking at water quality?
3 A Yes.
4 Q Vegetation?
5 A These reservoirs did not have any submerged
6 or emerging vegetation, but we were looking at algal
7 biomass, as well as algal community composition.
8 Q Did you look at stage?
9 A We looked at stage in relationship to total
10 phosphorus concentrations and phytoplankton productivity
11 in these systems.
12 Q And what kind of relationship did you find?
13 A We found that when the reservoir was high
14 and flushing very quickly, that you had a lot of
15 phosphorus in the system, but there was not enough time
16 for algae to take up the phosphorus and express
17 themselves.
18 And so we found that in wet years, we had
19 lower algal biomass in these systems, even though there
20 was the same or more phosphorus. When we were in the
21 dryer conditions, the reservoirs were lower, but they
22 weren't flushing as quickly, there was enough time for
23 phosphorus and other associated nutrients, like
24 nitrogen, to be up-taken by algae. And we had higher
25 levels of algae in these systems when we had lower water
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1 levels and lower inflow or discharge rates.
2 Q Did you attempt to use, I'm not sure if I'm
3 applying this properly, a lagging effect to it?
4 A Basically, we looked at the growing system
5 from April through September, which would incorporate
6 any type of lag effects that may occur. Based on
7 research that I have done, and other folks, it looks
8 like the minimum retention time that you need is
9 anywhere from 14 to about 50 days. And by encompassing
10 a four-month period, we would adequately cover any lag
11 effects that might be involved in flushing nutrients out
12 of the system.
13 Q Did you develop a statistical model for it?
14 A Not for those lakes. But my current
15 research activities in Alabama is trying to define what
16 that critical retention time for maximum expression of
17 phytoplankton is, based on phosphorus concentrations,
18 and my results are still preliminary.
19 Q Who are you doing the paper for this type
20 of research that you are doing now?
21 A I am a professor, and I have some grant
22 money to look at this phenomena. But part of my charge
23 as a professor at Auburn University is to develop new
24 and innovative techniques to understanding our
25 reservoirs, and our management and I'm pursuing this on
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1 my own.
2 Agencies have liked the work that I'm doing
3 in Alabama, and they're providing me with all of their
4 data, and I'm trying to put it all together and try and
5 determine the influence of retention time, discharge
6 rates, on phytoplankton expression in Alabama
7 reservoirs. But I don't have direct grant funding to do
8 that right now.
9 Q Is it phytoplankton?
10 A Phytoplankton.
11 Q Would you spell that?
12 A Sure. P-H-Y-T-O-P-L-A-N-K-T-O-N
13 Q Now, when you are saying that you are
14 presently working, is it trying to determine a
15 statistical model for this relationship?
16 A Yes.
17 Q When you say, yes, you seem to hesitate a
18 little bit. Is it something more than just that?
19 A No, it is a statistical analysis.
20 Q And what type of variable are you looking
21 at?
22 A Basically, I'm looking at phosphorus,
23 chlorophyll a concentrations. _
24 Q Could you spell that?
25 A C-H-L-O-R-O-P-H-Y-L-L, space, little a,
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1 underlined, or alpha.
2 Q The reason I'm doing that, Doctor, is that
3 the court reporter is going to be very appreciative when
4 she has to type this whole thing up.
5 You said some of the variables were
6 phosphorus and chloro -- I can't even pronounce it.
7 A Chlorophyll a. _
8 Q What other variables?
9 A Retention time of reservoirs, which is
10 defined as volume, divided by discharge.
11 Q Any other variables?
12 A Right now, that's all I'm looking at.
13 Q I guess each time you look at another
14 variable, it just magnifies the study?
15 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
16 BY MR. LOREDO:
17 Q You can answer. He just doesn't like the
18 way I posed my question.
19 A You never have enough data.
20 Q Dr. Bayne, can you tell me a little bit
21 about him?
22 A He's a limnologist at Auburn University.
23 (Brief recess.)
24 MR. LOREDO: Back on the record.
25 BY MR. LOREDO:
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1 Q Go ahead.
2 A His title is professor. And him and I
3 worked together on a number of different projects; fish
4 water quality and phytoplankton in reservoirs.
