Applications

The applications of environmental engineering can be roughly categorized into several divisions:

1. Drinking water and waste water treatment

Environmental engineers also design municipal water supply system and provide safe drinking water or secure
supplies for potable and agricultural use.To achieve these, they examine the watersheds with a hydrological or ge
point of view as well as engineering treatment systems for water purification. Various water treatment methods a
including membrane technology, desalinization, biological water treatment, etc. Water distribution systems are al
designed and built. Environmental engineers also develop collection and treatment systems to carry domestic or i
waste water discharges away and remove some of the pollutants before discharging it into the environment.

2. Solid waste management

Solid waste collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal, and monitoring systems and methods are d
and built by environmental engineers. Systems are generally designed to remove human-produced waste materia
reduced its impact to the environment, health, or aesthetics. Modern technologies also allow us to recover useful
or energy from our waste.Common waste treatment methods include landfill, incineration, recycling, and biologi
treatment.

3. Hazardous Substance Treatment and Control

Environmental engineers conduct hazardous waste management studies to evaluate the significance of such ha
advice on treatment and containment, and develop regulations to prevent mishaps. A hazardous waste is waste th
threats or potential threats to the public health and the environment and may be carcinogenic, flammable, corrosi
radioactive, explosive, or highly oxidizing. Disposal methods include recycling, incineration, special landfills, or
neutralization.

4. Air Quality Management

Environmental engineers develop methods, procedures, and equipment for maintaining or monitoring air quali
example, they design the manufacturing and combustion processes to reduce air pollutant emissions. Various pro
developed to remove particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds, reactive orga
gasses, and other air pollutants from effluent gases prior to their emission to the atmosphere. Devices are also dev
evaluate the concentration of pollutants in vehicle exhausts and industrial flue gas stack emissions. In this divisio
environmental issues such as the effects of acid rain, ozone depletion, as well as carbon dioxide and other greenh
emissions are also addressed.

5. Natural resources management

Natural resource management is a general term that include the management of land, water, soil, plants, and an
Here, environmental engineers study and design management strategies based on how the affect the environment
current as well as future generations. This discipline specifically focus on the scientific and technical understandi
resources, related ecology, and how these resources can support human and other life forms. The notion of sustai
development was originally derived from this discipline.

6. Environmental policy and regulation development

Environmental engineers also help developing environmental policy or regulations to manage human activities
view to prevent, reduce or mitigate harmful effects on human health, nature and natural resources. Environmenta
engineering law is the professional application of law, science and engineering principles to improve the environ
water, and/or land resources), to provide healthy water, air, and land for human habitation and for other organism
remediate polluted sites. Environmental engineering lawyers seek to promote the advancement of technical engin
knowledge in the legal profession and to enhance informed legal analysis of complex environmental matters.

7. Environmental impact assessment and mitigation

Environmental engineers assess the impacts of a proposed or already conducted project on environmental cond
They apply scientific and engineering principles to evaluate if there are likely to be any adverse impacts to water
air quality, habitat quality, agricultural capacity, traffic impacts, social impacts, noise impacts, visual (landscape)
etc. If impacts are expected, they then develop mitigation measures to limit or prevent such impacts. An example
mitigation measure would be the creation of wetlands in a nearby location to mitigate the filling in of wetlands n
for a road development if it is not possible to reroute the road. In short, it deals with the characterization, minimi
collection, treatment, recycling, utilization, and disposal of such materials and the laws relating thereto.

