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The LeFevre Lab is comprised of Environmental Engineering and Science researchers who study how non-point pollutants change in water, and what that can mean for ecosystems and human health. Non-point pollutants are those that don’t come out of a pipe, but rather run off streets & parking lots, lawns, and farm fields–often largely untreated. You can picture a rainbow oil shean floating across a parking lot during a rainstorm, heading for a stormsewer that will go to a river. We need to understand how pollutants change form because they can beneficially degrade to benign end products or become more toxic and impact our drinking water sources.
We work in the laboratory and the field to understand how bacteria, plants, and fungi change the chemical structure of pollutants, which can in term alter their fate in the environment. Our goal is to use this new knowledge to help design better so-called “engineered natural treatment systems” where we harness the power of these aforementioned biological processes to capture and degrade water contaminants that are reliable, robust, and resilient. Ultimately, this will improve water quality in ecosystems and protect drinking water sources for people.
[…] Greg LeFevre is an assistant professor of environmental engineering and science in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa and an assistant faculty research engineer at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. He did his BS at Michigan Tech, MS/PhD at University of Minnesota, and postdoc at Stanford University, all in environmental engineering. The focus of his research group is elucidating novel biotransformation products and pathways of emerging contaminants to inform improved design of engineered natural treatment systems for non-point pollutants. Much of Greg’s work has been dedicated to improving bioretention stormwater green infrastructure. […]