Tom Vaughan Interview, Part 1 of 2

  • DT: My name is David Todd. I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. It's February 23, 2006 and we are in Laredo and have the good fortune to be interviewing Doctor Tom Vaughan, who has a PhD in Zoology and has been focusing on Mammalogy for many years. And since 1980 has served as a teacher in Biology at Texas A & M International University and previously at the community college. And throughout has shown a strong interest in the Rio Grande and has been involved in the formation and operation at the Rio Grande International Study Center. I wanted to take this chance to thank you for spending time with us, to tell us about your life and some of your interest in conservation.
  • 00:02:10 - 2364 TV: Thank you, glad...
  • DT: Maybe we could start with a question about your childhood and if there might have been some early experiences? Maybe some friends, relatives that could have introduced you to the outdoors, to your interest in science.
  • 00:02:27 - 2364
  • TV: Well, I grew up in New Mexico, in Southern New Mexico, out in the Chihuahuan Desert but fortunately we were near the mountains in Alamogordo so, it was not a long drive up into the mountains. And so, my-my parents and my siblings and I spent a lot of time up in the mountains looking at the-the wildlife and the vegetation up there. My parents had actually come from the eastern part of the state and so, we still had relatives that were farmers over in the eastern New Mexico and-and far west Texas. And in the summer times, I'd spend a lot of time out on the farm and that made me more and more interested in-in animals. We got to observe a lot of wildlife out on the farm. And so that was, you know, kind of the way I grew up being interested in-in the outdoors.
  • DT: Could you tell us about some of your trips to the mountains or maybe some of your visits to the farm?
  • 00:03:27 - 2364 TV: Well, on the-out in the mountains we would go camping in the-you know, over the weekend. We-my dad had this big old canvas tent that we'd take up into the mountains and set up and spend the weekend, you know, walking through the trails and looking at butterflies and those kinds of things that, you know, got-got me really interested in not only the-the-the wildlife but just being outdoors. I'm an outdoor type person and then on the farm, my grandparents had a farm in Texas and, you know, we would go out there in the summertime and spend a couple of weeks with my-with my grandfather. He had cows and horses and other kinds of farm animals and really enjoyed being out on the farm.
  • DT: Did your father have any guide books or did he have any special knowledge about some of these butterflies?
  • 00:04:30 - 2364 TV: No, I don't-don't really think so, you know. He had grown up on the farm and so, he knew a good deal about the outdoors but I think, you know, being in the mountains was kind of new to him as well because he had grown up out in eastern New Mexico, a long way from the mountains. And so, I think maybe that was one of the reasons we spent so much time in the mountains is because it was pretty new to the whole family and we explored together and learned about what was going out there together.
  • DT: What were some of the differences that you saw from being in the mountains versus the lowlands?
  • 00:05:04 - 2364 TV: Well, in Alamogordo it's, you know, in the Chihuahuan desert and lots of desert type vegetation. We'd also spent a lot of time out in the White Sands National Monument, which is about fifteen miles from-from town and we would go out there a good deal and be interested in-in the-the white lizards that were running around on the sand and just really-I was amazed that they had this sea of sand out there in the middle of-of the surroundings that were not white or sandy at all. And so, th-those were some of my early experiences that got me really interested in-in the outdoors and wildlife.
  • DT: As you grew up and went on to school, were there any teachers or maybe other students that shared your interest in the outdoors?
  • 00:06:00 - 2364 TV: Well, I can-I can certainly remember by the middle school, what we call a junior high in those days, I had a teacher that-a science teacher-back in those days it was just science but he was a biologist by training and I think he was one of the people that really influenced me early on. And then in high school I really-I really thought I wanted to be a chemist. I had a-a teacher in-in high school and taught chemistry and-and I just really thought I wanted to be a chemist after having a chemistry class or two with him.
  • But then I went off to-to college and the first semester I was in college, I took both
  • 00:06:42 - 2364 general chemistry and general biology and after one semester I decided biology was the way I wanted to go rather than chemistry. So, I ended up getting a bachelor's degree in biology with a minor in chemistry. And so, I have an interest in both biology and chemistry as well.
  • DT: And then you went on to graduate school soon after college?
  • 00:07:09 - 2364 TV: Well, after I-after I went to-went to college, I had a couple of mentors at-at the university that really influenced me. Doctor Sublet, who was an entomologist, he really had a big influence on-on some of the decisions I made and then Doctor Genero who was a Mammalogist that was at the university that I was attending. And those two really had a big influence on me. After-after graduating from the university, I-I thought at that time I-I had two-two things I was really considering and one was I was interested in joining the Peace Corps or going to graduate school. And after applying to the Peace
  • 00:07:55 - 2364 Corps, I-I got accepted to the Peace Corps. I wanted to go to Latin America and they said "Well, we don't have any openings in Latin America but we do have an opening in Somalia." And I was more interested in graduate school at that time than I was in Somalia.
  • And so, I went to the University of Arizona in the graduate program out there and studied under E. Lindle Cochram, a well known Mammalogist in Arizona and well-well known worldwide and spent a few years studying rodent populations out in the Sonoran Desert.
