A Hub for Water Resources at Clayton State University

Dr. Aubrey Dyer (center) and Dr. Ann Showalter (far right) lead students doing field work in East Point last fall.

For over a year, we have been in conversations with administration at Clayton State University about engaging CSU’s faculty and students in Finding the Flint projects. Located in Morrow, Georgia with a campus that straddles the South River and Flint River watersheds, Clayton State’s mission to cultivate ”engaged, experience-based learning, enriched by active community service” is naturally aligned with the goals of Finding the Flint.

We’ve explored multiple ways that the University can support Finding the Flint, from student interns to help with communications, lab equipment, and meeting space. In fact, before the pandemic derailed all of our lives, we planned to discuss some of these proposals at our Spring Working Group meeting, hosted at CSU’s fabulous Lakeview Science and Discovery Center.

One of the most exciting proposals to emerge from these conversations is the development of a Water Resources Center at CSU that would bring together research students and community science initiatives in one place on campus with a robust water chemistry lab. (A great example of this kind of regional hub is the The Center for Water Resources at the University of West Georgia, which supports student research, local governments, environmental organizations, and private companies who need access to water testing tools.) This idea was actually driven by the needs of CSU faculty in biology and chemistry, including Dr. Aubrey Dyer, a professor of chemistry at CSU and a Hapeville resident.

Dr. Dyer first got involved with Finding the Flint in February 2019 when she participated in an Adopt-a-Stream training we organized in East Point. Since then, she has been working with colleagues and administration to outline what a Water Resources Center would look like at Clayton State, and what opportunities it would provide students, community members, local nonprofits, municipal partners, and for the University as a whole. Despite the pandemic, Dr. Dyer was able to obtain funding for over $200,000 in lab equipment to get started. This week, I caught up with Dr. Dyer on the phone.

Where did this idea for a Water Resources Center come from?

I’ve been at Clayton State for 5 years and in this past year, I’ve gotten some interest from students in doing research on water chemistry. We wanted to develop some new lab experiments for students in our freshman and sophomore level classes that go beyond the usual cookbook style experiments. They would be doing a research project and getting hands-on experience on real world problems and issues. We realized that Clayton State has all these lakes and streams on campus where we could go out and analyze water quality. After talking with biology professor Chris Kodani, he told me about your Adopt-a-Stream training in early 2019 and that’s how I got involved with Finding the Flint.

By fall 2019, I brought some students to the Southside River Rendezvous and we had a few undergraduate chemistry and biology majors researching pollution in the South River headwaters. We were borrowing these sampling and testing kits from Dr. Kodani’s Ecology class—similar to what Adopt-A-Stream uses—for general water analysis. In order to test for metals (such as copper, zinc, lead, mercury) and anions (such as phosphates, sulfates, nitrates) we had to take our water samples to UGA to use their equipment. We had all this interest from students and community members, but no equipment of our own or a central place to get organized.

In November, Dr. Ann Showalter (professor of biology at CSU) and I visited the University of West Georgia to learn about their Water Resources Center. They were very generous with their time and advice and we left feeling like it would be possible to create something similar on the southside at Clayton State that could benefit our students and the community.

Congratulations on securing the funds to start acquiring equipment! What kind of tools exactly, will you need for the lab?

Thanks, it’s pretty exciting. Last year, we won a grant through the CSU Foundation to purchase some initial equipment—simple pH meters and turbidity meters. Then we got some high level field probes with 10-foot cables so we can test streams from a road or a bridge. These are research-grade probes, the same quality that Clayton County Water Authority or EPA would use for field sampling and field tests for conductivity, pH, and dissolved oxygen.

Just this month, we were able to secure funds, in combination with small grants from the University, for a whole list of lab equipment. We ordered instrumentation and materials that allow us to conduct analysis for heavy metals, phosphorus, nitrogen, hardness, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and nutrients, an IDEXX system for biological testing similar to what Chattahoochee Riverkeeper has.

Finally, were also purchased an ICP (inductively coupled plasma) Mass Spectrometer which can test water and soil for elements, including heavy metals, down to very, very low concentrations (parts-per-billion or parts-per-trillion), which the EPA uses. Plus, other lab equipment like refrigerators, ovens, water purifiers, and analytical balances.

And that’s just our first round. We would like to get some equipment to do more biological testing for organics and other stream health indicators.

So you are about to be in possession of a lot of lab equipment. What’s next?

I need to talk to administration about a dedicated lab space on campus. Right now, things are spread out, so we’ll have to find one central laboratory with sinks, hoods, ventilation, and power outlets. Eventually, we need to name this place and come up with a brand. That could be a great assignment for some our Communications and Media Studies majors.

We’ll need to secure funding for research students’ stipends. As we build a team, we can figure out priorities for what we test, which sites to monitor, and how that data should be collected and shared online. I would envision a program and website similar to Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Neighborhood Water Watch, where people can upload findings and info is shared with EPD’s Adopt-a-stream database. The public should be able to view historical data and trend lines to see the whole story over time.

Maybe I should ask for a couple computer science interns to help build the database and website…

Once you have a lab and a website and some students working on projects, what happens? What’s the big vision for 3 to 5 years from now?

My big vision is that we have this lab where students pursue their own research and where we can run samples for residents or for professionals. Sort of a one-stop-shop for concerns around water quality. And in areas where there’s an opportunity to remediate and restore streams, like how Finding the Flint is turning areas into parks and greenspace, students could monitor sites continuously to see if water quality is improving over time.

As we grow into a Water Resources Center, we would provide space for Adopt-a-Stream to do community training on the southside and facilitate Georgia Project Wet training on water education for Clayton County’s K-12 teachers. It’s going to be a lot of work, and a lot of fun.

The hope is that our students will work with the community on real world issues, and at the same time, get hands-on experience that leads to great careers.

So that’s my baby, but the University is thinking big picture on how this kind of innovative, multi-disciplinary center enhances relationships to the community and positions Clayton State in the higher education marketplace.

Our team at Finding the Flint is thrilled to see Clayton State taking the lead on this. We do a lot of community engagement around water quality monitoring, but we don’t have a place to do it, to gather or test samples. We rely on our friends at the Flint Riverkeeper, which serves the entire state, but really need a way to focus on the airport area. To potentially have a home in Clayton County, both a place and a program, will take our community engagement to the next level and empower residents.

I hope that this Center would partner with many organizations like Finding the Flint that are working to improve the area. When we have these one day events and trainings on water quality monitoring, people get really excited about it. But then they realize there’s time and money involved, and they get discouraged.

For us at Clayton State, we have this long-term, established presence, and we have the means to do the testing. We have equipment and labs and interested students who are part of the community. That means we can help fill the gap, keep people engaged in these complex environmental issues that affect their lives. Volunteers that visit their local creeks or notice problems can grab the samples; we can take it from there.