Joseph Harrington, President of the Cambridge Water Board Major figure in Cambridge water quality dies

One of the great things about Cambridge is our water. There are a lot of people to thank for our plentiful and clean supply of water. We just received word that Dr. Joseph Harrington, one of the people responsible for our city’s enviable water, has died.

Among other public health accomplishments, Harrington was president of the Cambridge Water Board. There are services in his honor today and tomorrow, as indicated in the obituary below. So even if you didn’t know him, raise a glass of good Cambridge water to his memory.

Joseph Harrington, Professor of Environmental Health Engineering in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, passed away on October 9. He was 69 years old. Dr. Harrington chaired what was then called the Department of Environmental Science and Physiology at HSPH from 1982 to 1986. He served on the faculty of Harvard University for 42 years, working at the nexus of sanitary and environmental engineering, mathematical economics, and policymaking and public health.

Dr. Harrington received an A.M. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1963 from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, focusing on mathematical decision models for environmental control systems. Starting in 1960, he participated in the Harvard Water Program, which helped guide the United States’ water resource planning.

From there, Dr. Harrington embarked on a lengthy career. For more than two decades, he championed techniques in analytical approaches to natural resource development that offered flexibility in their application to world situations. These techniques allowed for the existence of multiple parties, uncertainties in understanding natural phenomenon and parameter values, and other variables. He advocated the use of mathematical programming models to find a range of solutions to resource development and management. He further drew attention to how complex analytical models may be affected by a lack of technical and other data in developing countries, and emphasized the need for technology transfer to countries such as India and Brazil.

Dr. Harrington lectured in short courses sponsored by the World Health Organization in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and in the U.S. In 1977, he was an Indo-American Fellow at Delhi University, working on problems of rural energy use. He joined a team from the World Bank/WHO that researched water supplies in several cities in India. He worked on environmental resource projects in Nepal, Philippines, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Russia, China, and Jamaica, among others. He studied the implications of several tropical diseases in water resource management, specifically incorporating malaria and schistosomiasis into models of the Senegal River Basin.

In the U.S., Dr. Harrington served as a consultant for federal, state, and local governments, including the U.S. Public Health Service, the National Research Council Committee on Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal, the EPA, and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Affairs.

He was one of three technical experts appointed in 1983 by the Special Master for Boston Harbor. He managed large environmental impact studies for advanced wastewater treatment for Boston Harbor, as well as for the Potomac River in Washington D.C., and elsewhere. Closer to home, Dr. Harrington served as president of the Cambridge Water Board in Massachusetts.

In addition to chairing the Department of Environmental Science and Physiology at HSPH (now the Department of Environmental Health), he also served as Director of the Physical Sciences and Engineering Program (now the Exposure, Epidemiology, and Risk Program at HSPH) and as Acting Director of the Occupational Health Program. He served as Acting Director of the Center for Population Studies, and as Acting Chairman of the Department of Population Sciences. Dr. Harrington was the founding Director of the Master of Science Program in Health Policy and Management. He also served as interim Chair of the Department of Population and International Health.

A service will be held this Thursday, October 12, at Keefe Funeral Home, 2175 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA. A memorial service is scheduled for Friday, October 13, at the Story Chapel at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA, at 11 a.m.

[Cambridge Chronicle article - October 12, 2006]

Dr. Joseph Harrington, 69, president of the Cambridge Water Board, passed away on October 9. The Cambridge Chronicle has additional details. Joe served on the Harvard faculty for 42 years. He was one of those great Cantabrigians who have served above and beyond the call of duty voluntarily as a member of one of Cambridge's boards and commissions. He served with distinction for the best interests of the city during a time of significant enhancement of Cambridge's water infrastructure. As Chris Helms of the Chronicle writes, “raise a glass of good Cambridge water to his memory.”
 - posted by Robert Winters on the Cambridge Civic Journal site.