  • DT: And what was it you were trying to find out about these rodents in the Sonoran Desert?
  • 00:08:39 - 2364 TV: Well, this was back in the days, there was something called the International Biological Program, a worldwide program trying to figure out if we alter the environment or change things this way, what effect will it have on the organisms out there. And my role in it was if we-if we remove woody vegetation, if we disturb the habitat in this way or the-or another, what re-what influence will that have on rodent population. So, I monitored rodent populations in southern Arizona for about three years looking-and those studies are ongoing actually. There have been people after me that have continued
  • 00:09:18 - 2364 looking at those same rodent populations over the years and seeing how things have changed over time.
  • DT: And did you see any particular changes or know what kind of impacts you might expect if the woody vegetation changed?
  • 00:09:34 - 2364 TV: Yeah, if we went out and for example, we removed the vegit-the woody vegetation and became more of a grassland and eventually, the succession would take over and eventually it'd be back to-to what it was before we removed the vegetation but certainly the kinds of rodents, the-the population, the density certainly changed with alteration of the environment in which they were found.
  • DT: And the reason that you were looking at that kind of alteration of removing woody vegetation was the thought that these semi-desert areas were going to revert to grassland or what was the thinking?
  • 00:10:15 - 2364 TV: No, like I said it was a worldwide program and we were a small part of that. We were in the desert but people were studying grasslands and other parts of the country and other parts of the world. And so, ours-ours was a small part of this big program and we had computer model people that were generating com-computer models to try to figure out what the overall impact would be. And this-this kind of data has certainly become more important as we're more and more convinced that climate change is a-a reality and as if climates change and vegetation distribution changes, certainly it's going to have a big impact on wildlife and everything associated with it.
  • DT: Maybe you could just touch on what scientists, like yourself, expect as far as the climate is concerned and these sort of long term, large scale changes in the climate, what effect they might have on rodents or other animals?
  • 00:11:22 - 2364 TV: Well, I think, you know, certainly it's been my experience that rodent populations and the populations of other things certainly are not stable. And how you understand why they fluctuate they do, what the influences are is a very complex situation. I can just give you an example. I teach-I teach Mammalogy here at Texas A & M International University and I teach that class every two years. And I have students go out and make collections of the wildlife, of the mammals. Since most of the mammals are rodents,
  • 00:12:02 - 2364
  • that's the-the most common thing that we-we collect. There's a species of rodent called Baiomys Taylori, it's a very small mouse called a Southern Pygmy Mouse. The first time I taught Mammalogy several years ago, nobody collected a Baiomys. Two years later, it was one of the most common things that was being collected. Two years later nobody collected Baiomys. And so, I'm not sure how you explain that. This most recent semester, I taught the same course and a couple of students actually did trap and bring in these Baiomys. Now, I-I-would be something I would really be interested in
  • 00:12:47 - 2364 knowing as why do they fluctuate like that from essentially as far as we could tell not-not present at all to super abundant. Now then as-as climate changes obviously, vegetational zones will shift and animals, the mammals in this case, are certainly associated with the vegetation of the area. And so, I suspect that we will see major shifts in not only zones of vegetation but wildlife that inhabits that vegetation.
  • DT: Are there any signs of climate change that you're seeing locally in the past twenty years?
  • 00:13:30 - 2364 TV: Well, yeah, that's a pretty short time frame to say anything about climate change. You got wet years, you got dry years, you got cold years, you got warm years. I mean a twenty-year period is way too short to-to say anything significant about the-the climate but certainly we know that droughts come and droughts go. And one of things that we've experienced in the Rio Grande watershed over pretty much most of the late nineteen nineties into the early two-thousands was drought conditions, which has certainly affected the Rio Grande.
  • DT: Something else that interests me in your career is it seems you've spent a lot of time from the days of being a graduate student in the field. Can you tell me something about why you focused on field biology as opposed to, I guess, a lot of scientists do more of their work in the lab?
  • 00:14:33 - 2364
  • TV: Well, I've done-I've done both. I'm really-I consider myself a field biologist. In addition to Mammalogy, I teach Ecology and to me, Ecology is done outdoors. And so, my students that take Ecology with me do outdoor field type work. The-when we-my-my wife is also a biologist and she and I spent three years in North Africa in Tunisia, back in the 1970's. And we were looking at karyotypes in mammals which, you know, you collect the mammals and you look at their-their chromosomes. And so that was a lot of field work combined with lab work. But my-my love is the outdoors and
  • 00:15:19 - 2364 the-the field work. I-I do some lab work today when I do water quality work on the Rio Grande. We're looking at bacteria as well as organisms living in it and wa-and chemistry and so some of that involves some laboratory work as well.
  • DT: It's intriguing that you've grown up in the desert around Alamogordo, gone to school at the University of Arizona, a desert region, have worked in North Africa in another arid region, and then have come to Laredo again-another low rainfall area. Have you learned something about what these different areas share in common and those differences that you see among those different desert areas?
