West Texas A&M University Environmental Engineering Program

09/18/2020

FE Prep...

03/28/2020

Thanks to the power of geographic information systems (GIS), the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) allows residents to receive up-to-the-minute information on confirmed COVID-19 cases throughout the state. This is done by presenting information through an interactive map which organizes cases by county. If you want more info on how to use GIS to create a map such as this, take Dr. Nathan Howell's GIS course at WT. It is offered Mondays 6-8:50 starting in August.

03/05/2020

Our own has provided details on particular disinfectants for protecting your spaces against .

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents/sars-cov-2-list_03-03-2020.pdf

02/15/2020

Attention Buffs: FE Prep Course Schedule is out! Go to the engineering office next week and order your prep book! It's only $30. March is coming soon! Tell your friends!

02/03/2020

Engineers are supposed to design infrastructure that lasts 50-100 years. But if the way that climate changes is uncertain during that time (and it is), then how are engineers supposed to build into their designs? ASCE produced a recent book on the way that this might be done. Here is a brief interview about what might be coming to an engineering design class near you from the book's editor, Bilal M. Ayyub, Ph.D., P.E.

https://news.asce.org/at-the-crossroads-of-civil-engineering-and-climate-change/

the book can be found here - https://sp360.asce.org/PersonifyEbusiness/Merchandise/Product-Details/productId/244232276

The Civil Engineering Blog and News Network

09/06/2019

The recent Trump administration announcement concerning biofuel blends in retail gasoline has generated more news on the politics of getting votes from particular areas of the nation more than it has on environmental impacts.You may or may not have thought much about what increased amounts of ethanol in our fuels means for climate change and natural resource consumption. Some important questions around this are:

(1) What crops are being used to produce the ethanol in the US and globally? More of it is corn, at least in the US, compared to other crops.
(2) How much water is required to irrigate the crops used to make bio-based ethanol? This article from Columbia University makes the point that the amount of irrigation water is different depending on which state the corn or other fuel crop comes.
(3) What are the greenhouse gas implications of more biofuel? Also mentioned in the Columbia University article is the thought that sometimes the amount of GHGs to produce the ethanol in gasoline can be the same or more than that from conventional crude oil extraction and refining.

I, personally, don't feel like I know enough yet to say when ethanol biofuel is actually better long-term for sustainability than conventional gasoline. But I'm going to keep examining these questions, and I think you should too. You don't have to be an environmental expert to do your own research and think through what actions are truly sustainable. Don't leave it all to government leaders. Many of them can feel more beholden to voters with particular interests rather than examining the full impacts of their decisions in the long-term.

-Nathan Howell, Associate professor of environmental engineering

ethanol impacts on water resources
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/03/21/ethanol%E2%80%99s-impacts-on-our-water-resources/

trump maintains ethanol blending requirements
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-05/white-house-mulls-biofuel-quota-boost-amid-appeals-from-iowa

arguments for and against ethanol biofuels
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_for_environment

energy costs involved in ethanol production compared to gasoline
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/UC-scientist-says-ethanol-uses-more-energy-than-2659237.php

08/27/2019

I saw this a location in Amarillo, TX today. I had to share it.This is a good example of what I would call "bottled water scare tactics". If you have not heard, the US has one of the safest water supplies in the US. There are certainly instances where things have failed (like Flint, MI). But by and large that is not the norm. We live in country where you can turn on the water and feed it to a newborn baby without any worry that they will get sick.

This is becoming the exception rather than the rule in many countries in the world due to the huge investment and operations & maintenance required to keep potable water treatment plants and distribution networks safe. If you drink or use water from the tap today (and you CAN safely do this in the USA!), go kiss an an environmental or civil engineer! And consider how you should or should not buy into the narrative that some bottled water companies have to scare you into only drinking their water.

07/24/2019

Have you ever stopped to think about where the water goes after you flush? I’m guessing probably not. Today’s modern sewer system has been designed to prevent diseases (and odors) by transferring wastewater through a series of piping networks into a wastewater treatment plant prior to discharge into a waterbody. Therefore, we can rest comfortably knowing that sewage will be taken away without an issue. We do know there are still challenges in the developing world with this but for the most part this is not an issue for industrialized/post-industrialized nations. However, there was a time when major cities would discharge sewage directly into the same source where water was drawn for drinking. Today learn about an incident in London that caused such a stench that it led to a major public works project. You will definitely think differently about toilets after watching this!

The History Guy remembers when, in the summer of 1858, a particularly hot month of June forced the city of London to address the pollution of the river Thame...

07/16/2019

A water war going on in west Texas Pecos County. It's all about . Some interesting points from the story

--> In 2018, a Basin well requires 15 million gallons of water to develop. For reference the City of Amarillo water utility had an average daily water supply of 49 million gallons.
--> The annual total revenue for supplying just the water in the Permian Basin is $1.2 billion.
--> In the region, the City of Fort Stockton sells 6 BILLION gallons of water a year, a strong source of revenue for the city. At 10 cents per barrel, the annual revenue from the sale is $14.2 million.

One powerful West Texas family wants to pipe millions of gallons daily from under its farmland to oil producers. Another wants to stanch that flow—echoing battles around the world over the resource.

07/10/2019

I (Dr. Howell) got to spend two hours talking Soylent Green, the 1973 dystopian thriller (link to trailer below), with a class of honors students recently. I knew it was an environmental film, but I had never seen it. In the famous death scene, Charleton Heston tells everyone that what they thought about Soylent Green, that it was a plankton based snack, is no longer true. In fact, it is MADE OUT OF PEOPLE that this society processes at "Waste Disposal Plants". Have you ever seen the film? It brings up some thoughtful questions about how we affect the environment and how the environment affects us:

(1) If there comes a time where, locally or globally, there are more people than our environment can reasonably provide for, what should we do?

(2) Will we value people less just because there are many of them, and we together exert a high environmental cost?

(3) If we do great damage to the environment in such a way as to limit the viability of survival and quality of life for those that come after us, have we done injustice to our descendants?

(4) What role is there for mercy and human dignitity if you live in a time of great scarcity?

These questions go beyond a science and engineering understanding of the environment. In engineering, we cannot by ourselves, answer all of these questions. Part of our responsibility in understanding the limits of enviornmental capcity and the consequences of engineering decisions on the environment is to get people talking about what I would say is an underlying question behind nearly all environmental problems, "What is the purpose and value of people, and what does that purpose/value dictate concerning how we should interact with our environment?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_jGOKYHxaQ