5 Q And what does he have his Ph.D. in?
6 A Limnology.
7 Q I'm sorry, you said that.
8 And Dr. Reeves?
9 A Dr. Reeves is not a doctor. He's got a
10 Master's degree from Auburn University. And he's chief
11 of fishery research for the State of Alabama, Department
12 of Conservation and Natural Resources.
13 Q Moving along to your next publication, this
14 is with Bettoli, Noble and Betsill?
15 A Yes.
16 Q You already told me a little bit about
17 Bettoli. Tell me about Noble.
18 A Noble is department head of fisheries at
19 North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, North
20 Carolina.
21 Q Does he have his Ph.D.?
22 A Yes.
23 Q In what?
24 A Fishery science.
25 Q And Betsill?
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1 A Betsill is a research fisheries biologist
2 for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
3 Q Does he have his Ph.D.?
4 A Yes.
5 Q Do you know in what?
6 A Fishery science.
7 Q Now, in fishery sciences, does that, also,
8 have the statistical aspect in it?
9 A Most people who get a Ph.D. in fishery
10 science will have anywhere from probably four to six
11 classes in statistics. So, you do a lot of statistics
12 and have a lot of training in statistics.
13 Q Enough statistics to understand the
14 split-plot analysis?
15 A All of these authors on this paper
16 understand the split-plot analysis.
17 Q Can you tell me a little bit about the
18 paper which is titled response of a reservoir fish
19 community to aquatic vegetation remover?
20 A Lake Conroe was a water storage impoundment
21 north of Houston, about 50 miles. And right after
22 impoundment, in 1974, the reservoir become infested with
23 hydrilla. By 1980, about 45 percent of the reservoir
24 was covered with hydrilla.
25 The other people of the lake, the people
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1 who didn't like to fish hydrilla, wanted some aquatic
2 plant removal. People liked to swim, liked to boat,
3 water ski and sail. And there was a study that was
4 conducted by Texas A&M University to go ahead and
5 evaluate grass carp stocking on Lake Conroe, and the
6 impacts on the fish community in that lake.
7 Q By stocking with that type of fish, do they
8 reduce the hydrilla?
9 A They completely removed the hydrilla two
10 years after stocking. And where the lake had 8,000
11 acres of hydrilla, two years later there was no hydrilla
12 in the lake at all.
13 Q Is there a fish population out there that
14 likes cattails?
15 A Fish will utilize cattails.
16 Q In what way?
17 A They will live there.
18 Q Will they eat it?
19 A Grass carp will eat cattails. It is not a
20 preferred plant.
21 Q Is sawgrass a preferred plant for them?
22 A I don't know that.
23 Q Moving along, the next publication I see
24 you authored yourself. And this was titled summer
25 fluctuations in planktonic chlorophyll concentrations in
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1 Lake Okeechobee, Florida: The influence of lake levels.
2 I think we talked a little bit about this.
3 A Yes, we did.
4 Q And this is where you looked at the
5 relationship between water levels and the planktonic
6 chlorophyll?
7 A That's right.
8 Q Let's move on to the next paper.
9 A This one.
10 Q This one you authored with Betsill, Bettoli
11 and Chichra?
12 A Cichra.
13 Q Can you tell me a little bit about Cichra?
14 A Cichra has a Master of Science in limnology
15 from Ohio State University. She is currently a
16 biologist at the University of Florida.
17 Q And we have already talked about Betsill
18 and Bettoli?
19 A Yes.
20 Q Tell me a little bit about this
21 publication, titled limnological changes in a large
22 reservoir following vegetation removal by grass carp.
23 A This dovetailed the earlier publication
24 where I looked at water quality changes, phytoplankton
25 changes, chlorophyll a changes, zooplankton changes in _
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1 response to that grass carp stocking, complete
2 vegetation removal in Lake Conroe.
3 Q A similar result, with the results of
4 placing the grass carp in the reservoir?
5 A As compared to what?
6 Q As to what we were talking about in the
7 study that you did or the publication that you did in
8 the North American Journal of Fisheries Management,
9 where it was titled response of reservoir fish community
10 to aquatic vegetation removal.
