Carl Hodges and the ERL: A Wunderkind at the Wonderworks

Carl Hodges and the Environmental Research Lab:

Biosphere II, test module designed as a research device, represents one of the early stages in the development of a self-contained habitat that could have application in the construction of space settlements. When design refinements are completed, the habitat is expected to resemble a sophisticated greenhouse in which plants, ani mals, and people can live in mutual support. (INSET) Carl Hodges, director of the Environ mental Research Laboratory.

Every Tuesday at 1:30 P.M., small groups of visitors from throughout the world congregate in the lobby of a scientific laboratory in Tucson for a ninety-minute tour. The setting is unimposing. The buildings, Quonset huts of varying sizes along with a few brick structures, are not architectural milestones, and the site adjacent to Tucson International Airport is less than glamorous.

But once the guests are inside, the at traction becomes apparent. Here scientists from a variety of disciplines are searching for new and more sensible ways for humans to feed and house themselves— without destroying the planet. The Quonset huts themselves actually are greenhouses where ideas are tested that may herald both the end of world hunger and the beginning of human habitation on another planet.

This deceptively modest place is the University of Arizona's Environmental Research Laboratory. At its head is Carl N. Hodges, a mathematician who has made a career of scientific gambling.

Nearly all of the projects under way at the ERL are, to one degree or another, an extension of Hodges' personality. That's another way of saying that his perceptions set the tone for what is allowed to happen, and that once something happens that's potentially valuable for the human race, the technology travels from Tucson International Airport to countries as far off as the United Arab Emirates.

In some ways, Hodges is like the precocious child who always has another question. Place a bowl of soup in front of him and he would probably ponder whether the vegetables in it could be grown in a way that would use water more efficiently and produce a more nutritious result. He might also wonder if the vegetables could be grown in a greenhouse using seawater desalted in a system powered by solar energy; and then he might consider whether the desalted water used to grow the vegetables might also be channeled into a tank to raise edible fish, and whether the wastes that the fish excrete could somehow be used to fertilize the vegetables....Moreover, he would want to know whether such a system would be of value in feeding people in places where fertile soil and freshwater irrigation are rare. Eventually, he would ask whether all of this could be duplicated on another plan et to make extraterrestrial life possible for human beings.

The parents of such a child (if they were abnormally patient) might realize that, to their inquisitive son, a bowl of soup may contain in microcosmic form the solutions to 5000 years of planetary mismanagement.

In any event, it is noteworthy that every question raised in the preceding paragraphs has been answered over the years by the team of scientists who work under Hodges at the ERL.

As a result of a solar energy conference held in southern Arizona in 1955, the University of Arizona established a Solar Energy Research Laboratory, forerunner of the ERL, as an arm of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics. Both facilities were the brainchild of A. Richard Kassander, an eminent UofA scientist and administrator (now retired) who became a kind of intellectual father to Hodges. In 1961, as a graduate student, Hodges designed a solar-powered desalting system. About the same time Ray Bliss, director of the solar lab, resigned. Kassander offered the position to his emerging disciple.

"Thanks to some support I got from Dick Kassander, the desalting system worked, and such systems were rare at the time," Hodges said. "So then we made a proposal to the Office of Saline Water at the Department of the Interior, and we received our first research grant, 60,000 dollars."

He used that money to hire John Groh, then a graduate student in mechanical engineering, and together they built a small desalting unit in the solar laboratory. The model evidently impressed the federal government, which asked Hodges to build a solar-powered desalting plant at Point Loma in San Diego, California. Uncharacteristically, Hodges balked.

"I grew up in the horse racing business," Hodges said (his father bred and trained thoroughbreds), "and I knew that wouldn't work. My family used to spend winters in Phoenix and summers at the racetrack in Del Mar; so I knew the coast of California-it's foggy all morning! It makes no sense at all to build a solarpowered desalting plant in a place like Point Loma. So, instead, we suggested Puerto Peñasco, the town also known as Rocky Point, in Sonora, Mexico." It made sense to the federal officials. Thus began a long, complex, and sometimes controversial association involving Hodges, the University of Sonora, and Puerto Peñasco, a Mexican fishing village where the desert meets the Sea of Cortés, some four hours' drive southwest of Phoenix.

