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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
GEOLOGY MINOR
This option is highly compatible with a minor in geology. The minor requires 18 credits, all of which can count toward the EVEN major as technical electives, earth lab/field course, and option courses, if you plan carefully. See details here.
Specifically take:
GEOL 1010-3 Introduction to Geology 1 and GEOL 1030-1 Introduction to Geology Laboratory 1. [required for GEOL minor; use in EVEN as air/earth lab/field course-3 credits]
GEOL 1020-3 Introduction to Geology 2 or GEOL 1040-3 Geology of Colorado or GEOL 1060-3 Global Change – An Earth Science Perspective [required for GEOL minor; use in EVEN as earth science and lower division technical elective]
GEOL lab or field course, required for GEOL minor [GEOL 3010-3, 3210-4, 3410-3, 3430-4, 4060-4, 4093-4 Remote Sensing of the Environment (recommended); 4130-4; 4241-4]; any OK as upper division technical elective; [if take GEOL 2700-2 use as free elective]
GEOL 3030-3 Introduction to Hydrogeology [option course; and toward GEOL minor to bring total GEOL credits to 18]
GEOL 4716-2 Environmental Field Geochemistry [option course; and toward GEOL minor to bring total GEOL credits to 18]
Additional 2-4 credits GEOL course(s) at 3000-level or above to bring total geology credits to 18; use as technical electives and/or free elective for EVEN
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
Bechtel
URS Corp, consultants
Tetra Tech, consultants
Parsons, consultants
Montgomery, Watson, Harza, consultants
AECOM, consultants
Battelle
Arcadis, consultants
EA Engineering, Science, and Technology, 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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