11 A That was fish. This is the limnology, so
12 it is a different component of the ecosystem that was
13 looked at in this study.
14 Q Okay.
15 Just educating me a little bit. What are
16 the components when we're looking at the limnology?
17 A We looked at phosphorus, soluble reactive
18 and total phosphorus. We looked at nitrate, nitrite.
19 We looked at sulfate. We looked at potassium. We
20 looked at the phytoplankton in the community, abundance
21 and structure, the actual species identification of the
22 algae. We looked at chlorophyll a, which is a measure _
23 of phytoplankton abundance. And we looked at the
24 zooplankton, which is a small Crustacea that lives in
25 freshwater.
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1 Q And you looked at those changes following
2 the vegetation removal by the grass carp?
3 A Both before and after.
4 Q What were the changes after?
5 A The changes that occurred afterwards is
6 that phytoplankton abundance increased. We had more
7 algae in the system after complete plant removal. We
8 found water clarity was less, mostly due to the increase
9 in phytoplankton, which limited light. We found
10 nutrient concentrations, particularly potassium,
11 increased dramatically in the reservoir system after
12 vegetation removal. Potassium tied up in the aquatic
13 plants and released back in the system. We, initially,
14 found a great increase in zooplankton abundance and a
15 tremendous crash due to increase in certain fish species
16 that like to consume a lot of zooplankton. And they
17 drove the zooplankton, essentially, to really low levels
18 in the reservoir.
19 Q Did the phosphorus increase?
20 A Our phosphorus concentrations were not
21 measured accurately enough to determine any change. We
22 only measured to 10 micrograms per liter, which was not
23 sensitive enough to detect changes.
24 Q Did you develop any type of model,
25 statistical model, for these type of changes?
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1 A No, we didn't develop any model. We just
2 recorded these changes, saying that this is a potential
3 impact that grass carp may have, if you have this amount
4 of vegetation and then you remove it.
5 Q Can you tell me a little bit about the next
6 publication, titled a simple regression model to assess
7 environmental effects on fish growth?
8 A Okay. Many times you are interested in
9 fish growth, growth of any animal. And what I
10 developed, there was a regression technique, to take in
11 account the age dependent effects that growth has and
12 their interactions with the environment. As fish grow
13 older, they decrease their increments in length. They
14 don't grow as quickly.
15 And so that if you do any type of habitat
16 or environmental manipulation, you will not have a big
17 impact on fish later in life. You will have the biggest
18 impact early in life, when they have their fastest
19 growth rates. And that will be true of any organism.
20 Most organisms, animal organisms, grow most quickly
21 early in their life.
22 So, I developed a regression type of
23 technique that was able to incorporate changes in the
24 environment, food availability, to assess the impact on
25 growth rates in fish.
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1 Q What was the period of time in a fish's
2 life where the environmental effects would be the
3 greatest?
4 A The first two to three years of life. It
5 all depends on the species of fish.
6 Q And what type of environmental effects were
7 you looking at?
8 A Mostly, food availability. As an example,
9 in my model or the regression model that I developed,
10 obviously, the more food you have, the more the organism
11 is going to grow.
12 Q And when you say food, are we looking at
13 vegetation as a source?
14 A In this case, these were carnivorous fish,
15 so these were changes in abundance of what we call prey
16 fish or the smaller fish they may consume.
17 Q The next publication you co-authored with a
18 Mr. Soballe?
19 A Soballe.
20 Q Tell me a little bit about Mr. Soballe.
21 A Dr. Soballe is a Ph.D. from Iowa State
22 University. Former senior environmentalist with the
23 South Florida Water Management District. Currently
24 project leader with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
25 or now currently the U.S. National Biological Survey,
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1 looking at restoration efforts on the Mississippi River.
2 And he is stationed in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
3 Q Do you know what his Ph. was in?
4 A Limnology.
5 Q Was he a predecessor of yours at the South
6 Florida Water Management District?
7 A I believe Dave got there about a month or
8 two before I did, in the summer of 1990.
9 Q David Soballe?
10 A David Soballe did. I got to the district
11 in August of 1987. Dave had just gotten there. And I
12 am it was a month or two before me, but he was an
13 employee, like me.