8. Contaminated resource management or site remediation

Environmental engineers work to remove radioactive or toxic pollutants from already contaminated soil, groun
sediment, or surface water for the benefits of human and ecosystem health as well as for he purpose of redevelop
Extensive site assessment usually precedes the actual remediation process. Environmental engineers then design
remediation strategy that may include various ex-situ or in-situ methods. Ex-situ methods involve excavation of a
soils and subsequent treatment at the surface; whereas In-situ methods seek to treat the contamination without rem
the soils. Remediation is generally subject to an array of regulatory requirements, and also can be based on asses
human health and ecological risks where no legislated standards exist or where standards are advisory.
Why Environmental
Engineering Is Vital
for Our Future

Humanity has always engineered the environment around us. From the earliest
days of wetland drainage and the need to acquire fresh water, to keep it flowing
and keep it clean enough to drink, building cesspits to take away our waste and to
stop pollution of vital waterways, we have always strived to maximize our sanitation
and living conditions in order to expand and survive.

Sanitation is a large part of our civil evolution; without it, we would succumb more
often to water-borne disease and illness - raising our mortality rates and lowering
our quality of life. Therefore, we've always needed to find bigger and better ways of
taking away our sewage, cleaning our water and harnessing natural or artificial
water supplies for our health and environment. Since the industrial revolution in
the 19th century we have needed to prevent businesses and individuals from
polluting the environment with harmful substances. The modern environmental
engineer is dedicated to keeping our air and water clean of pollutants and
promoting good health (1) and these days, protection against radioactive and toxic
materials too; they also study the potential effects of climate change and other
environmental factors on the infrastructure (2).

There is presently a shortage of STEM graduates coming out of our colleges and
universities right across the western world and engineering is one of the core areas
that has suffered the most. This means that with a good degree, there is a high
likelihood of getting a good job fresh out of your studies. A master's degree then
may be unnecessary for most people, but for the especially gifted who may be
looking towards greater responsibility in future or to move towards the very top of
the field, it may be advisable to do an advanced degree - all the way to the PhD. If
you choose to go that high, you may be more involved in business or government
policy than the hands on approach of the job of the bachelor's graduate.
Environmental engineering is an applied science.

Learn more about environmental engineering careers.

Read about environmental engineering degrees.

History of Environmental
Engineering
Ancient World to Industrialisation
How far back were humans aware of the need for sanitation? It is generally believed
that the first civilisation to have express concern for what happens to sewage waste
and to develop more complex ways of moving it, and the first designers of sewer
systems as we would understand them, was Republican Rome.
Certainly, archaeologists interested in the study of sanitation will often turn to the
largest Republic and later Empire the ancient world has ever known in order to
understand urban development amongst other things, but the process goes back
further than this to the Harappan Civilisation of the Indus Valley (3). Their
remarkable achievements included grid-planned cities with the most elaborate
network of water supply and waste disposal. Larger houses had their own wells and
the poorer abodes made do with communal water, but these were all connected -
just as the sewer systems taking the waste away were connected (4, p7-15).
Surprisingly, they also had public toilets and baths. Cleanliness was of the utmost
importance.

By the time we reach the Roman Republic, technology had developed into
elaborate systems of water and sewage transportation for which we know the
ancient world was famous. We have all heard about the aqueduct systems across
the empire; the Romans knew that drought was a possibility in the Mediterranean
climate that dominated most of the land of the empire so they built massive stone
networks to carry water from areas where it was abundant to areas that could
suffer in a drought. The Romans did not invent them, but they did enhance the
technology and create monuments that far exceeded the examples they
emulated (5). The massive sewer system that still exists beneath the city of Rome
today was used to drain the marshes to create farmland as well as to remove
sewage from the houses and businesses in the city; it was built as early as the
7th century BC, way before the Imperial era (6).

Both the aqueducts and the sewers allowed Rome to expand their cities to the
immense sizes that still hold us in awe today, so it is no surprise that we do not
really see much change for some 1400 years after the fall of Rome. The beginning
of environmental engineering arguably came with a great public work in London in
the 19th century (1). Joseph Bazalgette was charged with overseeing the building
work of a massive sewer system after what historians now call The Great Stink. The
city was in the grip of a cholera epidemic with the conduits providing the basis of
the sewer system then proving inadequate, leading to raw sewage pumped into the
River Thames that also provided the majority of the city's drinking water (7). Prime
Minister Benjamin Disraeli extracted a 3.5m budget from Parliament for the
project. The completed project replaced all the pipes and improved the existing
network, dramatically improving the city's health, ending the cholera epidemic (a
disease that never returned to London after that) and leading to similar
programmes in industrialised cities throughout the world. This was a time where
free market capitalism was subject to no environmental regulation and was not
encouraged to think about the people's health.

