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Many locations have been contaminated by past activities, including both intentional and accidental releases of chemicals and toxic wastes. These sites require investigation to characterize the concentrations and locations of contaminants in the soil and groundwater, a risk assessment to estimate the health hazards of the contamination to humans and the ecosystem, and strategies to clean-up the site and return it to safe utilization. The worst of these sites in the U.S. are called "Superfund" sites. Clean-up of these locations is overseen by the US Environmental Protection Agency. States oversee clean-up of many other sites. In Colorado, for example, many sites are being cleaned up under the Voluntary CleanUp (VCUP) process. Many of these sites can be rehabilitated to enable
use for businesses and industry. This type of work is termed "brownfields" restoration.
Jobs in this area include:
site characterization by collecting samples of soil, groundwater, sediment, surface water, air, and biota
working with toxicologists, biologists, etc. to conduct human health and ecological risk assessments
working with regulatory agencies, citizen groups, etc. to develop target concentrations for clean-up
designing methods to clean-up the sites, including in situ and ex situ treatment; these can include chemical, biological, and phyical methods
using modeling software to predict the fate and transport of contaminants at the site
operation and maintenance of remediation equipment at contaminated sites
OPTION COURSES
Students select a minimum of 9 credits from the following:
CVEN 4474 Hazardous and Industrial Waste Management, including regulations, toxicology and risk assessment, and remediation methods; team projects
CVEN 4353 Groundwater Engineering
EVEN 4100 Environmental Sampling and Analysis; can also be used as an air/earth lab/field course
GEOL 3030 Introduction to Hydrogeology
GEOL 4716 Environmental Field Geochemistry
Research: Prof. Joe Ryan assists in remediation of abandoned mines:
Link to full story
Research: Professor Silverstein studies methods to prevent and treat acid mine drainage, CV link
Research: Professor Bielefeldt studies methods to remediate contaminated sites, Website link
Companies that Specialize in Remediation:
CH2M Hill, rated top Environmental firm by Engineering News Record, 2007; EVEN alumni here
Bechtel
Shaw Group, consultants
Washington Group Inernational, consultants, esp. sites contaminated with radioactive wastes
URS Corp, consultants
Tetra Tech, consultants
Parsons, consultants
Montgomery, Watson, Harza, consultants
Black & Veatch, consultants
Earth Tech, consultants
Battelle
Arcadis, consultants
Environmental Quality Management, consultants
EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, consultants
Terracon, consultants
Geomatrix, consultants
LT Environmental, Inc, consultants, Arvada, CO; EVEN alumni here
LINKS
Air and Waste Management Association
Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable, technical information on technologies for waste site cleanup
Wikipedia Environmental Remediation article
Environmental Protection, online journal
2007 job survey results
Remediation Journal
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