14 MR. PERKO: You said 1990.
15 THE WITNESS: I sorry, 1987, I guess.
16 BY MR. LOREDO:
17 Q I was trying to figure out if he came in
18 after you or just a little bit before you left.
19 A Right before I got there. Dave and I
20 worked together on the lake.
21 Q When you say lake, Lake Okeechobee?
22 A Yes.
23 Q Do you know when he left?
24 A I have a broad time frame in my mind. I
25 think it was in the fall of 1991. That is speculation.
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1 Q So, you left in 1992?
2 A I left in June of 1990.
3 Q So, almost a year, give or take a few
4 months after?
5 A I believe so, to the best of my
6 recollection.
7 Q I think we talked a little bit about the
8 variability of wind with Lake Okeechobee as to
9 phosphorus. What other constituents did you look at?
10 A I looked at nitrate, nitrite. I looked at
11 total nitrogen. I looked at turbidity. I looked at
12 water clarity. As best I can recall, that was it.
13 Q Was water clarity a variable with
14 vegetation?
15 A Not where we were working. We were working
16 with the data from the eight historic stations located
17 far offshore, that were not associated with vegetation.
18 So, we didn't look at the relationship between
19 vegetation and water clarity in that particular paper.
20 Q Okay. Looking at the next publication,
21 that you co-authored with Cichra in 1987, can you tell
22 me a little bit about that publication, which was
23 published in the Texas Journal of Science, regarding
24 limnological characteristics of Aquilla Lake?
25 A Aquilla Lake, A-Q-U-I-I-L-L-A. A new
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1 impoundment for water supply and flood control, built by
2 the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. The dam was
3 completed in 1983. It took two years for the reservoir
4 to fill.
5 And, basically, this is a descriptive paper
6 looking at the limnology of a brand-new reservoir.
7 Something that has not been done too often, mostly
8 because reservoirs are a lot older and people didn't
9 start studying these things until later on. So, it was
10 kind of a unique paper, as I described the limnological
11 processes as the lake filled up. It turned from a small
12 river, a small stream, to a 3300-acre impoundment.
13 Q And in this impoundment area, was there
14 discharges? How did the water come in and out?
15 A The water came in through two main
16 tributaries. One was the Hackberry Creek and one was
17 the Aquilla Creek, that drained black land prairie soils
18 in that region of Texas. It was south of Dallas, about
19 50 miles.
20 Q And you are looking at the characteristics
21 as additional water was put into the impoundment?
22 A Yes. Basically, when you impounded a
23 reservoir, a lot of unique things happen. You don't
24 have a fish community that is established in the
25 reservoir. You have got some stream fish there, and you
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1 flood all of this organic material.
2 Basically, the most unique thing we found
3 there was just tremendous blooms of zooplankton, the
4 small crustaceans that form the base of the animal food
5 web. We found algal levels, also, went up in the
6 reservoir. And, again, that is due to the flooding of
7 the old plant material. So, it was just based on data
8 that I collected during the first two years of
9 impoundment.
10 Q Looking at your next publication here, it
11 looks like you co-authored it with Shireman. Is that
12 how you pronounce that, S-H-I-R-E-M-A-N?
13 A Yes, Dr. Jerry Shireman.
14 Q Can you tell me a little bit about him?
15 A He is department head of fisheries and
16 aquatic sciences at the University of Florida. A Ph.D.
17 in fishery science, Iowa state.
18 Q Is it Dr. Hoyer?
19 A He has a Master's of science degree in
20 limnology from the University of Missouri. And he's
21 currently a research biologist at the University of
22 Florida.
23 Q I'm sorry, at what university did he get
24 his Master's?
25 A University of Missouri, at Columbia.
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1 Q And Canfield?
2 A Canfield, professor of Limnology, Ph.D.,
3 Iowa State.
4 Q Is he a professor at Iowa?
5 A He's a professor at the University of
6 Florida now. He got his Ph.D. at Iowa state.
7 Q Did you meet him at the University of
8 Florida when you were the --
9 A Yes. When I was finishing up my Master's
10 degree, he came on as an assistant professor of
11 limnology. He just graduated with his Ph.D. from Iowa
12 State, 1979.
13 Q In limnology?
14 A In limnology.
15 Q Can you tell me a little bit about the
16 publication that you co-authored with those gentlemen?