20th to 21st Century

The next leap forward would make us question the role of some pesticides used in
farming methods. Rachel Carson was a highly qualified biologist, but not a famous
one, when she released her book Silent Spring. It was a careful and lengthy study of
the role of pesticides and their impact on the environment since the birth of
intensive farming following World War II (8). Carson presented evidence that
delicate ecologies were being lost and could be lost in the future without the study
of the role of certain pesticides, particularly DDT, and the correct action taken if
proven harmful. At the time, the chemical was proving vital in the fight against
malaria yet it was also proving damaging to crops and other wildlife too. Most
alarmingly, Carson (and those who followed her work) noted that while DDT use
was expanding, malaria-carrying mosquitoes were building up a resistance to the
substance (9).

Her book made governments take notice of the dangerous of industrial activity
-President John F. Kennedy and his successor Johnson both focused heavily on a
growing concern for the environment during their presidencies. They set the
wheels in motion and the EPA came into being in 1970 during the Nixon
era (10) who proclaimed the 1970s a decade of environmental transformation,
enacting legislation to cover air and water quality. Couple this with environmental
awareness in the general population and the (then) growing understanding of the
effects of climate change meant that environmental engineering was born in this
era. Since then, environmental legislation has sought to define environmental
standards on clean water, air quality, solid waste disposal and pollution
management (toxic and radioactive) - at state and national level (11), and to define
international standards. We are using an ever-increasing number of chemicals with
toxic waste and the remit of the environmental engineer is to keep the
environment safe for humans and for other forms of life.

The Remit of Environmental

Engineering
Management of Solid Waste
We are, and have been for a very long time, a consumer society and consumer
societies generate a lot of waste. Food packaging, white goods, broken electronics
and everything else that we dispose of is considered solid waste. In the western
world, we recycle a lot of solid material, but not nearly enough and new
technologies will bring problems of their own in reclamation, recycling or otherwise
disposal of those material. In the developing world where recycling is limited or
non-existent, this is expected to be a major problem as they seek to industrialise to
the point that they too can join the developed world (12, p1-2). Climate change is
now a large factor in how fast these countries can develop. Environmental
engineers of the future will be expected to provide answers and strategies for this
form of waste disposal.

Landfill sometimes remains the only option for some materials, and how we
manage these sites and the materials that go into them is something that
environmental engineers work with every day. Recycling is big business and we are
learning how to recycle material (and to do so safely) in order to better utilise the
resources we have.

Water Supply
As the human population expands, we need access to an ever-increasing supply of
water - whether that is drinking water, to keep our crops nourished so we can eat,
to preserve local wildlife and the delicate ecosystem, water is vital to life. Over the
last decade, we have been aware of the limits of water acquisition and retention.
California has suffered drought, putting an enormous strain on water supplies in
the south-western USA (13). Europe too has suffered both drought (14) and
flooding (15) and both scenarios bring problems of their own for Environmental
Engineering. Drought affects food supply and increases fire risks in urban areas;
flooding also affects food supply and the economy; businesses cannot open and
local and national governments have a large bill for a clean-up operation, as well as
putting an enormous strain on public services.

Environmental engineers already play a huge part in managing water supply - in

droughts and in floods and outside of disaster areas, identifying where there are
problem areas not getting enough water - irrigation or inadequate facilities.

