The paper reviews the major future water related environmental problems in the context of the environmental education of water resources engineering students. Questions of sustainable development as the first step toward long term environmental management are discussed. The role of water resources in the definition of the sustainability in the society, economics and the environment is seen to be the central future problem for water resources engineering specialists. The adequacy of their present day knowledge for the solution of these problems in water resources development is critically examined. It is emphasized, that several hydrological disciplines failed to develop as coherent scientific disciplines, technology failed to meet the challenges of the new situation. Severe communication problems between engineers and environmentalists have been identified. Water resources engineering education programmes of six European technical universities were examined and compared in the context of environmental education. Education seems to fail to meet the requirements of interdisciplinarity, the water resources engineer tends to isolate himself from environmentalists. A project on the Prague Agricultural University in environmental education of agricultural and forest engineering students for the integrated planning of land use and water resources is presented as a possible model for the future. The need for a new generation of water resources engineers, interested in interactions between moving water and the surroundings through which it passes, is stressed.