  • 00:16:08 - 2364 TV: Well, each-each desert is unique. They all share some common elements. Rainfall in-in the cases of the deserts we're talking about, arid places but each one is unique. Each one has its own set of plants and animals. Some-sometimes those plants and animals are related to each other even though they're very distant from each other. But the Arizona Sonoran Desert with the saguaro cacti and things like that is much different than the Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico. And then the-the Sub Sahara in north Africa is even more different-a lot more sand there.
  • Also, spent four
  • 00:16:56 - 2364 years in Kuwait. There I studied mammals but also worked on some fish out on the mud flats and little fish called mudskippers that inhabit the mud flats when the tides go out. They're out active on the surface of the-of the mud flats. So, I spent time looking at those as well, behavior and ecology of-of mudskippers. But I-the-the deserts, they're all different in-in a lot of ways. For example, in-in Kuwait we consider that a pebble desert for the most part, you know, some sand but lots of pebbles on the surface and the-the-associated-one of-let me-let me say one other thing about deserts. Laredo, where I've been for the past twenty some years, is not actually a desert. We call it a semi arid region. We get about eighteen to twenty inches of rainfall on average so,
  • 00:17:52 - 2364 we're way to wet to be a desert but we do share some of the-the flora and the fauna with those-with the Chihuahuan Desert further to the-the west and to the south. But we're not-we're not truly a desert here. We do have some of the same mammals that occur all the way across the-the deserts to-to California that occur here but...
  • DT: I understand that Laredo finds itself in the Tamaulipan Region?
  • 00:18:25 - 2364
  • TV: The Tom-Tamaulipan Biotic Province, it's called, uh huh.
  • DT: I've heard some people describe that as one of the most diverse eco regions anywhere and I was wondering is that so? And secondly why would it be so unusually diverse?
  • 00:18:42 - 2364
  • TV: Well, the-the eco region itself, includes not only the-the Rio Grande Plain here but further south into Mexico, it becomes more diverse in terms of topography. And so, I think that would be one of the reasons of the-the diversity is because of the topography down to the south in Mexico. But the-one of the things that people are sometimes surprised to find out that deserts are very productive places in terms of the kinds of reptiles and-and mammals as well. My experience in Arizona would tell me that even thought there's less rainfall in Arizona, in the southern part of the state where I was working, the biomass of rodents is higher, small mammals, rodents, is much higher there than it is here in general. So-and th-the good diversity in-in all of the deserts, lots of different kinds of reptiles, lots of different kinds of mammals that make up the part of the vertebrate fauna.
  • DT: Well, since you've arrived in Laredo and started to teach and do research, can you maybe tell us about some of the focuses of your various courses, what kind of lessons you're teaching and also what kind of research you-you've been doing over the last twenty six years?
  • 00:20:19 - 2364 TV: Well, I consider myself to be a teacher that does a little bit of research. I am not-I certainly would not describe myself as being a researcher that has to teach. I-I enjoy working with students. And-so, that's-that's my main focus is-and not only working with students but get them interested in doing field work, get them out there in the field. I-I teach an ecology class every-every spring-every spring and as far as my students are concerned the lab is an outdoor lab. We rarely-we do some things in-in the lab depending on the project they choose to work on but they're out there in the field, either
  • 00:21:07 - 2364 wo-looking at the vegetation, some aspect of vegetation, some aspect of invertebrates, vertebrates, fish, mammals. But yeah, my main focus is-with the students is to-to hopefully give them of an appreciation of what's going on out there in the natural world. And I do find that quite commonly they don't-they don't have much knowledge about
  • 00:21:35 - 2364 the outdoors. They don't have much knowledge about what's going on around them. And so, that's one of my-one of my goals is to-at least to introduce them to some of the possibilities.
  • One of the things that I find very encouraging here at this institution in Laredo, is we just started a Master's program in Biology. And I think we're going to see a lot of our students that take their education a step further than-than they might have since we do have-have a master's program. One of the-one of the things I tell my students, you know, I got a Bachelor's degree in biology and it didn't take me very long
  • 00:22:20 - 2364
  • to figure out that a Bachelor's degree is not worth very much. If you really want to do something in biology, you probably need to go at least to the master's level and if possible, beyond that to the PhD level. And we've got a-we've got a group of students that are coming through now that seem to have gotten that message and they're-they're not thinking about well, I'll get a bachelor's degree and that'll be it so, I'm really encouraged about that.
  • DT: Can you tell us about some of the field research projects, the typical ones and maybe some of the more unusual exciting ones that some of your students have undertaken?
