1 Introduction
There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of published articles about the state of
engineering education and about how to improve it. The potential for enhancing
engineering education with the internet was appreciated long ago [1], and Van Ness
claimed that we may never get it right because education evolves [2].
Pollution is a necessary evil. As an index of industrial health and of lifestyle for
individuals, creating waste is good, and environmental engineers are at the forefront
for cleaning up the messes. Environmentalists, on the other hand, decry pollution
and scare the public with images of dead fish from a waterway that was mistreated,
with tales of air pollution disasters, with accounts of destruction that may last forever
from radioactive leakage, toxic landfills, and the like. Environmental engineers are
much more likely to appreciate cost/benefit analyses and compromises for acceptable environmental impact.
With no disrespect to education for environmental awareness, better habits for the
general public such as not flushing drugs down toilets, better recycling, less careless
damage to our environment, and conservation are not enough. In addition to better
citizenship, there must be engineers and technicians for tasks such as planning,
designing, constructing, and operating what is needed for managing and disposing of
wastes, developing more cost-effective treatments of potable water, and enforcing
environmental regulations.
Other engineering disciplines, notably chemical engineering, encroach on environmental engineering and have sometimes outperformed us in areas such as
industrial waste treatment. However, the key difference is evident in the term
environmental. For the chemical engineer, a high percentage of projects are indoors,
while much of environmental engineering is outdoors, a vast environment. Other
disciplines target profits that can pay for expensive equipment. Very few waste
treatment facilities generate any profit, and low technology is mandatory.
To train environmental engineers, we must introduce the proper mindset. Environmental engineers must shun expensive equipment such a vessels of stainless
steel, cannot control the temperatures of high-volume waste treatment process, must
accept wastes that often come as pulses or have diurnal and seasonal variations,
cannot afford highly skilled plant operators, and will not have the financial resources
to do it right. Because perfect treatment would be impossibly expensive, we set
targets for percentages of pollutants that must be removed only to find that some
governmental agency changes the rules to make reaching these goals more
expensive.
When the goal is treatment of ordinary water and waste water, polluted air,
radioactive or toxic materials, and solid waste, the clear choice is a conventional
environmental engineer who understands how to satisfy regulations, because departure from the norm risks lawsuits should the installation fail to operate properly. A
method that follows established practices is less likely to face lawsuits or prosecution
when it fails to work well. Off-the-shelf technology will perform as expected or
maybe a little better or a little worse.
378
H. R. Bungay III
There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of published articles about the state of
engineering education and about how to improve it. The potential for enhancing
engineering education with the internet was appreciated long ago [1], and Van Ness
claimed that we may never get it right because education evolves [2].
Pollution is a necessary evil. As an index of industrial health and of lifestyle for
individuals, creating waste is good, and environmental engineers are at the forefront
for cleaning up the messes. Environmentalists, on the other hand, decry pollution
and scare the public with images of dead fish from a waterway that was mistreated,
with tales of air pollution disasters, with accounts of destruction that may last forever
from radioactive leakage, toxic landfills, and the like. Environmental engineers are
much more likely to appreciate cost/benefit analyses and compromises for acceptable environmental impact.
With no disrespect to education for environmental awareness, better habits for the
general public such as not flushing drugs down toilets, better recycling, less careless
damage to our environment, and conservation are not enough. In addition to better
citizenship, there must be engineers and technicians for tasks such as planning,
designing, constructing, and operating what is needed for managing and disposing of
wastes, developing more cost-effective treatments of potable water, and enforcing
environmental regulations.
Other engineering disciplines, notably chemical engineering, encroach on environmental engineering and have sometimes outperformed us in areas such as
industrial waste treatment. However, the key difference is evident in the term
environmental. For the chemical engineer, a high percentage of projects are indoors,
while much of environmental engineering is outdoors, a vast environment. Other
disciplines target profits that can pay for expensive equipment. Very few waste
treatment facilities generate any profit, and low technology is mandatory.
To train environmental engineers, we must introduce the proper mindset. Environmental engineers must shun expensive equipment such a vessels of stainless
steel, cannot control the temperatures of high-volume waste treatment process, must
accept wastes that often come as pulses or have diurnal and seasonal variations,
cannot afford highly skilled plant operators, and will not have the financial resources
to do it right. Because perfect treatment would be impossibly expensive, we set
targets for percentages of pollutants that must be removed only to find that some
governmental agency changes the rules to make reaching these goals more
expensive.
When the goal is treatment of ordinary water and waste water, polluted air,
radioactive or toxic materials, and solid waste, the clear choice is a conventional
environmental engineer who understands how to satisfy regulations, because departure from the norm risks lawsuits should the installation fail to operate properly. A
method that follows established practices is less likely to face lawsuits or prosecution
when it fails to work well. Off-the-shelf technology will perform as expected or
maybe a little better or a little worse.
378
H. R. Bungay III