Is It Time to Resurrect the Harvard Water Program?

In 1955, a group of professors at Harvard University began a program to investigate ways to improve the planning and design of multiunit, multipurpose water resource systems. In part, the program responded to the lack of adequate guidance at the federal level for the design of water systems. Bureau of the Budget Circular A-47, issued in late 1952, required that net benefits be maximized, but offered little direction on picking the right combination of uses to achieve that end. The professors realized that the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration, which offered training to civil servants, provided just the place for a water resources seminar to address the problem. The program would mix practically oriented government water planners and more theoretical academic talent. The Harvard academicians believed that techniques could be devised to allow planners to take into account far more alternatives than were usually considered with available procedures. The identification of more alternatives would, in turn, help maximize benefits. In such a system, any change in one of the variables would cause the net benefits to decline ~Maass and Hufschmidt 1959, pp. 99–100; Hufschmidt 1962!. The program integrated economic theory and engineering practice in a democratic political arena. It necessarily embraced a strong interdisciplinary approach and operations research techniques. Professors came from engineering ~Gordon Fair, Harold Thomas, Jr.!, economics ~Robert Dorfman, Otto Eckstein, John R. Meyer!, and government and public administration ~Arthur Maass and Maynard Hufschmidt, a research associate!. Maass chaired the program. Economics student Stephen A. Marglin, who was an undergraduate when Maass first recruited him, and engineering student Myron B. Fiering later also made important contributions. The Bureau of Reclamation, Army Corps of Engineers, Public Health Service, Soil Conservation Service, Geological Survey, and the California Department of Water Resources provided students and later funding for the program. Gordon Fair managed to acquire $150,000 in ‘‘seed’’ money from the Rockefeller Foundation, a substantial sum for that time ~Maass et al. 1962, pp. 10– 13; Hufschmidt 1962, 1967; Burden 1955; S. Marglin, personal interview, December 11, 2001; Maass, telephone interview, October 1, 2001!. A complete list of participants in the program appears on pp. 12-13 of Maass et al. 1962!.