Hodges believes his desalting plant was "very successful," though his critics disagree. One, who prefers anonymity, said, "It was a successful failure. Yes, it produced desalted water, but that water was so expensive to produce that it was economically impractical."

Hodges characterizes that judgment as "offensive." In his words, "The fact is that, beginning in the fall of 1963 and continuing at least through the end of that decade, the desalting plant provided all of the bottled drinking water-it was called Agua Solar-for Puerto Peñasco. You have to remember that at that time all water in Puerto Peñasco was trucked in."

He does not dispute the fact that it turned out to be expensive water. The question was how best to use it.

"We wanted to use it to make the desert bloom, but we couldn't because, if you irrigated outside, you got very few plants for a lot of expensive water; so then we thought, why not encapsulate the plants

inside some kind of inflated plastic structure or something, and use seawater to raise the humidity and reduce the vapor gradient that causes water to transpire from plants?

From this modest beginning, Hodges and his team at the solar laboratory's successor, ERL, established what they called "controlled environment agriculture." Kassander brought the Puerto Peñasco experiment to the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation, where he had solid contacts, and Hodges was given a substantial grant to expand the lab's activities in desalting seawater and using it to grow plants in plastic-covered greenhouses.

That also led eventually to experiments with aquaculture, or "fish farms," and a major shrimp farm at Puerto Peñasco. The operation, in which shrimp were produced in long rectangular tubs similar to bowling lanes, had been funded by the Coca-Cola Co. and the F. H. Prince Co.

The shrimp-growing operation has since been moved to Hawaii and is currently marketing between 50,000 and 80,000 pounds of shrimp each month. The ERL continues to provide technical and scientific support for the operation; in return, the University of Arizona Foundation receives a two-percent royalty on net sales.

In the late 1960s, Time magazine carried an article on the ERL's work, and several other events occurred simultaneously, all of which began to lift the ERL out of obscurity. Hodges, invited to deliver a technical paper at an international confer-ence in India, asked the Rockefeller Foun-dation for air fare.

The foundation agreed, but with a hitch: "It turned out they wanted me to stop at all of their international research centers," Hodges recalled, and the trip became a journey around the world in which he visited fifteen research instal-lations in seventeen days.

"Two weeks before I left on that trip, I got a telephone call from the head of planning for a country I'd never heard of called Abu Dhabi. This man had read the article in Time and wanted me to come to Abu Dhabi to talk about agriculture. It turned out that I was going to Bombay and Teheran, and Abu Dhabi was right in the area."

In a subsequent meeting with the ruler of Abu Dhabi (one of the United Arab Emirates), Hodges was asked to develop a controlled-environment agricultural system for the country. Abu Dhabi is a hot desert with no source of freshwater. All produce was being imported and consequently was extremely expensive.

Hodges declined, explaining that the system was still in the research stages. "I came back to Tucson, and, for the next year, I'd get a call about every two months from Abu Dhabi. The ruler wanted us to build greenhouses on an island a little offshore that he was particulary fond of. Finally, a year later, I said if they'd pay expenses for me and two members of my team to come, we'd visit Abu Dhabi and talk about it. "So we went back, and sometimes we sat on the floor with them and ate with our hands. And other times we'd be in a more elaborate place eating with solid gold utensils; they're very affluent and wonderful people. Anyway, they asked if we would do these projects, and I made some quick calculations, being very naive, and said it would cost 3.6 million dollars. They said fine. We shook hands, and I came back to Tucson."

Nothing had been put in writing, but soon after his return, Hodges said, the UofA received two checks from Abu Dhabi for a total of 3.6 million dollars. At Hodges' request, the sheik sent three citizens to Controlled environment agriculture exploits various techniquesincluding efficient utilization of water, elevated bumidity, nutrient management, and recycling to produce prolific food crops in limited space.

plants receive sufficent fish-effluent nutrients for proper growth.

program coordinator, tests tilapia hybrids. The fish are being grown experimentally as a promising food source.

Tucson to be trained in the operation and maintenance of controlled-environment agricultural systems.

Today, Abu Dhabi is only one of several beneficiaries of technology developed at the ERL.

At present, for example, Hodges and