Wastewater engineering is not usually its own degree course but a specialization from degrees

such as civil engineering, environmental engineering or chemical engineering. Wastewater

engineering deals with the transportation and cleaning of blackwater, greywater, and irrigation
water. Wastewater treatment and water reclamation are areas of concern in this field.
Wastewater engineers map out topographical and geographical features of Earth to determine
the best means of collection.
Early history[edit]
Irrigation systems were invented five to seven thousand years ago as a means of supplying
water to agriculture-based societies. Aqueducts and irrigation systems were among the first
forms of wastewater engineering. As population centers became more dense, they were used to
remove sewage from settlements. The Romans were among the first to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the aqueduct. The Dark Ages marked a period where progress in water
management came to a halt.[1]

Modern history[edit]
As populations grew, the management of human waste became a growing concern and a public
health threat. By the 1850s in London more than 400,000 tons of sewage were flushed into the
Thames River each day - around 150 million tons a year.[2] Diseases such as smallpox,
diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, typhus, cholera and typhoid were spread via the
contaminated water supply.[3] During the 19th century major cities started building sewage
systems to remove human waste out of cities and into rivers.
During the 1900s the activated sludge process was invented.[4] The activated sludge process is a
form of water purification that uses bacteria to consume human feces. Chlorine is used to kill off
the bacteria.
Over the centuries much has changed in the field of wastewater engineering. Advancements in
microbiology, chemistry, and engineering have drastically changed the field. Today wastewater
engineers work on the collection of clean water for drinking, chemically treating it, and using UV
light to kill off micro-organisms. They also treat Water Pollution in wastewater (blackwater and
greywater) so that this water may be made safe for use without endangering the population and
environment around it.

Sewage treatment is the process of removing contaminants from wastewater, primarily from
household sewage. It includes physical, chemical, and biological processes to remove these
contaminants and produce environmentally safe treated wastewater (or treated effluent). A byproduct of sewage treatment is usually a semi-solid waste or slurry, called sewage sludge, that
has to undergo further treatment before being suitable for disposal or land application.
Sewage treatment may also be referred to as wastewater treatment, although the latter is a
broader term which can also be applied to purely industrial wastewater. For most cities, the
sewer system will also carry a proportion of industrial effluent to the sewage treatment plant
which has usually received pretreatment at the factories themselves to reduce the pollutant

load. If the sewer system is a combined sewer then it will also carry urban runoff (stormwater)
to the sewage treatment plant.