Environmental Engineering: Keeping Alaska DEC-Complianta.

• Author: PARMELEE, CATHERINE
• Position: Department of Environmental Conservation

Environmental engineers monitor everything from noise pollution to underground storage tanks.

Environmental Engineering is a difficult-to-define discipline. It covers the air you breathe, the ground you walk on, the sounds you hear, the foods you eat and the water you drink.

It encompasses such activities as site investigations and assessments; underground storage tank assessments; remedial designs; corrective action plans; risk-based cleanup determinations; field sampling for groundwater, soil and air; hazardous waste matters; spill contingency and prevention plans; and noise pollution monitoring, among other things. Environmental engineering requires the expertise of biology, chemistry, geology, hydrology and much more. It takes investigating yesterday, being aware of today, and predicting tomorrow.

Environmental engineering is a fairly new notch on civilization's timeline. "People used to not care about the environment," said Pam Cushman, marketing coordinator for the IT Corp. in Anchorage.

The discipline grew as an offshoot of civil engineering and became prominent in the industry after the Environmental Protection Agency was founded in the 1970s, said Senior Engineer Clark Milne of Nortech Environmental and Engineering Consultants in Fairbanks.

Presently an environmental engineering degree is available at some colleges, but the field is broad compared to something like civil or other types of engineering, said Cory Lloyd, director of environmental services for Dowl Engineers in Anchorage. Lloydsities have been slow to develop curricula for environmental engineering programs.

Engineers, Chemists and Biologists

The industry is apt to look for capable people with backgrounds in fields like geology, forestry and natural resources. Individuals within the sector tend to specialize in areas, or subsets, such as air, water, hazardous materials, pollution prevention, etc.

Rarely in the construction world will

one entity complete all phases of a project, a trend similar in the environmental engineering arena. For example, in a cleanup effort, an environmental engineering firm might be brought on board to specifically handle hazardous material matters. But for many firms, environmental engineering is just a portion of the expertise they provide, often in hand with other engineering services. In addition, some might have clients for whom they handle all environmental issues, including permitting.

Generally speaking, environmental engineering firms...