17 A Yes. The results were somewhat similar to
18 what we saw in Lake Conroe. We had a lake that was 80
19 percent infested with hydrilla. A smaller lake, only
20 200 acres. We stocked adequate numbers of grass carp in
21 there, and we saw a dramatic decline in hydrilla in the
22 lake. We saw a dramatic increase in phytoplankton algae
23 in the lake. We saw a dramatic increase in total
24 phosphorus in the lake.
25 Q Increase or decrease?
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1 A Increase in total phosphorus in the lake,
2 that we attributed, primarily, to the release of
3 phosphorus from the plants as they were eaten and the
4 feces of the grass carp went back in the water. In
5 fact, Canfield did the analysis. I was an author on the
6 paper. I collected it. He did a mass balance and could
7 account for the increase in total phosphorus from what
8 was in the plants and then, also, that was contained in
9 the grass carp.
10 Q That is interesting. I thought the
11 phosphorus increased because of the reduction of the
12 hydrilla. Well, maybe this is an assumption that I
13 make. Did hydrilla take up phosphorus?
14 A That's right. They will take it up. When
15 the hydrilla is no longer there, it can't take up the
16 phosphorus any more, so any phosphorus that is in some
17 kind of dynamic equilibrium in the lake has to go
18 somewhere. If you have enough light, it switches from
19 hydrilla-based plant community to an algae-based
20 community.
21 The thing about this lake, too, it is
22 located in Orlando, on top of some phosphatic deposits.
23 The lake is naturally eutrophic. The hydrilla came into
24 the system and was able to pull the phosphorus out. And
25 we had clear water conditions, we had water clarity, at
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1 five to six meters. After the hydrilla was removed, we
2 had water clarity of about 1 to 1.5 meters. An expected
3 response, in my scientific view.
4 Q When the fish ate the hydrilla, I guess
5 their excretion produced phosphorus, also?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Moving on, I have another paper here that
8 you did with Dr. Canfield, with Shireman, Colle and
9 Haller, C-O-L-L-E and H-A-L-L-E-R.
10 First, can you tell me a little bit about,
11 I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, is it
12 Colle?
13 A Doug Colle, research biologist at the
14 University of Florida, Master's degree in fishery
15 science, Texas A&M University.
16 Q And is it Dr. Haller?
17 A Dr. Bill Haller, professor of agronomy at
18 the University of Florida.
19 Q Professor of what?
20 A Agronomy.
21 Q What is that?
22 A Study of farming. His specialty, though,
23 is aquatic plant control, aquatic plant physiology. It
24 happens to end up in the agronomy department.
25 Q Where does he teach?
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1 A He is a professor at the University of
2 Florida, in Gainesville.
3 Q Do you know what his Ph.D. is in?
4 A His Ph.D. is in plant physiology, from the
5 University of Florida.
6 Q I missed someone. Dr. Watkins?
7 A Mr. Watkins, Curtis Watkins, Master of
8 Science, University of Florida, limnology. Currently
9 works for the City of Tallahassee as the city's
10 limnologist here.
11 Q As the city's what?
12 A Limnologist. You have a lot of lakes
13 around here, and he is involved. The last I heard. I
14 haven't talked to him in about three or fours years.
15 But he goes out and samples water quality here, your
16 city lakes here in Tallahassee.
17 MR. PERKO: That is where I recognized the
18 name.
19 BY MR. LOREDO:
20 Q Can you tell me a little bit about the
21 publication that you co-authored, prediction of
22 chlorophyll a concentrations in Florida lakes: _
23 Importance of aquatic macrophytes.
24 A It is similar to a thesis and treatise that
25 we have been working on for a while.
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1 The aquatic macrophytes, particularly
2 hydrilla, will take phosphorus out of these lakes, and
3 store this phosphorus. That results in lower phosphorus
4 in the water column, lower algal levels. And what
5 Canfield was able to do, by using the base levels of
6 phosphorus -- again, he was the primary author of the
7 analysis, and I supplied data and some input on the
8 writing -- by looking at phosphorus and nitrogen
9 concentrations, and looking at the volume of plants in
10 the system, he was able to accurately predict open water
11 phosphorus concentrations in Florida lakes.