Management of Water Waste

Environmental engineers ensure the smooth running of supplying us with water,
and of taking it away from our homes and businesses. As mentioned earlier,
humans have always needed to remove waste water as quickly and effectively as
possible; it is good for our health and for the environment and today we produce
so much waste water from our toilets, from our showers and baths, from
swimming pools, from washed clothes and dishes - and that's just home use. We
produce a lot of waste industrially too and disposal of these substances do not
necessarily follow the same process; dangerous materials can leak into the
environment and our drinking water so it needs careful handling.

The majority of this water goes to waste treatment facilities is filtered, processed
and pumped back to us after a rigorous cleaning process (16). Much of what you
drink and use has been used over and over again for the same things and it's
thanks to experts in this area that our water is so clean. They also tackle water
pollution in all its forms.

Air Pollution Management

Air pollution has been a big issue since the 1960s and many countries introducing a
Clean Air Act or equivalent. Some of the world's largest cities were big polluters
until then; over the decades, the remit of the Environmental Engineer has changed.
It used to be control and management of toxic materials and their effects on the
environment - the 1980s was a big problem for Acid Rain (17); professionals in the
air pollution category were fundamental to raising awareness of the problems
cause and advising on legislation to reduce the output of relevant gases (sulphur
dioxide and nitrogen dioxide) into the atmosphere. Today, acid rain still has the
potential to cause harm, but levels have been reduced by 70% in some parts of the
world (18).

Today, they are also concerned with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in
attempting to reduce the global output so that we may limit the temperature rise in
the future. This is not their only area though; industrial pollutants are not limited to
greenhouse gas emissions. Read more on air quality.
The Future of Environmental
Engineering
The future is likely to see more technological development, population growth and
a greater need for enough food for our growing population, housing and facilities
to cater to our growing needs, new farming methods and so on. These are likely to
see more areas needing management to avoid pollution or ecological damage; we
will see new potential contaminants as well as a need to change conditions in some
areas to cope with the changing climate. There will be an even greater need for
environmental engineers to help us deal with the potential problems that this
future will bring.

Environmental engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the application of scientific
and engineering principles for protection of human populations from the effects of adverse
environmental factors; protection of environments, both local and global, from potentially deleterious
effects of natural and human activities; and improvement of environmental quality.[1]

Environmental engineering can also be described as a branch of applied science and technology
that addresses the issues of energy preservation, production asset and control of waste from human
and animal activities. Furthermore, it is concerned with finding plausible solutions in the field of
public health, such as waterborne diseases, implementing laws which promote adequate sanitation
in urban, rural and recreational areas. It involves waste water management, air pollution control,
recycling, waste disposal, radiation protection, industrial hygiene, environmental sustainability, public
health and environmental engineering law. It also includes studies on the environmental impact of
proposed construction projects.

Environmental engineers study the effect of technological advances on the environment. To do so,
they conduct studies on hazardous-waste management to evaluate the significance of such hazards,
advise on treatment and containment, and develop regulations to prevent mishaps. Environmental
engineers design municipal water supply and industrial wastewater treatment systems.[2][3] They
address local and worldwide environmental issues such as the effects of acid rain, global
warming, ozone depletion, water pollution and air pollution from automobile exhausts and industrial
sources.[4][5][6][7]

At many universities environmental engineering programs are offered at either the department
of civil engineering or the department of chemical engineering at engineering faculties.
Environmental "civil" engineers focus on hydrology, water resources management, bioremediation,
and water treatment plant design. Environmental "chemical" engineers, on the other hand, focus on
environmental chemistry, advanced air and water treatment technologies and separation processes.
[citation needed]

Additionally, engineers are more frequently obtaining specialized training in law (J.D.) and are
utilizing their technical expertise in the practices of environmental engineering law.[citation needed]
 Most jurisdictions also impose licensing and registration requirements.

