Environmental Engineering: Training for the Next Round

It seems to me that environmental engineering as a discipline has reached something equivalent to its mid-20s. It is past those awkward but somewhat euphoric and booming teenage years. It is past the age of majority and prepatterned education. It has had a few harsh doses of reality that have taken some of the gloss off its “everything is possible” early outlook—something akin to a few rejection letters from the first job or grad school applications, and the realization that some of the people to whom you are pitching your great ideas have already been “there and done that.” Essentially it is at a point where it must take charge of (and responsibility for) its subsequent livelihood, having grown out from underneath the assured protection and patronage of its parent, Civil Engineering. On a more personal level, the leaders who changed the discipline from sanitary engineering to environmental engineering are retiring from the forefront and the next generation is taking over. In short, Environmental Engineering is at an age where it can reflect on its upbringing and critically evaluate the path it will need to take to meet its future obligations and challenges.

The transition from Sanitary Engineering to Environmental Engineering was largely a transition from specialization in the design of water and wastewater treatment to specialization in the cleanup and control of environmental insults. This is not to say that many environmental engineers do not still work predominantly on water∕wastewater processes, but that an equal or greater number work on environmental cleanup or control of environmental discharges. Further, the present-day water∕wastewater engineers are often preoccupied with removal of aqueous contaminants that are the result of historical or continuing poor chemical management practices, rather than the conventional contaminants of sanitary engineering concern, such as BOD, turbidity, and pathogens. Perhaps this transition is most clearly seen in the variety of pollutants and problems with which an environmental engineer now must be knowledgeable. Beyond the problem of removing the conventional, aqueous pollutants, the graduating environmental engineer will deal with a broad range of issues, including toxic air pollutants, greenhouse gases, pharmaceutically active compounds in water, noise pollution, energy conservation, solid and liquid radioactive wastes, toxic compounds in porous media, recalcitrant synthetics, and complex mixtures of landfill leachates—just to name a few of the current areas of concern. This leads to my first suggestion that the training that well prepared the sanitary engineer may not be the training that will well prepare the environmental engineer. At a minimum the environmental engineer must have a working knowledge of a diversity of media, chemistry, and toxicology far beyond that of the sanitary engineer.

From another viewpoint, the next generation of environmental engineer may align themselves more with the traditional sanitary engineer’s perspective than with that of the environmental engineers of the last 20 years. Traditional sanitary engineers were as proactive as they were reactive. An excellent example is the forward thinking (aka preventative engineering) taken by Abel Wohlman in the 1920s and 30s when he masterminded a system of protected water supply reservoirs and conduits that still provide the City of Baltimore with a reliable and safe source of drinking water. However, with the advent of the environmental movement of the late 1960s and 70s (and the consequent birth of what I am calling environmental engineering), the perspective became predominantly reactive. It was the charge of the environmental engineer of that time to remediate the residues and consequences of toxic and environmentally destructive discharges—both past and present. For instance, consider the large number of environmental engineers graduated in the last 20 years whose careers have revolved around either the cleanup of contaminated subsurface sites or of combustion gases. It seems to me that the successes from this preoccupation with remediation combined with a realization of its limitations has brought environmental engineering to the point where it must once again balance reactive efforts with an equal dose of proactive efforts. If successful, these proactive efforts will even further decrease the need for reactive responses. This shift is seen in the call for “green engineering.” It implies a broadening of thinking to produce an essentially life-cycle assessment of pollutants analogous to what we attempt with natural resources. Therefore, my second suggestion is that the training of the next generation of environmental engineers must focus equally on the tools to prevent as well as clean up pollution. They must understand the workings of the processes (industrial, municipal, and domestic) that produce the pollutants and their precursors as much as those that control remediation of the pollutants once released.