  • 00:23:05 - 2364
  • TV: Well, in the-in ecology, like I say, we work out in the field and there-there is a location here in Laredo, it's called Las Palmas Park. It's a city park now. It's down on the banks of the Rio Grande and the first time I went down there I thought, this cannot be Laredo, Texas. There's a large palm grove. They're not native palms. They're-they're an imported species but growing on the banks of the river and down there in the heart of that palm grove you could have been, you know, in the-the Amazon Basin. And so, students have taken an interest in the palm trees and-and have done some studies on the
  • 00:23:48 - 2364 growth of the palm trees, how they-they spread, how the birds are involved in the spreading of the palm trees. And so the-the vegetation is one of the aspects I have students looking at. Another interest we-some of us here in Laredo have is the mussels in the Rio Grande, the clams. And apparently there are relatively few of the native species of clams left in the Rio Grande and those that are there are in very small populations, small pockets perhaps. And so, I've had students taken-trying to take a look at-at the clam populations in the river. Certainly the most common of the mollusks
  • 00:24:37 - 2364
  • in the river of the-the bivalves is an imported version called the Asiatic clam and you find that virtually everywhere. You go to any-any gravel bar any sand bar or along the banks of the river, you find corbicula, the Asiatic clam. But it's pretty uncommon to find even a shell of some of the native species. And so, I've had students trying to take a look at some of the distributions of the native species of-of mussels in the river.
  • DT: Have you been able to speculate as to why these mussels, the species and the population have changed?
  • 00:25:14 - 2364 TV: Well, I think probably there-there are multiple factors. The Rio Grande, which is a very long river, has not actually been a naturally flowing river since about 1916. And the first reservoir, the first dam on the Rio Grande was over in New Mexico, Elephant Butte and that was back in 1916. And so, the river has been altered in-in its flow since at least that point in time. And then now we have two reservoirs on the international portion of the Rio Grande. Falcon re-reservoir about ninety mi-eighty miles downstream of us was built back in the 50's, 1954 they started impounding water. And
  • 00:25:56 - 2364 so, anything that would've come from the estuary upriver can't do that anymore. So that-that could have an effect on the-the fauna in river maybe not the-the mussels per se but in other things that might have been able to make their way on up the river pretty much stopped by the-the dam at-at Falcon. The other reservoir up river from us at Del-up river from Del Rio is Amistad reservoir and that's been there since the 1960's, 1969 is when they started impounding water. And so, we've altered the flow of the river and so, that-that could certainly have had an effect on the organisms, not only the-the
  • 00:26:41 - 2364 fish that-there seems to be some decrease in-in diversity of the fish in the river but in the-in the mussels as well. And over time, there's been pollution that has gone into the river that I can't say definitely has had an effect on these organisms but I can speculate that it may well have had a negative effect.
  • DT: You mentioned that you are more of a teacher and maybe less focused on research. What is it that you are trying to pass on to your students? How are you trying to inspire them? How do you manage to connect with them?
  • 00:27:28 - 2364
  • TV: Well, I would-I would like for my students maybe to-to go a little further than I have. And one of-one of the things I have seen a change in and in Laredo many of our students that come to the-to the college, to the university that say "Well I wanted to be a M.D., I want to be a doctor." And so they think that biology is the way to get there. And so, over the years I've encountered a lot of students that really weren't biologists, weren't really that interested in being biologists. They were using a degree in biology as a stepping stone to professional school, medical school, dental school, pharmacy school
  • 00:28:19 - 2364
  • but I-what I'm trying to-to get across to these students is, you know, there are other options. And certainly if they-if their-if their main goal is making money, probably being a biologist is not the-the way to go. But there are certainly opportunities, especially for people that have biology degree, upper Master's and PhD's in biology. I mean, you know, we try to hire people at our institution here and it would be great if we had some of our local students that have gone off and gotten PhD's at other institutions and that were interested in coming back and-and carrying on the-the tradition of-of getting other students involved in higher studies in-in biology.
  • DT: Have you seen much change as students have passed through your classrooms since I guess it would be the early 80's till now as, I guess, kids spend-tend to come from larger towns and I understand have more sort of indoor lives than they might have certainly a generation or two ago?
  • 00:29:41 - 2364 TV: Yeah, I think, well, like I mentioned earlier most of our students, you know, they-they don't have that much experience being-being outdoorsy. I mean, you know, they're-hunting is a big-a big thing in south Texas. You know, the White Tail Deer hunting and the bird, Dove, Quail hunting. If-if the students haven't been involved some way in-or other with their families in those kind s of outdoor activities, most of them just don't have very much of an experience in the-in the natural world. They spend way too much time in front of the T.V. and nowadays in front of the computer and
  • 00:30:22 - 2364 the computer games in my-my opinion. But I try to get them interested in things beyond that and I-I have perhaps-most of them respond pretty positively, you know. I teach another course for non-majors called natural history of south Texas. And in that course I have, you know, business majors, music majors, criminal justice majors and they take the course and I explain to them the first day, if-if you're not interested in going outdoors and finding what's out here, you know, we got a three hundred acre campus here, over half of it's undeveloped and so we've got lots of native vegetation, native organisms out there. And so, that course we spend a good deal of our time on campus here but outdoors taking a look at the vegetation, the animals that-that inhabit our campus.
  • DT: What are some of the themes and highlights of this natural history course that you teach?
