EWRE Laboratory facilities are well-equipped for performing both basic and applied state-of-the-art research in virtually all areas of environmental and water resources engineering.  The laboratories are housed on the main campus and at J.J. Pickle Research Campus.

The on-campus laboratories and offices of EWRE cover 20,000 square feet on three floors of Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Hall.   Much of the environmental engineering research is conducted on campus.  The laboratories are designed for physical, chemical and biological analyses, and for research on water, wastewater and hazardous waste treatment processes.  Facilities include one clean room for metal or particulate analysis, four laboratories with temperature and humidity control for special projects and numerous hoods for the safe handling of hazardous chemicals.  The laboratories are equipped with a broad array of modern analytical instruments that can measure virtually any type of pollutant.  Special equipment also may be built in the Civil Engineering machine shop.  Additional analytical equipment such as x-ray fluorescence, NMR, scanning electron microscopy, and nuclear activation analysis instruments is available in other departments on the main campus.

The Center for Research in Water Resources (CRWR) is located at J.J. Pickle Research Campus approximately 9 miles from the main campus.  (The University operates a regular, free shuttle bus between the main campus and the Pickle Research Campus.)  CRWR is a facility supporting computational and experimental research in water resources.  The focal points of the computational research are the application of geographic information systems in water resources, the numerical simulation of pollutants in soil and groundwater systems, and the assembly and synthesis of historical water quantity and quality information.  The focal points of the experimental research are scaled laboratory models of water flow in rivers and in piped systems, models of innovative wastewater treatment facilities, and field monitoring of water quality in streams and highway runoff.  The CRWR Computational Laboratory is built around a Windows NT network supporting 18 computers, a 60GB disk server, regular and large size printers and plotters, a CD-ROM writing and replicating facility, and two Sun Unix workstations. The Arc/Info and ArcView geographic information system software operates on all these machines.  The adjacent Hydraulics and Environmental Laboratory contains instrumentation and data acquisition systems necessary to conduct major laboratory and field studies.  Permanent features of the 24,000-square-foot facility include a 200-foot outdoor flume with adjustable slope and a 75-foot tilting, glass-walled flume.  Other facilities include a model of a meandering river channel to study hydraulics and pollutant transport, a side weir to study diversion of flood flows, a tilting channel to study the hydraulics of street and gutter flows on roadways, and a rectangular open channel which is 130 ft long and 5 ft wide with a flow of 23 cfs.

The Air Resources Engineering Program maintains approximately 5,000 square feet of laboratory space in five newly-renovated laboratories at the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources (CEER), previously the Center for Energy Studies.  These laboratories are equipped for doing laboratory-scale analysis of biological air filtration systems and other air pollution control devices.  The laboratories also include facilities for studying outdoor sources of volatile organic compounds and indoor sources and sinks of volatile chemicals.  A wide range of instrumentation is also available for field monitoring in both indoor and outdoor environments.

The Environmental Solutions Program (ESP) is an industry-sponsored research program at UT Austin involving many EWRE faculty members.  The program was created to enhance the interaction and collaboration of faculty with industries and other organizations seeking solutions to environmental problems.  ESP provides yet another opportunity for students to conduct research on environmental problems of both a fundamental and applied nature.  Semi-annual meetings at UT Austin with the sponsoring companies allow students to develop contacts for future employment opportunities and to obtain a better perspective on real-world environmental problems.

UT Austin offers excellent computing facilities.  There are microcomputers and workstations in the EWRE research laboratories.  The Computational Hydrodynamics Laboratory has one Compaq XP 1000 Workstation, one DEC Personal Workstation 500 au, three DEC Alpha 600 (5/266), five Xterminals, 2 printers, one PC and one Mac.  These computers provide the necessary platform for solving non-linear flow problems about complex geometries (involving cavities or free-surfaces) and for performing advanced propeller blade design using non-linear optimization techniques.  The Department of Civil Engineering maintains a computer center equipped with over 70 IBM compatible computers, DEC workstations, and the new HP Studio Classroom 2 Technology Enhanced Activities and Methods Center equipped with 23 workstations for instructional use.  In addition, a CalComp plotter, digitizer and other peripheral devices are available to support CAD/CAE.  The Texas Advanced Computing Center at UT Austin operates a Cray T3E Scalable Parallel system and two Cray J90 Parallel Vector supercomputers.  An extensive, high-speed data communication network links the various microcomputers, departmental computers, and university computers.  Access to a variety of national networks also is readily available.

The Richard W. McKinney Engineering Library, conveniently located in Cockrell Hall, is a state-of-the-art information resource with highly trained personnel ready to help you make use of specialized electronic sources and databases such as pollution abstracts and water resources abstracts. The McKinney Library contains more than 120,000 volumes, subscribes to over 1,800 periodicals and has over 500,000 technical reports on microfiche. Facilities of several local organizations outside UT Austin are also available.   Examples include the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which has its district office in Austin; the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, which regulates drinking water plants, wastewater discharges, municipal solid waste, hazardous waste disposal, and air emissions in Texas; the Texas Water Development Board, which oversees development of water resources in Texas; the City of Austin, which has a water and wastewater research facility at its Center for Environmental Research, 18 miles from campus; and the Lower Colorado River Authority, which operates a series of flood-control and water-supply reservoirs along the Colorado River near Austin.

The Engineering Career Assistance Center (ECAC) provides a comprehensive on-campus recruiting and interviewing program to assist students in finding suitable employment upon graduation.  ECAC also assists students with résumé construction, cover letter writing, and job search preparation and implementation.  EWRE faculty members also play an active role in assisting students to find employment through their numerous professional contacts across the country.

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