What then should the training of new environmental engineers include? Nearly all undergraduate engineering programs, regardless of discipline, are initiated with a block of courses including mathematics through (at least) ordinary differential equations, one year each of general chemistry and physics, and courses in a computer programming language, statics, dynamics, and some form of continuum (deformable-body) mechanics. The coursework of the various engineering disciplines diverges off of this common base. Traditionally, the environmental engineering undergraduate has followed the civil engineering path. However, in recent years two alternative routes have emerged. One is a dedicated undergraduate track in which the student graduates with a degree in environmental engineering (rather than, say, a civil engineering degree with an environmental emphasis). Another variation is inclusion of environmental engineering within a chemical engineering department. This path yields a chemical engineering undergraduate degree with an environmental emphasis. The civil engineering and chemical engineering routes support the concept that the entry-level degree for Environmental Engineering is the Masters degree, whereas the Environmental Engineering BSc degree breaks that traditional model. Discussion as to whether or not environmental engineering should be its own undergraduate discipline is beyond the scope of my present thesis. To me that question is more a matter of academic economics than the presence or lack of inherent capabilities within the civil or chemical engineering disciplines. That is to say, is the manpower demand from the environmental engineering market sufficient to warrant dedicating educational resources to another, separate degree program? However, I do want to consider what training best prepares an environmental engineer in the two areas I have suggested above as now being integral to our field: a working knowledge of a broad diversity of media and chemistry and a balanced capability between proactive and reactive responses.

Chemistry training beyond the freshman, introductory level is critical to the environmental engineer. It is not only necessary to understand the nature and behavior of the pollutants with which we deal, but equally to grasp the kinetics and limiting conditions of chemical transformations in the environment. It is as important to understand the chemical dynamics of the environmental system as those of the pollutant discharged into it. Likewise, it is as important to understand the limitations and options of the industrial process as those of the pollutant that is generated by it. I would suggest, at a minimum, exposure to courses in basic organic chemistry, chemical kinetics, and chemical thermodynamics as prerequisites to an environmental engineering degree. I would add to this a need for basic courses in mass transport, reactor engineering, and perhaps (looking ahead) biochemistry. In addition, preventative environmental engineering implies an understanding of the processes by which a pollutant is produced and how those processes may be economically modified or replaced to curtail the target’s production. Typically the fundamentals of this latter understanding are taught in chemical process design and economics courses. Add these requirements to the curriculum common to all engineering and the necessary training looks much like the course requirements for a chemical engineering undergraduate major. However, that is not the whole picture; an environmental engineer must also have a firm foundation in the physical processes that dictate the nature of the interwoven systems that constitute the natural and man-made environment. For instance, an understanding of physical geology, hydrology, fluid mechanics, the properties of materials, and perhaps meteorology are needed. These subjects look very much like the basic stuff found in a civil engineer’s core curriculum. Finally, practicing engineers will spend much of their time in verbal and written communication, so training in public speaking and technical writing is a necessity.

Altogether, I would argue that neither chemical nor civil engineering undergraduate curriculums provide all of the foundation courses needed by environmental engineers. A civil engineering undergraduate will find him or herself lacking the depth of chemistry and chemical process training needed to understand industrial processes so as to be able to identify and design economically viable, preventative solutions to pollutant or pollutant precursor discharges. On the other hand, the chemical engineering undergraduate’s knowledge of the functioning of natural systems is often so weak that they have little intuition of the domino effect of most ecological insults and what technologies are applicable with respect to remediation of environmental contamination. From my perspective, there is currently no perfect undergraduate upbringing for the environmental engineer. In both chemical and civil engineering, it is the content of the electives that constitute the environmental emphasis that largely dictate the readiness of the undergraduate for environmental engineering employment or further education. However, typically these electives amount to only two or three classes, since the core engineering courses and required general education classes leave little room for coursework flexibility.

Can the missing coursework be picked up in the Masters’ program? Practically, no. There is seldom room in an MS student’s study plan for more than two electives beyond the core graduate requirements and those are normally dedicated to gaining a small degree of specialization, rather than picking up the background knowledge missed in the undergraduate preparation. My bottom line is that our next generation of environmental engineers should be trained differently than the last generation. They must have a more diverse educational base in both chemical processes and natural system function. They must be equally capable of discerning both preventative as well as remediative solutions to our present and emerging environmental problems. This cannot come primarily at the Masters’ level, but must be more fully incorporated in their undergraduate curriculum. However, as our present undergraduate disciplines are crafted, there is no room there either for the missing elements.