Water resources engineering programs prepare people to design systems that collect, store, and conserve water. Students learn about human and industrial needs for water. They learn ways to control floods and reduce pollution.

Water is essential for life. We drink it, we wash with it, we cook with it, we play in it, we grow crops and raise livestock with it, and we use it for countless industrial processes. So we humans make great efforts to make water available and pure. And we also guard against the dangers of flooding and erosion.

Water resources engineers play an important role in these efforts. In this field, you may help the public works department of a city redesign its reservoirs. You may help a real estate development company plan a water treatment system for a suburban tract. You may work with an oil drilling company to ensure that they have a reliable source of water for their operations.

When you study water resources engineering, you start with chemistry, physics, and math. You need to understand the physical and chemical properties of water to be able to control it and purify it. Eventually you study fluid mechanics so that you can predict how water will flow. You learn how to measure the potential of a source of water. You create simulations to predict supplies of water under various possible levels of availability and use.

You learn about the materials you can use to contain or carry water. You might research what kind of steel makes pipes with the best combination of strength, light weight, and low cost. Or you might determine what the most practical substance is for lining an irrigation ditch to limit seepage.

In most branches of engineering, you can enter the work force after four years of full-time study beyond high school. But almost no colleges offer a bachelor's degree in water resources engineering. This leaves you with a couple of choices. You can get a bachelor's in civil engineering or environmental engineering and try to take a lot of course work related to water resources. Or you can get a bachelor's in one of these branches of engineering (or possibly geology) and then study water resources engineering for a master's degree. This will take about one or two years beyond the bachelor's. About 10 graduate schools of engineering in the U.S. offer this program.