  • 00:31:29 - 2364
  • TV: Well, probably, I would say, the-the majority of my students, when they first come to the class, I will talk about Mesquite trees. Well, certainly Mesquites are a very common element in the south Texas landscape. Well, the first time I take them out there, I ask somebody to point out a Mesquite tree and most of them cannot do that. And so, at least by the end of the course, they can-they can recognize a Mesquite tree when they see one and they can recognize; I've got a list of about fifty common woody plants that are in south Texas. And I expect them to be able to sight identify those plants by the end
  • 00:32:13 - 2364 of the semester so that if they're driving down the highway between here and San Antonio and they see a huisache, they'll know they're looking at and if they see black brush they'll know what they're looking at. So...
  • DT: And is part of what your trying impart not just being able to know your taxonomy and identify things by sight but also know what role a Mesquite tree, for example, might have for human settlements or for wildlife?
  • 00:32:40 - 2364 TV: Well, yeah that's-that's a good deal of what we try to do, is try to link all these things together. You know, why did the mesquite trees grow where they do? Why are the huisache's kind of have their own distribution out there? And then what kinds of animals take advantage of these different kinds of plants? What-what eats this? What eats that? How is it all interrelated?
  • DT: I've heard and I'm curious if this has any truth to it, that some of the distributions of mesquite and huisache were connected to the early cattle drives that went from south to north, is that so?
  • 00:33:23 - 2364 TV: Well, I certainly, you know from what I read, when the Spaniards first came through to this part of Texas, it was a grassland. There might have been some scattered Mesquites here then but certainly cattle have been instrumental in the spread of Mesquites and some of these other legumes because they-they can eat the-the Mesquite beans. The beans pass through the digestive tract then will germinate and so, the cow that eats the Mesquite bean is going to be spreading the Mesquites further and further. I, you know, when I drive from, let's say, from here to College Station, I see
  • 00:34:01 - 2364 mesquites all the way along the way but I see Mesquites there intermixed with Oaks and some other things that we don't have down here. And I think that probably those Mesquites further north were certainly there as a result of-of cattle. I think the Mesquites were probably here initially or nearby but the-the cattle, yeah; have had a big impact on changes in the-the vegetation. Now Laredo at one time was sheep country. Most people don't-don't know that but back in the-the twenties, there were more sheep than cattle grown in this part of the country. And it used to be a big horse raising area as well. But now it's mainly cattle as far as domestic animals but most of the ranchers that, you know, have a big spread out there probably make more money off their White Tail deer then they do their cattle, you know, they-the hunting leases are more-more lucrative than raising a few head of cattle out there.
  • DT: What sort of effects have you seen in the biota around Laredo and in southwest Texas from the kind of land uses you've talked about, the cattle grazing, the sheep grazing and more recently the wildlife industry?
  • 00:35:23 - 2364
  • TV: Well, the other-the other indicator I look at is-is the Prickly Pear Cactus. The Prickly Pears have been here but I can drive down the highway and I can see areas that are almost pure stands of Prickly Pear. Well, to me that indicates serious over grazing at some time in the past that have allowed those Prickly Pears to pretty much take over. You know, and so there's-there's some real problems with land management.
  • And, you know, the-the ranchers here, like I say, are interested in raising White Tailed deer and if they can manage their land in order to-to increase the populations of the deer, the-the health of those deer, then that's what they're interested in doing. And if you ever fly over this part of south Texas, you can see some of those management practices where they'll go in and remove a strip of the woody vegetation and leave a strip of woody vegetation and remove a strip. It's kind of like sometimes checkerboard patterns so that the-the
  • 00:36:30 - 2364 deer have some cover but they also have some open areas to-to feed in as well. And so-the-the land management has, you know, changed the environment a good deal and largely for the-the White Tailed deer I think.
  • The other thing, of course, is simply the growth. You know, when I first moved to Laredo there was a lot more agriculture along the Rio Grande in the-the Laredo area and even before I came here the-it was much more than-than even when I got here. When I moved to Laredo out behind my back fence was a big cantaloupe fields. That's all a field of houses now and so-and if we go
  • 00:37:20 - 2364 out Mines Road, out to the-to the north, which twenty-five years ago was also mainly agricultural fields, fields of-of broccoli, of onions, of things like that, today it's either houses or warehouses. And so, yeah, the growth has been tremendous in Laredo over the past twenty-five years.
  • DT: We've talked a little bit about your students' research and studies and some of the land use changes that they may have witnessed. I'm wondering if you could talk some about your own research. I understand that you've been doing work on macroinvertebrates and perhaps other creatures as well.
