“The Missing Piece”

Board of Health welcomes a new member; colleagues laud Joseph Dorant’s environmental expertise

By Mark E. Vogler

The town’s newest Board of Health member, Joseph Dorant, couldn’t have asked for a better first meeting. On Monday, just four days after he was sworn in at Saugus Town Hall, he received a long introduction and a warm welcome from his board colleagues.

Dorant’s introduction was the first order of business on the agenda and lasted about eight minutes as the board’s chair Maria Tamagna read from the highlights of his resume – including more than 25 years as an environmental engineer for the state Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). “Mr. Dorant offers us a wide knowledge base. I’m sure he’s a welcome member of our board,” Tamagna said.

“I think to have an environmental expert on our team is just going to add a whole different layer to our expertise as a group. I’m excited,” she said.

Adding a member with Dorant’s extensive environmental background “is sort of the missing piece,” Tamagna said, noting that she and the other board members have professional backgrounds in the medical and health care field.

“We’re really going to enjoy this,” she said.

Dorant worked from 1978 to 2006 as an environmental engineer and Chief of Technical Services in MassDEP. And overlapping part of that period (1991-2006), he was a member of the Environmental Strike Force. He was part of an interagency unit comprised of scientists and engineers from MassDEP, environmental police officers from the state Department of Fish & Game, State Police and prosecutors from the state Office of the Attorney General who collaborated in prosecuting environmental crimes.

“I started in 1978 before the Clean Air Act and before the Clean Water Act and Hazardous Waste Regulations,” Dorant told his colleagues.

“I was fortunate to see firsthand the environmental improvements in Massachusetts over the last 30 years,” he said.

In 2006, he joined the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists (MOSES) – an employee union that represents over 3,800 technical, engineering and scientific employees of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including the state Department of Transportation and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. MOSES members work in such areas as public health, transportation, environmental protection, public safety, occupational health and safety, and wage enforcement in 30 different agencies throughout the state. He served for 14 years as president of MOSES and has been on its Board of Directors since 2020.

Dorant has a Master of Science degree in environmental engineering from Northeastern University. He received a Bachelor of Science-Biology from Boston State College (UMass).

Dorant’s appointment runs through December 2025. He fills the unexpired term of the board’s longtime Chair, Bill Heffernan, who resigned in late October to accept a job promotion that involves extensive worldwide travel.

At Monday night’s meeting, Board of Selectmen Chair Debra Panetta called Dorant “an incredible asset to the board and to our town.”