Contents
[hide]

1Development

2Scope

o 2.1Solid waste management

o 2.2Environmental impact assessment and mitigation

o 2.3Water supply and treatment

o 2.4Wastewater treatment

o 2.5Air pollution management

o 2.6Environmental Protection Agency

3Ecological engineering for sustainable agriculture in arid and semiarid West African regions [13]

4Education

5Prominent environmental engineers

6See also

7References

Development[edit]

Ever since people first recognized that their health is related to the quality of their environment, they
have applied principles to attempt to improve the quality of their environment. The ancient
Indian Harappan civilization utilized early sewers in some cities more than 5000 years ago.
The Romans constructed aqueducts to prevent drought and to create a clean, healthful water supply
for the metropolis of Rome. In the 15th century, Bavaria created laws restricting the development
and degradation of alpine country that constituted the region's water supply.

The field emerged as a separate environmental discipline during the middle third of the 20th century
in response to widespread public concern about water and pollution and increasingly extensive
environmental quality degradation. However, its roots extend back to early efforts in public health
engineering.[8] Modern environmental engineering began in London in the mid-19th century
when Joseph Bazalgette designed the first major sewerage system that reduced the incidence of
waterborne diseases such as cholera. The introduction of drinking water treatment and sewage
treatment in industrialized countries reduced waterborne diseases from leading causes of death to
rarities.[9]
In many cases, as societies grew, actions that were intended to achieve benefits for those societies
had longer-term impacts which reduced other environmental qualities. One example is the
widespread application of the pesticide DDT to control agricultural pests in the years following World
War II. While the agricultural benefits were outstanding and crop yields increased dramatically thus
reducing world hunger substantially, and malaria was controlled better than it ever had been,
numerous species were brought to the verge of extinction due to the impact of the DDT on their
reproductive cycles. The story of DDT as vividly told in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) is
considered to be the birth of the modern environmental movement and of the modern field of
"environmental engineering."[10]

Conservation movements and laws restricting public actions that would harm the environment have
been developed by various societies for millennia. Notable examples are the laws decreeing the
construction of sewers in London and Paris in the 19th century and the creation of the U.S. national
park system in the early 20th century.

Scope[edit]

Solid waste management[edit]

Environmental impact assessment and mitigation[edit]

Main article: Environmental impact assessment

Scientists have air pollution dispersion models to evaluate the concentration of a pollutant at a
receptor or the impact on overall air quality from vehicle exhausts and industrial flue gas stack
emissions. To some extent, this field overlaps the desire to decrease carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gas emissions from combustion processes. They apply scientific and engineering
principles to evaluate if there are likely to be any adverse impacts to water quality, air
quality, habitat quality, flora and fauna, agricultural capacity, traffic impacts, social impacts, ecological
impacts, noise impacts, visual (landscape) impacts, etc. If impacts are expected, they then develop
mitigation measures to limit or prevent such impacts. An example of a mitigation measure would be
the creation of wetlands in a nearby location to mitigate the filling in of wetlands necessary for a road
development if it is not possible to reroute the road.

In the United States, the practice of environmental assessment was formally initiated on January 1,
1970, the effective date of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Since that time, more than
100 developing and developed nations either have planned specific analogous laws or have adopted
procedure used elsewhere. NEPA is applicable to all federal agencies in the United States. [11]

Water supply and treatment[edit]

Sewage treatment plant, Australia

They evaluate the water balance within a watershed and determine the available water supply, the
water needed for various needs in that watershed, the seasonal cycles of water movement through
the watershed and they develop systems to store, treat, and convey water for various uses. Water is
treated to achieve water quality objectives for the end uses. In the case of a potable water supply,
water is treated to minimize the risk of infectious disease transmission, the risk of non-infectious
illness, and to create a palatable water flavor. Water distribution systems are designed and built to
provide adequate water pressure and flow rates to meet various end-user needs such as domestic
use, fire suppression, and irrigation.