  • 00:38:09 - 2364 TV: Yeah, a number of years ago, like I say, I was-my background's not really in water, not really in aquatic organisms but a few years ago, I got interested in the Rio Grande and monitoring what's going on the-in the Rio Grande. And the focus really was what is the effect of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo on the water quality of the Rio Grande. As the water passes through here, we take some of it out, we use it, we put a lot of things back into the river. And the-the question was well, what-what are the effects of these two cities on the water? And in addition to doing basic water chemistry, basic
  • 00:38:57 - 2364 bacteriology of the water, one of the other things I've been interested in and one of the ways people have assessed quality of water is what kind of organisms are living in there? What are the populations like? What are the-what's the diversity? And so one of the things that been doing for a number of years on two sites of the river, the river site upstream of most of Laredo, Nuevo Laredo, where there's no influences from us, there may be influence from Eagle Pass and towns upriver but there's no influence of Laredo. We've been collecting macroinvertebrates over the years to see what the populations
  • 00:39:36 - 2364 are, what kind of organisms in there. And as a comparison we've been sampling a site down at the Webb/Zapata County line. And we're looking from there at water that has passed through Laredo and Nuevo Laredo and whatever we'd added to it's had an influence on it. And when we first started doing the macroinvertebrate studies, Nuevo Laredo had no wastewater treatment plant. At that time an estimated twenty-five million gallons of raw sewage was going into the river everyday. And so, we were looking at the effects of that on the organisms downstream compared to the organism upstream. Well, just because water's polluted doesn't mean there's nothing living in it. There are some
  • 00:40:21 - 2364 organisms that are very tolerant of pollution and then there are others that are very intolerant. And so, knowing which ones are tolerant and which ones are intolerant and making collections and identifying and plugging these into indices that people have developed over the years based on the tolerances of these organisms, you can tell something about the water quality.
  • And since Nuevo Laredo's wastewater treatment plan came online in 1996, we have certainly seen a change in the macroinvertebrates downstream. Initially, mainly what we would collect would be dipteran larvae, flies,
  • 00:41:04 - 2364 midges, things that are very tolerant of pollution. Today we collect things that are more-that require better quality water. Things like Mayflies, hellgrammites, things that are-are indicators of better water quality. I can't say that the-the upriver site and the downriver site are the same yet and probably never will be because we will continue to put material into the river from our wastewater treatment plants and from runoff from the City of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo that are going to continue to have an effect on the water quality downstream. But certainly one of the-the pieces of good news, I would
  • 00:41:52 - 2364 say, is the wastewater treatment plant in Nuevo Laredo has made a big impact on the water quality downstream.
  • DT: Maybe you could give us a little background about this research program. One thing I'd be curious to know is how do you do your sampling and what's sort of the range of creatures that you might find? Are there any benthic organisms or is it more insects that are higher in the water column?
  • 00:42:22 - 2364 TV: Well, the way we-the way we usually do the-ag-when we first started we were very naïve. We had something called a server sampler and it's simply a net with a metal frame on it that you-you set this down in the bottom of the-the river. And then it's usually a two-person operation and another person gets upstream of the net and picks up rocks off the bottom and-and scrubs them with their hands, washes any organisms off and they go into the net. And after a period of time or after you've sampled a certain area, then you take the organisms out. You count them, preserve them and then bring
  • 00:43:03 - 2364
  • them back to the lab and-and identify them and plug that data into the-the index. Well, I say we were naïve because for several months, we were ju-just using our server sample-sampler and going down and collecting the samples. Well, one day we went down and well, the water was about fifteen feet higher than it had normally had been and so we figured well, we're not going to get any invertebrates out of-out of the river today. And so we tried some artificial habitats for these organisms in-in order to-you put milk crate of-full of rocks that you can just on a regular basis retrieve and take the
  • 00:43:47 - 2364 organisms off of the rocks or there's some-some commercial samplers called a Hesti-Hester-Dendy trap or sampler that you put it in the river and then you can pick it up occasionally and take the organisms that are attached to it off. But today we have found that the-the thing that works best for us is with just a simple little d-net, what we call a
  • 00:44:11 - 2364 kick net. Take it down to the river if the-if the flow permits, if it's not too high and you just simply put the net down on the bottom of the-the river bottom and kick the rocks in front of it to dislodge organisms. And so, these are being washed into the net and we normally do a five minute kick so, we can, you know, put the same amount of effort into each one of the samples so we'll have and idea of what the populations are. And so, we do a five minute kick up river and collect those organisms. Go down to the down river site and do the same thing and then compare the samples from the-the same day at each
  • 00:44:55 - 2364 one of these so that the kick net seems to work the best. And normally you would like have a minimum of a hundred organisms out of each one of those samples. And usually it's not that big a problem to find a hundred organisms because they're-some of them are extremely small. And, you know, after-after you get the big damsel flies and the Dragon flies and some of the beetles and some of the bigger larvae, then you're back, you know, to the smaller and smaller things. But that's important that you get the small things because we're looking for diversity here. And so, we'd like to have a, you know, a
  • 00:45:33 - 2364 pretty good picture of everything that's living in that water. And so, that's-that's the way we-we collect the macroinvertebrates is with the-with the five minute kick out into the river.
  • DT: And let's see if I understand this, you mostly count them and categorize them and describe them but do you also find out what sort of chemicals there might be within these organisms or what kind of lesions they might have?
