Alan Steinman on the shore of Muskegon Lake, ice-covered in January.

Alan Steinman is one of the country’s premier freshwater ecologists. A professor and researcher at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, he coauthored an authoritative report on Michigan’s blue economy and found his niche using science to show that protecting water resources and driving economic development don’t have to be opposing forces.

By Annie Sherman

Growing up on Long Island, Alan Steinman, M.S. ’83, explored the coast with curiosity, following crabs as they scurried on the beach and investigating the dunes. This freedom to discover—while also digging for clams and fishing for flounder—cemented for him an insatiable devotion to nature.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Vermont, Steinman traded the saltwaters of his childhood for the inland freshwaters of Rhode Island. The plentiful freshwater streams of the Ocean State and the University of Rhode Island stream ecology program were mecca for Steinman. So, he researched algae and aquatic plants for his master’s degree in botany here.

Steinman fondly remembers botany professor Bob Sheath’s lab, in which he “spent time looking at all the streams in Rhode Island.” He adds, “Fortunately, it’s a small enough state that you can actually survey all of them within a week. And I had a keen appreciation for the state as a whole because we were going everywhere from Lincoln down to Sakonnet, wherever there was flowing water. So, I really got to know the state and appreciate its water resources, as well as marine resources.

“My focus,” Steinman continues, “was to be broad and encompass as much as possible around this issue of freshwater in general, and URI enabled me to do that in not just freshwater, but also marine and estuarine intertidal areas. I had all of these different aquatic habitats at my disposal, and I tried to take advantage of that.”

Steinman built on that experience to become one of the country’s premier freshwater ecologists. From Florida’s Lake Okeechobee to Michigan’s Great Lakes, he used science to advocate that our water resources have incredible value for health, recreation, agriculture, and so much more—and, as a result, are worth preserving and fighting for. He lobbied that in order for the public to support this preservation, it must involve a return on economic investment.

He learned this lesson the hard way when he was director of the Lake Okeechobee Division of the South Florida Water Management District for nearly eight years. Steinman oversaw the restoration efforts associated with the lake, its watershed, and connecting estuaries, which involved decisions on water levels and distribution from the country’s second-largest freshwater lake. When water levels rose above the lake’s regulation schedule’s designated zones, the district would release vast quantities of water from the lake into the connecting estuaries, which empty into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. However, the water being discharged contained waste from neighboring cattle and dairy farms, which would wash into the lake via canals and creeks. This unleashed high concentrations of phosphorus, which causes harmful cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) and red tide blooms, and the reduced salinity in the estuaries resulted in the death of shellfish and finfish that were fished both commercially and recreationally. But if the water was not released from Lake Okeechobee, the 30-foot-high earthen dike surrounding the lake might fail, leading to catastrophic economic damage and potential loss of life. So, Steinman says this became such a heated community dispute that he received a death threat, and armed guards had to secure public meetings.

“I realized, for the first time really in my life, that the decisions we were making, based on the research we were doing, influenced not just millions of people, but millions—if not billions—of dollars,” Steinman says. “I always knew how important research was and how valuable our data were, but this showed that if I didn’t get it right, the implications were more than just me being written up in a journal. It was like, ‘Whoa, your job’s at stake, your reputation is at stake, billions of dollars are at stake.’ So, you really take the science seriously and recognize how important water is—not just to the ecosystem, which is where my natural focus was, but also to people’s livelihoods, to industry, to utilities, to homeowners who rely on drinking water. The implications are significant.”

Alan Steinman in his lab at the Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University in Muskegon, Mich.

It was these hydro resources and their potential to become an economic engine that centered Steinman’s work for the next 21 years. As director of the Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Michigan, he was—and remains, although he stepped down two-and-a-half years ago—the go-to scientist on Michigan’s blue economy, conducting research, teaching, and exploring ways to preserve the state’s freshwater resources. Maintaining his research lab on restoration ecology, aquatic ecosystems, and phosphorus biogeochemistry, Steinman also pursues water policy as a method of integrating the blue economy into water management.

When Michigan Economic Center director and Brookings Institution senior fellow John Austin proposed a collaboration, the economic engines really started revving up. With a team of contributing scientists, professors, and economists, the pair coauthored a report, “Blue Economy: Making Michigan the World’s Freshwater and Freshwater Innovation Capital,” which chronicles the state’s legacy as an industrial juggernaut of water trade and agriculture and makes a case for saving the state’s freshwater lakes and streams by emphasizing the value of those resources to the state’s economy.

“I knew Al to be easy to work with. He had a smart perspective and insight and understood what we were talking about. And he got it, that there are multiple ways that water and water innovation matter to economic development,” Austin says. “He combined real hard science, rigor, and ability. And he’s just very easygoing in terms of no big ego and wants to help make good things happen.”

Steinman wants to see natural places protected and enjoyed by everyone. Though he spent the better part of his career leading freshwater initiatives in Florida and Michigan, he remains attuned to the Ocean State’s water woes, too, and knows that the tension between Narragansett Bay and its blue economy runs deep.

“Like Rhode Island, we have lost most of our coastal wetlands in Michigan,” he says, “and these are critical habitats for vegetation, invertebrates, and fish, as well as being the kidneys of the ecosystem that filter out pollutants before they get into any receiving water body, whether it is Narragansett Bay or Lake Michigan.”

The Ocean State will draw him back to retire in a few years, to join family near East Greenwich. But until then, he’ll continue experimenting with new methods of preventing freshwater algae blooms, developing salinization treatments, and teaching graduate students at GVSU about emerging issues in water resources. Maybe he’ll write another book, he says, to follow his first, Internal Phosphorous Loading in Lakes: Causes, Case Studies, and Management.

When an expert tries to step back, it seems more opportunities come knocking. Steinman was appointed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Ecosystem Sciences and Management Working Group. He’ll also continue his service with the Great Lakes Advisory Board to advise the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on $475 million in annual restoration initiatives and help the National Academy of Sciences oversee Everglades restoration in Florida.

“I’ll continue to do ecosystem restoration, whether it’s dealing with too many nutrients or restoring shorelines, because it’s so important,” he says. “But I’m also very involved on the state level, as well as in my local community. I really believe in giving back.”

ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCK; PHOTOS: JENNIFER GREEN PHOTOGRAPHY