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In Memoriam
Elaine Krueger
The news of Elaine Krueger’s death on October 20 surprised and saddened all of us at NEIWPCC. Since 1996, Elaine had been a familiar and most welcome presence at NEIWPCC Commission meetings as the representative of the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She was a loyal friend, a steadfast supporter of our work, and a brilliant environmental scientist for whom we had deep respect. As the director of MA DPH’s Environmental Toxicology Program for more than 20 years, she was a compassionate public servant, providing indispensable advice to state officials on environmental health issues and working on hundreds of investigations related to human exposure to environmental contamination. She led DPH’s efforts to ban the use of toxic substances such as chlordane, alar, and urea formaldehyde foam insulation. She pioneered efforts to warn pregnant women and nursing mothers of the dangers associated with eating fish contaminated with mercury. She even played a critical role in perhaps the most celebrated public health case in recent memory, when she collaborated with the late Dr. Peter Murphy on the water distribution model used in the final childhood leukemia study in Woburn, Mass.
Elaine’s accomplishments were many, and her dedication to excellence in all that she did was evident to all. She is greatly missed.
Helen Cottrell
In July, we received the sad news of the passing of Helen Cottrell, the principal environmental scientist at the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program. For many years, NEIWPCC has been a partner and supporter of the NBEP, and we were well aware of the critical role Helen played in many of the organization’s most significant accomplishments. She was a driving force behind the first inventory of coastal habitats and coastal features in Narragansett Bay, the first trends analysis of coastal wetlands loss in the Bay area, and the first Atlas of Narragansett Bay Coastal Habitats. As we do at NEIWPCC, Helen believed deeply in the value of building collaborative processes to address environmental issues, and she succeeded in building trusting working relationships across many organizations. It was Helen who in 1995 led the effort to create the Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Workgroup, the forerunner to today’s highly praised R.I. Habitat Restoration Team. Our friends and partners at the NBEP miss her tremendously, and we share their sorrow.