George C. Anderson papers, 1940-1991

George Anderson was born in Vancouver Canada. He attended the University of British Columbia, earning his bachelor's in 1947 and his master's in 1949. He had worked for the BC Game Department during summers, doing research on the trout in Paul Lake near Kamloops. He realized that he was much more interested in the lake than in the fish and this inspired him to continue his education. He began working toward his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 1949 and finished in 19.54. His research included studies on Lake Washington and Chase Lake, and Soap Lake and Lake Lenore in the Grand Coulee. He wrote up his dissertation and was offered a position at the UW in Zoology to continue his lake research.

He met his wife, Harriett in zoology in 1954, and they were married for 47 years before she died in 2003. They had one son who died young.

In 1955 on a July day while sailing on Lake Washington, he noticed that the water was cloudy, and a slightly different color and he immediately recognized that something was wrong. He collected a beer bottle full of lake water and took it back to the lab to test, discovering that it had a high concentration of a blue green alga, Oscillatoria rubescens, a notorious indicator of impending pollution. He also looked at dissolved oxygen levels in deep waters and compared it with studies from 1933, 1949 and 1955, and then, with his mentor, wrote an article on the artificial eutrophication of Lake Washington. The article caught the attention of city planner, James Ellis. At that time there were 10 sewage treatment plants dumping into the lake. Ellis drew up the Metro plan which would bring together all the surrounding municipalities to build a line around the lake and divert the sewage to West Point. Dan Evans was a freshman legislator and with scientific backing they got it on the ballot. TV detractors said that it was promoted by the zoologists "who were keepers of zoo animals" insisting that because water was H2O there was plenty of oxygen in the lake. The measure passed in 1958, and Metro cleaned up Lake Washington, the first city in the country to do so.

George felt his studies on lakes had reached a logical conclusion and began interviewing at various universities when Fleming, the chair of the UW Department of Oceanography, a small academic unit, came looking for him. He left word for George not to accept any other job without talking to him first. An attractive offer was made, and there he spent the rest of his career. When George retired the faculty numbered 74

George got a call in 1971 to go to Washington D.C. to administer the Marine Science program for the US Atomic Energy Commission. The family moved then to Washington D.C. but Harriett and their son, then an adolescent, had soon toured most of the museums and battlefields there, and were ready to return to the PNW after the year's commitment was completed. The family returned west, towing Harriett's Volkswagen, bringing their own Stuart the mouse on the journey.

A year later George was appointed as a part time member of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel whose members make up the three member Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards. These boards conduct hearings on applications to construct and operate nuclear power plants throughout the country. The three member boards consist of a lawyer, a nuclear physicist or engineer, and an environmental scientist. Each has the title of Administrative Judge. George attended the National Judicial College and earned a Certificate in Judicial Writing. During the following ten years, as time allowed, he sat on boards involving plants to be built and operated in several states including Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin and New York. After much of the licensing of nuclear plants had been finished, he took on other cases such as plant modifications, nuclear medicine, industrial radiography, etc. and he finally resigned from the panel in 2005.

Also, during the 1970s, he took on other assignments, such as member of committees on Ocean Sciences for the National Science Foundation, chair of Advisory Committee for the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System and from 1975 to 1977 was the chief scientist of Deep Ocean Mining Environmental Studies, NOAA. In 1977, he became Associate Chairman of Oceanography and after the formation of the College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences in 1980 he was named the Director of the School of Oceanography.

After selling his home in May 2005, he moved to Issaquah where he met and in 2006 married a lovely lady named Margaret. Margaret died the following year. George moved into Mirabella on December 15, the very first day, along with the Bergs and the Potters. He died January 14, 2019.