12 Q And what was his prediction, if you recall?
13 A Well, it basically said that as you
14 increase the volume of plants in that occupied water
15 column, you are going to have less and less phosphorus
16 in the open water, and that is going to go ahead and
17 affect the chlorophyll a in those systems, the _
18 planktonic chlorophyll a. And you are shunting _
19 nutrients into the macrophytes that normally would have
20 been associated with the phytoplankton algae.
21 Q Moving on to the next publication, again,
22 we have Canfield, Dr. Haller, Dr. Shireman. And the
23 only name that I don't think I have heard now is Jones.
24 Is he a doctor?
25 A Yes. He's a Ph.D. of Limnology at the
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1 University of Missouri.
2 Q What was the Ph.D. in?
3 A Limnology.
4 Q I'm sorry, you said that.
5 And is it Langeland, L-A-N-G-E-L-A-N-D?
6 A Langeland.
7 Q Is he a doctor?
8 A Yes.
9 Q What is his Ph.D. in?
10 A Ph.D. is in limnology, University of
11 Florida. Currently associate professor in the agronomy
12 department.
13 Q At UF?
14 A University of Florida.
15 Q Can you tell me a little bit about this
16 publication?
17 A A different approach to trophic
18 classifications of lakes. We have talked about
19 oligotrophic, mesotrophic lakes and eutrophic lakes. We
20 noticed in these lakes high phosphatic deposits, which
21 are naturally eutrophic with hydrilla or other submerged
22 macrophytes. We worked on systems that had a lot of
23 hydrilla, a lot of submerged aquatic macrophytes, and we
24 noticed that in these bodies of water they would be
25 eutrophic. They would have high chlorophyll
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1 concentrations, high phosphorus concentrations.
2 And we noticed that when some of these
3 submersed plants got in there, particularly hydrilla,
4 that the phosphorus concentrations would decline as they
5 were up-taken by the plants. The subsequent
6 phytoplankton in the open water would, also, decline.
7 And then if you went out there and took a water sample
8 in the middle of the lake, you would classify the lake
9 as oligotrophic, but maybe four years before you called
10 it eutrophic.
11 So, we worked on a classification system,
12 that said, okay, this lake really is not a poor
13 productive system. That is what oligotrophic means. It
14 is really a highly productive system. We have got a lot
15 of plants in the system.
16 And so what we did was, we determined the
17 phosphorus concentration in the plants, in the water
18 column. You add those to what is in the open water, and
19 then you classify your lake according to what is in the
20 plants, as well as what is in the open water, to get the
21 true trophic state of the lake.
22 And if you went out and said we can only
23 remove the plants from the lake and we turned it from a
24 oligotrophic system to an eutrophic system, that is an
25 incorrect appraisal, because the lake was still highly
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1 productive. All you did was change the water clarity in
2 the system.
3 Q So, did you develop another classification?
4 A Another classification. You take into
5 account the total phosphorus that is in the water
6 column. Then if that phosphorus was not in those
7 aquatic plants, and if you had the right light
8 conditions, it would be in the algae in the open water.
9 When you have phosphorus, you have got to put your
10 chlorophyll somewhere. If you have the right light
11 conditions, you either put it in plants, big plants,
12 macro-plants or you have got to put it in algae. It
13 will go somewhere.
14 Q The question that pops to my mind is, how
15 would you classify the Everglades now?
16 A I would classify the Everglades, based on
17 the phosphorus concentrations that I see in sawgrass,
18 somewhere as mesotrophic. I mean, that --
19 Q Middle?
20 A -- middle.
21 If you take a water clarity sample, you get
22 low phosphorus, but if you took the phosphorus in the
23 sawgrass or the other plants that are out there, you
24 would classify that system as lot higher. The
25 Everglades is a productive system. Based on fish
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1 standing stocks that I have seen of a hundred, 150
2 pounds per acre, that is a productive system. The water
3 quality is just low in phosphorus, because of up-take by
4 plants.
