Environmental Engineering and Stormwater Management Flashcards
6 cards from real Civil Engineering PE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Environmental Engineering and Stormwater Management flashcards as text
Darcy's Law for groundwater flow through a porous medium is expressed as:
Answer: Q = K × i × A
Darcy's Law states Q = KiA, where K is hydraulic conductivity (ft/day or cm/s), i is the hydraulic gradient (Δh/ΔL), and A is the cross-sectional area.
The cone of depression around a pumping well describes:
Answer: The drawdown of the water table forming a funnel-shaped depression
Pumping lowers the piezometric head around the well in a conical shape; the cone expands until steady-state inflow equals the pumping rate.
Aquifer transmissivity T is related to hydraulic conductivity K and saturated thickness b by:
Answer: T = K × b
Transmissivity T = Kb represents the aquifer's capacity to transmit water laterally through its full saturated thickness per unit width.
In situ air sparging remediates contaminated groundwater by:
Answer: Injecting air below the water table to volatilize dissolved contaminants for SVE capture
Air sparging injects compressed air into the saturated zone, stripping volatile organic compounds into the vapor phase where soil vapor extraction (SVE) collects them.
RCRA Subtitle D requires that municipal solid waste landfills have a minimum liner system consisting of:
Answer: A geomembrane directly overlying at least 2 ft of compacted soil with K ≤ 1×10⁻⁷ cm/s
Subtitle D mandates a composite liner: a flexible membrane liner (geomembrane) placed directly on compacted low-permeability soil (K ≤ 1×10⁻⁷ cm/s, ≥2 ft thick).
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) cause environmental harm primarily because they:
Answer: Discharge untreated mixtures of raw sewage and stormwater to receiving waters during wet weather
CSOs occur when wet-weather flows exceed collection capacity, bypassing treatment and discharging raw sewage mixed with stormwater, introducing pathogens and nutrients to receiving waters.