The rivers aren't burning, the smokestacks aren't belching, the dumps aren't open. The challenges facing the future are how to face the problems of today, not those of 20 or 30 years ago. Those are the problems environmental managers and policy managers have to address. For today's environmental managers, challenges are more likely to involve compliance with federal or state regulations and prevention of environmental hazards through careful attention to waste management, water and land resource management, and air quality management. This, Alter says, is a trend with national support.
Environmentalism is part of the American ethic.
That means when you are putting together a plan for a new plant or division, you think about the environment at that stage, and you put in features to care for it. UMUC's graduate program and undergraduate specialization respond to this trend. Upper management would assign those duties to a personnel manager or a health and safety officer. Today's environmental managers must understand information technology, problem solving, and human relations. As an environmental scientist and senior analyst on the strategic planning staff of the assistant secretary for defense programs in the Department of Energy, Pflaum works to maintain the safety, reliability, and performance of nuclear weapons.