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Fired curator says Baker opened zoo's aquarium too early Blames animal deaths on push to finish project Tuesday, July 18, 2000 By Diana Nelson Jones, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Jim Prappas, fired last week as curator of aquatic life at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium, said he clashed with zoo President Barbara Baker over decisions he said she made to hurry completion of the $15.9 million aquarium.
Prappas blamed several recent animal deaths on Baker's decisions and a rush to get the aquarium ready for a June 10 social gala.
At one point during the project, Prappas said, he complained in an e-mail message to a zoo board member that it was not "humanly possible" to meet Baker's deadlines.
Baker denied that her decisions imperiled animals and said the aquarium project was not unduly rushed. She has declined to comment on why she fired Prappas.
Among Prappas' allegations was that, to Baker, some loss of fish was acceptable. Amid the rush to open the aquarium for the gala, he said, Baker asked if there were "disposable" fish to display in tanks that weren't ready for habitation.
"The tanks were not yet stable for animal life," said Prappas. "She said 'Can we use disposable animals?' I wouldn't discuss it."
Baker says it was "totally untrue" that she made such a request.
"There aren't any disposable animals at the Pittsburgh Zoo," she said.
The only publicized losses -- 12 stingrays and two sharks last month -- were accidents. A leak of tap water, caused when a worker's fall tore the sprinkler system, contaminated the stingray tank. The sharks died because a vendor had supplied the wrong chemical.
Last week, the aquarium lost a puffer fish and a panther grouper when an ozone machine was turned on for the first time. The machine, which disinfects and sterilizes tank water, was turned on the day after Prappas was fired.
"You have to know what you're doing with ozone," said Prappas, who said he has 15 years working with the gas.
Baker said the ozone system was being regulated but that it spiked "for whatever reason, and we lost the fish."
An earlier incident led to the deaths of several jellyfish and sea- horses. The temperature rose in a chiller unit, an incident Baker blamed on a malfunction but others implied may have been caused by Baker accidentally hitting a wrong switch.
What Prappas calls "the penguin incident" occurred days before a preview of the aquarium in May. The king penguins' exhibit wasn't ready. E-mail to Prappas from a board member called that "common knowledge."
The air conditioning and the water temperatures were inconsistent, Prappas said.
According to Prappas, Baker decided to bring the penguins -- four king penguins and four rock-hoppers -- back from Moody Gardens, Galveston, Texas, where they were on loan during construction of the aquarium. Prappas opposed the decision.
"They stayed on that truck, in the dark, for 10 days," said Prappas, adding that this kind of storage should be used only in emergencies.
Baker said the penguin exhibit was "99 percent complete and could have been ready any day." Their 72-foot-long transfer truck was climate controlled and twice the size of their exhibit, she said. "They were pampered," she said. "The penguins were never in any danger. They've even laid eggs, which shows how well they're adapting."
Baker has maintained that completion of the aquarium project was not rushed, that the last months of any big project are naturally frenetic and fraught with stress. But Prappas said members of the board came to him, asking: "Why are we rushing that building?"
In response to a board member's e-mail to him in mid-May, Prappas detailed much of the work that remained to be done, saying: "There is no way humanly possible that I could finish all the exhibits. This deadline is impossible to complete."
At that point, he wrote, three tanks were leaking, two exhibits had not been plumbed, three were not yet painted.
Mark Reiser, who consulted for the architectural design firm Bios of Seattle, said he had "a ringside seat" as a support engineer on the project. He said the completion schedule was "very aggressive."
"I want to be supportive of Jim," he said of Prappas, "because he did the work of about three people, went far beyond the level of effort you normally see, from going out and procuring equipment and setting up smaller tanks and doing a lot of coordination work with contractors, which is normally done by consultants or a team of people.
"It is kind of mind-boggling he's ending up on the short end of the stick after he put so much into the project."
While workers were trying to meet the deadline, Baker decided the aquarium would be open to the public every day from noon until 4 p.m. Carpeting, lighting and graphics installations had to be stopped during that time, said one worker, who asked not to be named.
The zoo, like many institutions, has a policy that unauthorized talking to the news media can result in immediate firing. "Waves of people came through," delaying work sometimes for half an entire day, the worker said.
Joe Choromanski, vice president of animal husbandry for Ripley Entertainment in Orlando, Fla., said animals are vulnerable in new aquariums as work crews try to make a deadline that directors and boards have promised to the public.
Choromanski, whose firm builds aquariums, had no firsthand knowledge of the situation in Pittsburgh, but said a slightly higher incidence of fish death is not uncommon at the startup of operations.
"Depending on how much people are rushed, the loss can be significant," he said.
He said too often animals are introduced into their tanks before the systems -- both the mechanical systems and the animals' systems -- are ready. Aquariums use artificial salt water that recirculates, and it takes time for beneficial bacteria to grow in the filters.
The bacteria feed on the ammonia the fish emit.
"We inoculate the filters with this bacteria," Choromanski said. "You can do everything you can, but so much is under the control of nature."
In January, Prappas received a favorable job review and a $3,000 raise. In February and March, he said, pressure began building to bring back animals that were relocated during construction.
"It was continual pressure," he said. "Meanwhile, my foremost responsibility was to take care of animals."
Prappas said he was given no reason for his firing, in fact was told no reason was necessary.
"It certainly had nothing to do with animal welfare, because animal welfare is everything to me. I stood up for my ethics, and I think they're making me a scapegoat," he said.
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