Wastewater engineering

Wastewater engineering is not usually its own degree course but a specialization from degrees such as civil engineering, environmental engineering or chemical engineering. Wastewater engineering deals with the transportation and cleaning of blackwater, greywater, and irrigation water. Wastewater treatment and water reclamation are areas of concern in this field.

Wastewater engineers map out topographical and geographical features of Earth to determine the best means of collection.

Irrigation systems were invented five to seven thousand years ago as a means of supplying water to agriculture-based societies. Aqueducts and irrigation systems were among the first forms of wastewater engineering. As population centers became more dense, they were used to remove sewage from settlements. The Romans were among the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of the aqueduct. The Dark Ages marked a period where progress in water management came to a halt.

As populations grew, the management of human waste became a growing concern and a public health threat. By the 1850s in London more than 400,000 tons of sewage were flushed into the Thames River each day - around 150 million tons a year. Diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, typhus, cholera and typhoid were spread via the contaminated water supply. During the 19th century major cities started building sewage systems to remove human waste out of cities and into rivers.

During the 1900s the activated sludge process was invented. The activated sludge process is a form of water purification that uses bacteria to consume human feces. Chlorine is used to kill off the bacteria.

Over the centuries much has changed in the field of wastewater engineering. Advancements in microbiology, chemistry, and engineering have drastically changed the field. Today wastewater engineers work on the collection of clean water for drinking, chemically treating it, and using UV light to kill off micro-organisms. They also treat Water Pollution in wastewater (blackwater and greywater) so that this water may be made safe for use without endangering the population and environment around it.

Today the wastewater managers confront new challenges and the need for new technology as water levels decrease due to increasingly frequent and extended droughts. Technologies such as sonar mapping are being used in wells to determine the volume of water that they can hold. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the State of New York worked together to map underground aquifers since the 1980s. Today they have thorough maps of these aquifers to assist in water management.

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