The development of environmental engineering as a discipline is a reflection of the modern need to maintain public health by providing safe drinking water and sanitation, and by treating and disposing of sewage, municipal solid waste, and pollution. Originally, sanitary engineering, a limited subdiscipline of civil engineering, performed some of these functions. But with the growth of concern for protecting the environment and the passage of laws regulating disposal of wastes, environmental engineering has grown into a discrete discipline encompassing a wide range of activities including: "proper disposal or recycling of wastewater and solid wastes, adequate drainage of urban and rural areas for proper sanitation, control of water, soil and atmospheric pollution and the social and environmental impact of these solutions." Education for environmental engineers requires that they be "well informed concerning engineering problems in the field of public health, such as control of insect-borne diseases...