14
engineer on the Fox River Bridge project in Illinois, which went on
to win a National Recognition Award from the American Council
of Engineering Companies in 2017. The project had unique tasks,
such as scheduling construction around the spawning season of
a federally protected species of fish. It also had more routine chal-
lenges, such as coordinating with state transportation officials to
make sure traffic disruptions were kept to a minimum (more than
one hundred thousand vehicles cross the bridge daily). “Watching
the project progress from the beginning stages of construction to
the end is the best part of my job,” says Seymour. “I love seeing the
transformation take place and know that I was a vital part of it.”
3
Environmental Engineers
Engineers who work on water and wastewater systems and land-
fills are also civil engineers. Known as environmental engineers,
their job is to help protect air, water, and land from becoming pol-
luted by dirty industries, such as oil and gas production, or the
processing of chemicals used to make detergents, paint, plastic,
and countless other products. “In chemical processing, there’s
a lot of wastewater to be treated and environmental engineers
design systems that monitor them, evaluate performance and
modify them for industrial wastewater processes,”
4
says Charles
Werth, a professor of environmental engineering at the University
of Texas.
Environmental engineers are also brought in to help repair en-
vironmental damage caused by pollution or by events such as oil
spills. In the massive 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf
of Mexico, 168 million gallons (636 million L) of oil poured into the
gulf over eighty-seven days until the undersea well was capped.
Environmental experts worried about the damage this would
cause to wildlife, fishing and oyster farming, and local economies
that depended on tourism. Environmental engineers tried several
solutions to limit the damage. One strategy was to contain parts
of the oil floating on the water’s surface with inflatable balloons or
booms and then burn the oil. Another technique required environ-
mental engineers to work with chemists and marine biologists to
release chemicals called dispersants into the oil before it reached
