Which engineering career is best for someone with a bachelors in civil engineering that would make the most impact on improving environmental conditions?

Olivia:

If you want to directly contribute to environmental protection with you Civil Engineering Degree, Environmental Engineering is a great Career. This involves designing waste treatment processes and plants (sewage treatment plants). The water quality improvements from these types of projects are tremendous. You could also get into Site Remediation. This branch specializes in cleaning up old mining/industrial sites that have been contaminated with toxic materials over the years. This is also a big, active branch of Civil Engineering.

Finally, you could pursue a career in Water Resources (Hydrology). This has been my specialty through the years. I have been involved in numerous water quality studies on streams, lakes and estuaries. I have also designed stream habitat improvement projects to bring salmon back to Pacific NW Streams. This has been a most satisfying career for me as far as contributing to the betterment of our Nation's environment.

I see you hail from Washington. Did you get your CE Degree at my Alma Mater, the University of Washington (good. old Moore Hall)?

There are a couple of ways to look at this question. First, you could work in a regulatory agency where your responsibility is to ensure that permitted facilities meet the limits in their permits and protect the environment from degradation. Second, you could work in a company that produces technology used in cleaning or protecting environmental media like water filtration or air pollution control devices. Third, you could work for an environmental advocacy group like Greenpeace or Sierra Club and apply your scientific and engineering skills to advocate for environmental protection. Lastly, you could work as a consultant or in a corporate environmental department. These people work to see that facilities meet the intent of their permits; however, in some cases companies will use the "grayness" of some environmental regulations for the benefit of the corporation and this may cause you some internal conflict with your values.