  • 00:46:07 - 2364 TV: Well, the macroinvertebrates, we-we haven't done any kind of chemical analysis on those. In addition okay, the-we do four sites on the Rio Grande in the Laredo region, once a month. In addition to that, I also work with the International Boundary and Water Commission on the clean rivers program. And for that we have seven sites that we sample. And for that kind of sampling we do different sites-we do various number of times a year but we do the seven sites twice a year. And so, it's a long day. We start at the Columbia Bridge, which is about nineteen miles up river from Laredo and we have
  • 00:46:50 - 2364 sites at each one of the bridges. We do-do a site at the Columbia Bridge and then the World Trade Bridge, we have a site there were we collect and then at the-Rio-at the Jefferson Street Water Treatment Plant where Laredo Texas water in from the Rio Grande, we have a site there. And then we move on down to bridge two and then on down river eventually to San Ignacio which is another thirty miles or so down river. So, we do about a hundred mile-hundred river mile stretch when-and-sap-sampling seven different sites. Now then that work includes not only collecting the basic water
  • 00:47:32 - 2364 chemistry data, the bacterial data, but also we collect water samples for heavy metals. We collect sediment samples for heavy metals and all those samples are sent off to an E.P.A. approved lab. We don't do the analysis ourselves because that-that data needs to be done by an approved lab that is certified. So, we just collect the samples of the sediments and the water for the-the heavy metals to keep an eye on, you know, what's going on and we do that twice a year at these seven different sites.
  • DT: Well, are you picking up any signs of heavy metals or pesticides or solvents that might be coming from industrial processes?
  • 00:48:22 - 2364
  • TV: Well, the-the heavy metals there-there are always metals in the river, you know, some of that's naturally according. We have, back in the old days, anyway, cinnabar mines, mercury mines, up in the Big Bend region and so, there's, you know, rocks up there that contain mercury. Arsenic is always in the-the water, naturally according for the most case. One of the big-one of the big issues in Laredo over the years has been the antimony smelter that-there was a company that would-went through various names but in-in the past twenty years, it was called Anzon America. It was actually a British
  • 00:49:10 - 2364 corporation and they had a smelter that was set up on the banks of Manadas Creek, one of our creeks that flows into the Rio Grande, upstream of our water intake for the city and that-for over seventy years there was a antimony smelter. They brought the ore out of Mexico at a blast furnace that was smelting the metal. And eventually they took the blast furnace out. I think they actually took it back to Mexico to-to Reynosa for doing the smelting but the plant continued as a processing plant. And for years they were producing things like antimony trioxide and some other compounds of the antimony. And all this was right on the banks of the Manadas creek and so, all the runoff from the
  • 00:50:02 - 2364 plant was going into the creek and then very quickly down to the river. And so, antimony was-is-is a concern. That plant now is closed. The site where it was is in a process of being remediated but apparently there's some problems with the process that they were using and-and it looks like it's going to be a long term process of getting that site cleaned up. And as-as time goes by, we're guessing that, you know, there be more contamination of antimony from that plant even though the TCEQ, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which in those days was the Texas Natural
  • 00:50:47 - 2364 Resource Conservation Commission had them put in retention ponds out there so all the runoff from the plant would actually be caught in the retention ponds rather than going into the-into the Rio Grande. But that was like sixty-five years after this had been occurring anyway. It had been going on for a long, long time.
  • DT: Do you see any effects from the maquilas that, I guess, are in this area or perhaps from the warehousing?
  • 00:51:18 - 2364
  • TV: Well one of our-one of my concerns has certainly been the warehouses because many of the warehouse districts are right on the banks of the river. And so, for years, I-I'll have to say that I think things have improved in most or in a lot of those warehouses. Fifteen years ago, you'd drive through the warehouse districts and there were old barrels of who knows what just sitting out on the lots rusting away. And certainly anything from
  • 00:51:51 - 2364 those situations if the barrels were ruptured or rusted through, short distance from the river that-all of that stuff would eventually end up in the river. But like I say I think, you know, the City of Laredo has some ordinances in place now. I don't think they have nearly enough inspectors to enforce all of the ordinances that deal with the warehouses. But I think even though the warehouse industry has continued to grow and there are more and more warehouses all the time and most of them are near the river, I think the-it seems to me anyway that the-the-the way those warehouses are actually functioning
  • 00:52:34 - 2364 has maybe improved a little bit over the years.
  • Maquiladoras-one of the things that when-when we first started doing the water quality monitoring and talking-you know, I think one-one of our goals was to educate people about what's going on.
  • And so the Rio Grande International Study was formed as a non-profit organization and we had three things that we thought this organization ought to do. It ought to be an educational organization. It ought to be involved in some research and the other one was bi-national cup-cooperation. And so, we do have a sister organization in Nuevo Laredo and over
  • 00:53:17 - 2364 the years, that has worked very well and o-o her times not so well-not that-not that the organization itself had anything wrong. It's just the people. People come and people go and to keep an organization going, there has to be somebody that's really interested in keeping the organization afloat and functioning. And so there's been, you know, some ups and downs with our international, bi-national cooperation. Now, the Maquilas, one of things that I was going to say, when we first started, we-we thought well, we got to-
  • 00:53:57 - 2364 we got to talk to as many people as we can; we got to tell them about what's going on in the river and what's going in with the-the creeks. And people in Laredo say "Oh", you know, "You're fighting a losing battle here" and the other thing they would say "Well, the reason the water quality in Laredo is so bad is because of Nuevo Laredo." But if you look at a map of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Nuevo Laredo is downstream of our water treatment plant. And so, that point in time Nuevo Laredo was not affecting our water. They were affecting the water of the people that live downstream in-in El Cenizo, Rio
  • 00:54:38 - 2364 Bravo on down to San Ignacio. But we were not being impacted by activities of the maquilas in-in Nuevo Laredo.