Wastewater treatment[edit]

Water pollution

There are numerous wastewater treatment technologies. A wastewater treatment train can consist of
a primary clarifier system to remove solid and floating materials, a secondary treatment system
consisting of an aeration basin followed by flocculation and sedimentation or an activated
sludge system and a secondary clarifier, a tertiary biological nitrogen removal system, and a
final disinfection process. The aeration basin/activated sludge system removes organic material by
growing bacteria (activated sludge). The secondary clarifier removes the activated sludge from the
water. The tertiary system, although not always included due to costs, is becoming more prevalent to
remove nitrogen and phosphorus and to disinfect the water before discharge to a surface water
stream or ocean outfall.[12]

Air pollution management[edit]

Scientists have developed air pollution dispersion models to evaluate the concentration of a pollutant
at a receptor or the impact on overall air quality from vehicle exhausts and industrial flue gas
stack emissions. To some extent, this field overlaps the desire to decrease carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gas emissions from combustion processes.

Environmental Protection Agency[edit]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of the many agencies that work with
environmental engineers to solve key issues. An important component of EPA's mission is to protect
and improve air, water, and overall environmental quality in order to avoid or mitigate the
consequences of harmful effects.

Ecological engineering for sustainable agriculture in arid and

semiarid West African regions[13][edit]

Ecological engineering offers new alternatives for the management of agricultural systems that are
more tailored to the ever-changing social and environmental necessities in these regions. This
requires managing the complexity of agrosystems, while striving to mimic the functioning of natural
ecosystems of West African drylands and taking advantage of traditional practices and local know-
how resulting from a long process of adaptation to environmental constraints.

1. Acting on biodiversity. Biodiversity is essential to the productivity of ecosystems and their

temporal stability under the impact of external disturbances. Several ecological processes
related to biodiversity may be intensified for the benefit of agrosilvopastoral systems:
promoting diversity and soil microorganism activity to benefit plants, associating and utilizing
the mutual benefits of plants

2. Utilizing organic matter and nutrient cycles. The productivity of agrosystems with low
chemical input use in dryland regions is primarily based on efficient organic resource
management, and in turn on the nutrient and energy flows they induce. It is thus possible to
intervene at several levels: enhancing crop-livestock farming integration to preserve natural
resources, restoring the biological activity of soils via specific organic inputs, supplying
nutrients to plants locally.

3. Enhancing available water use. Water supplies are limited and irregular in dryland areas.
Current management of these supplieswhich involves capturing rainwater and surface
runoffcould be improved in several ways: adapting to erratic rainfall or drought risks by
focusing on: (i) the organization of the farm and community (farm plot patterns in association
with the random rainfall distribution, etc.), and on (ii) cropping techniques to reduce crop
water needs (plant choices, weeding, etc.), preserving water in crop fields by hampering
runoff, accounting for the essential role of trees regarding soil and water in drylands.

4. Managing landscapes and associated ecological processes. Ecological crop pest regulation
by their natural enemies is one ecosystem service provided by biodiversity. Better pest
management could be considered in association with promoting biodiversity at different
scales, e.g. from the plant to the landscape.
Education[edit]

Courses aimed at developing graduates with specific skills in environmental systems or

environmental technology are becoming more common and fall into broad classes:

Mechanical engineering courses oriented towards designing machines and mechanical

systems for environmental use such as water treatment facilities, pumping stations, garbage
segregation plants and other mechanical facilities;

Environmental engineering or environmental systems courses oriented towards a civil

engineering approach in which structures and the landscape are constructed to blend with or
protect the environment;

Environmental chemistry, sustainable

chemistry or environmental chemical engineering courses oriented towards understanding the
effects (good and bad) of chemicals in the environment. Focus on mining processes, pollutants
and commonly also cover biochemical processes;

Environmental technology courses oriented towards producing electronic or electrical

graduates capable of developing devices and artifacts able to monitor, measure, model and
control environmental impact, including monitoring and managing energy generation from
renewable sources.