What Is Environmental Engineering?

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Lynn Bestul. I'm the solid waste planner from New Hanover County, North Carolina. And I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about environmental engineering. What that primarily is, is engineers that look at land, air and water qualities. They primarily investigate contaminants for each one of those items. They'll, they've found that in research different things in the environment affect our health. So that's the importance of them measuring any contaminants that come through our water systems and where it comes from. And what it can do to us. The same thing with the air quality. What we are breathing in, what damage is that going to do to our health. As far as the land goes, a lot of what their engineering is has improved landfilling of municipal solid waste. When they are going through, say looking at a landfill they look at the layout of it, they've come up with methods of redesigning the layout to make the most effective use out of a smaller piece of land to compact the garbage onto that landfill. They also have looked at using GPS systems on the top of a landfill. As garbage is dumped onto a hill it's compacted down. Using a GPS system they are able to find areas that they can still have room to compact that material. This is something that has come from the environmental engineers and we thank them very much. These are some of the facts that I had to talk to you about on environmental engineering."