  • One of the things that has altered that a little bit, I'm afraid, is we built a-a bridge called the World Trade Bridge and in my opinion, we put it in the absolute worst place we could put a commercial bridge and it is a commercial bridge. It's only commercial vehicles that are allowed to cross that bridge. I mean, if we went out there, you and I went out there in our car to go across, we would not be allowed to cross that bridge. It is strictly commercial and I think, I don't know what the actual
  • 00:55:20 - 2364 numbers are but I hear maybe as many as nine to ten thousands trucks a day cross that bridge. And all of that's happening upstream of our water treatment plant. The other thing putting that bridges where we did caused, was development in Nuevo Laredo. All of that land on the Mexican side of the river was simply ranch land. Now that we have an international bridge there, we're seeing development growth talking place on the Mexican side as well as the U.S. side in that area. And so, if-if that continues, which I expect it will, Nuevo Laredo is going to need another wastewater treatment plant to take care of that part of the-the city.
  • DT: Has your sampling shown you much about the impacts that derive from Laredo versus those from Nuevo Laredo and if you've gotten any insight about how things operate in the states versus Mexico?
  • 00:56:29 - 2364
  • TV: Well, the thing is, the water in the river does whatever the water in the river is going to do. I mean, it moves back and forth. So, it's a little-little hard to say well, this was a result of something that happened on the U.S. side or on the Mexican side of the river. Certainly one of the things that struck me was back before Nuevo Laredo had the wastewater treatment plant, at one point they were diverting much of the raw sewage into the river at a particular point at Coyote Creek, downriver where the wastewater treatment plant near-is near there now. But they were diverting much of the raw sewage in and
  • 00:57:16 - 2364 have an aerial photo of that and this dark, dark, black water coming out of the outfall into the Rio Grande. And you can see for a long way down river before the-the two-the-the dark black stuff mixed with the brown Rio Grande. So certainly the-the stuff that's coming out of one city or the other hangs to the bank for a period of time but eventually it all gets mixed together. And, you know, depending on how much flow there is will-will determine how long it takes that stuff to get incorporated into the main part of the river.
  • DT: You were explaining earlier off tape about the construction of this sewage treatment plant in Nuevo Laredo and that it had actually treated a great deal of the waste in the city but that it had some connection problems, can you explain a little more about that?
  • 00:58:17 - 2364
  • TV: Yeah, well, the wastewater treatment plant in Nuevo Laredo actually was-was the first treatment plant on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. No other cities in-in Mexico on the Rio Grande not-not Juarez, not Acuña, not Reynosa or not-none of those cities had a wastewater treatment plant. And Nuevo Laredo was the first to-to have a functional plant and the plant was designed to be a thirty-one million gallon per day treatment facility. Pre-treatment plant, Nuevo Laredo was putting approximately twenty-five million gallons of raw sewage in the river on a daily basis. Well, that's a lot of raw sewage. The treatment plant was designed to handle that much sewage plus some
  • 00:59:13 - 2364 potential for future growth. The real problem was that when they first started, they had to go in and dig up the streets of Nuevo Laredo because at that point in time, there was no separation between sewage and storm water. It was all put in the same pipes because it was all going to the river anyway. There was no reason to have separate pipes-separate systems. So they had to go in and separate the storm drains from the-the sewer and they had to build a collector line along the banks of the-the river from the upper end of Nuevo Laredo down through, down to the treatment plant. And they built the treatment plant on the south side, the down river end of Nuevo Laredo so it would be a gravity fed
  • 01:00:01 - 2364 system, so they wouldn't have to have a lot of lift stations. And so, the-the flow of the sewage, once it gets into the collector line it just moves down hill to the treatment plant. And the first real pumps that are involved in-in moving the sewage is right there at the treatment plant. So they had a thirty-one million gallon design capacity, twenty-five million gallons that needed treating. And the U.S. government put in about seventeen million dollars, the State of Texas two million dollars and the rest of the cost was the responsibility of Mexico. And as you can imagine, there always cost over runs and I think the-the final figure for the infrastructure and the plant itself was around sixty
  • 01:00:48 - 2364 million dollars but the infrastructure's not complete. There are still raw sewage outfalls in Nuevo Laredo that are con-continue to put on a daily basis, raw sewage into the river. Estimates I hear somewhere on the order of eight million gallons a day. Well that's better than twenty-five million but still not good enough. We still need to figure out some way to get all of that sewage treated in Nuevo Laredo.