5 Q Was the Everglades, then, an oligotrophic
6 system?
7 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
8 THE WITNESS: Clarify the question "was."
9 BY MR. LOREDO:
10 Q Historically?
11 MR. PERKO: I object to the form.
12 THE WITNESS: No. The Everglades was never
13 an oligotrophic system.
14 BY MR. LOREDO:
15 Q Why do you say that? What is your basis
16 for that?
17 A You had a tremendous amount of plant growth
18 in the Everglades that need a source of nutrients. If
19 you have no nutrients in the system, you will have no
20 plants. The Everglades has always had lots of plants,
21 therefore, they must have had nutrients.
22 Q Let's press on here in your old memory days
23 and look at the one of the last publications that you
24 have highlighted here for me.
25 Tell me a little bit about the publication
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1 entitled effects of hydrilla and grass carp on water
2 quality in a Florida lake. This was authored by
3 Canfield, yourself and Dr. Shireman.
4 A Okay. Another study where we go ahead and
5 we put grass carp into a system, so removal of
6 vegetation, increase in phytoplankton algae, total
7 phosphorus, decrease in water clarity. The same theme
8 that we did for about three or four years.
9 Q Do you have any present grants? When I say
10 present, I'm looking at your grants now. I think from
11 your testimony before, I got the feeling that you are
12 not working with any present grants. The question is,
13 are you working with any grants now?
14 A Yes. I have got two major funding
15 agencies. One is the Tennessee Valley Authority. And
16 right now, I believe I have four grants with the Alabama
17 Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. So, I
18 have five grants total.
19 Q I think we talked a little bit about the
20 Tennessee Valley Authority. I'm not sure we talked
21 about the Alabama. Could you just summarize for me what
22 the four grants with the Alabama department is regarding
23 the conservation of natural resources?
24 A Okay. The current ones are assessment of
25 influence of limnological and ecological factors, and
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1 recruitment of black bass and crappie in Alabama
2 reservoirs.
3 Q Is it croppie or crappie?
4 A It depends on where you are from. If you
5 are from Massachusetts, it is crappie. If you are from
6 the south it is croppie.
7 Q Is crappie a type of fish?
8 A Yes, it is a popular sport fish in Alabama.
9 Q All right.
10 A What we're doing with that is looking at a
11 host of different variables, both abiotic and biotic
12 factors, that are related to reproductive success of
13 these fish. Our primary concern with reproductive fish
14 is that you have a lot of small fish, they're able to
15 grow and survive and, ultimately, these fish will grow
16 and will recruit to the sport fishery, which people can
17 catch. So, the early life history of these fish is very
18 important to any type of future fishery that you may
19 have in these systems.
20 Q When you say four grants, they all have to
21 do with this type of project?
22 A The other one that I've got going on right
23 now is looking at bass genetics. The Alabama Department
24 of Conservation stocks about three-quarters of a million
25 Florida large-mouth bass in their reservoirs, in the
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1 hopes to increase the size of the fish caught by anglers
2 as well as the catch rate of large trophy fish.
3 Large-mouth bass get larger in Florida than they do in
4 Alabama. And I'm involved in doing genetic studies to
5 determine the influence of these stockings and the
6 success of these stockings in all of their major
7 impoundments in the state.
8 Q In Florida or Alabama?
9 A In Alabama. But this is transplanting
10 Florida fish. Fish that come from around Lakeland,
11 basically, as the hatchery source, that are spawned in
12 Alabama and then stocked around the state. And I am
13 assessing those stockings.
14 The third one I have, the third project or
15 grant, is another type of sport fish that is just found
16 in the Tennessee River, within the border of Alabama,
17 the sauger. And the sauger is a popular sport fish. It
18 is a fish that a lot of people catch. There is concern
19 that they may be being over-fished, and we're just doing
20 a fishery assessment of that population to determine the
21 status of it, and if we need more regulations to protect
22 the fishery.
23 The last project involves a rare species in
24 Alabama, the walleye. And the main thrust of this study
25 is to determine the mitochondrial DNA and the allozyme
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1 variation of walleye in Alabama, and comparing that to
2 the rest of the country.
