| Consumers | (Environmental Engineering) Organisms which consume protoplasm produced from photosynthesis or consume organisms from higher levels which indirectly consume protoplasm from photosynthesis. |
| Corrosive waste | (Environmental Engineering) A waste that is outside the pH range of 2 to 12.5 or a waste that corrodes steel at a rate greater than 6.35 mm (0.25 in) per year. One of EPA's four hazardous waste properties. |
| Decomposers | (Environmental Engineering) Organisms which utilize energy from wastes or dead organisms. Decomposers complete the cycle by returning nutrients to the soil or water and carbon dioxide to the air or water. |
| Denitrification | (Environmental Engineering) The anoxic biological conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas. It occurs naturally in surface waters low in oxygen, and it can be engineered in wastewater treatment systems. |
| Deoxygenation | (Environmental Engineering) The consumption of oxygen by the different aquatic organisms as they oxidized materials in the aquatic environment. |
| Disease | (Environmental Engineering) Any impairment of the normal function of an organism. |
| Dump | (Environmental Engineering) An illegal and uncontrolled area where wastes have been placed on or in the ground. See Landfill. |
| Effluent based standards | (Environmental Engineering) Standards which set concentration or mass per time limits on the effluent being discharged to a receiving water. |
| Equivalent | (Environmental Engineering) The mass of the compound which will produce one mole of available reacting substance. Thus, for an acid, this would be the mass of acid which will produce one mole of H+, for a base, one mole of OH-. |
| Ethers | (Environmental Engineering) An organic compound which has two hydrocarbon groups bound by an interior oxygen atom. The general formula is R'-O-R". |