3 I'm working with an expert out of Illinois
4 University, who has characterized genetic variation in
5 walleye, and we're just determining what is the genetic
6 status, and how unique is this fish in Alabama and does
7 it deserve, potentially, rare, threatened or endangered
8 species status.
9 Q Is walleye more common in the northern
10 area?
11 A Yes.
12 Q I'm moving ahead to your major scientific
13 presentations. One of the ones that catches my eye is
14 Lake Okeechobee: The issues and solution. Can you just
15 kind of summarize what you discussed there in the 45th
16 annual meeting of the Soil and Water Conservation
17 Society?
18 A Yes. I was invited by the Soil and Water
19 Conservation Society to discuss Lake Okeechobee, along
20 with Eric Flaigg, who I believe is still an employee of
21 the district, and with Dale Bottcher, who is a soil
22 agronomist, soil specialist, with the University of
23 Florida.
24 The basic theme of the meeting was looking
25 at the use of best management practices, reduction of
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1 phosphorus in the northern basins of Lake Okeechobee.
2 What kind of impact that is going to have on the water
3 quality in those basins and, ultimately, what kind of
4 effect that water quality is going to have on the lake.
5 So, I discussed some of my Lake Okeechobee research
6 findings in this panel discussion.
7 Q What solutions did you propose?
8 A I didn't propose any solutions. Dale
9 Bottcher and Eric Flaigg, who were involved in the best
10 management practice program north of the lake, discussed
11 the solutions. I just discussed the phosphorus dynamics
12 and algal dynamics in Lake Okeechobee.
13 MR. LOREDO: I would like to mark now the
14 notice of deposition duces tecum as Exhibit
15 Number 2.
16 (Deposition Exhibit 2 marked for
17 identification.)
18 BY MR. LOREDO:
19 Q I am showing you Exhibit 2, titled Notice
20 of Deposition Duces Tecum. Have you ever seen it
21 before?
22 A Yes. This was sent to me about three weeks
23 ago, from Hopping, Boyd, Sams & Green.
24 Q And did you discuss its requirements with
25 anybody?
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1 A Gary Perko indicated to me that I needed to
2 supply all information, notes, documents, memos, papers,
3 that were involved in my analysis of the conclusions
4 that I have drawn about the SWIM plan in this lawsuit.
5 Q And can you tell me what you did? How did
6 you gather the information?
7 A I was asked to do a number of different
8 chores; to re-analyze some total phosphorus data in
9 Water Conservation Area 2A, to look at hydrology in
10 Water Conservation Area 2A and, also, attempt to explain
11 the variation of total phosphorus in Water Conservation
12 Area 2A. I used the data that was given to me in the
13 district back in 1989, and augmented that database, the
14 data provided by KBN Engineering, and Tetra-Tech.
15 Q We'll get a little bit into that. What I
16 was really looking for, is did you meet with Mr. Perko
17 or did you talk to him on the phone regarding the
18 document production?
19 A I don't understand the question.
20 Q What I'm trying to ask, what I'm trying to
21 ascertain is, what brought you to the conclusions of
22 what to send Mr. Perko?
23 A What time frame are we talking about here?
24 I'm still not sure.
25 Q Well, let's do this chronologically. You
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1 said you received a copy of this Notice of Taking
2 Deposition Duces Tecum about three weeks ago?
3 A Yes.
4 Q When you received it, what did you do?
5 A I assembled all of my materials that were
6 involved in my analysis. And to the best of my
7 knowledge, I sent them all to the law firm.
8 Q So, basically, just everything you had you
9 put together and you sent it to the law firm?
10 A Yes, I sent it to Hopping, Boyd, Green &
11 Sams.
12 Q Did you withhold anything?
13 A Not to my knowledge. I tried to present
14 everything that I had used in my analysis.
15 Q Did you send computer disks?
16 A Yes.
17 MR. LOREDO: Counsel, I think the other day
18 you told me that you would try to get me the
19 computer disks that were sent.
20 MR. PERKO: My secretary indicated to me
21 that they were Fed. Exed. to you Tuesday.
22 MR. LOREDO: Okay.
23 MR. PERKO: You should have received them
24 by now.
25
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1 BY MR.