MICHIGAN ENVIROTHON

 

 

2010 Michigan Envirothon State Competition

Glen Lake High School Team Wins the 2010 Michigan Envirothon!

 

A team of students from Glen Lake High School won the Michigan Envirothon state competition held May 13 and 14 at Leelanau Outdoor Center in Maple City.  The team will now represent Michigan at the North American Canon Envirothon held this year at California State University in Fresno, California.  The Glen Lake team finished first among 22 teams from across the state that competed against each other on their knowledge and skills of conservation topics. Finishing second in the competition was the Iron Mountain/Kingsford High School team, followed by a team from Groves High School.

In addition to representing Michigan at the Canon North American Envirothon at California State University, each winning team member received a $2,500 scholarship to MSU. The team members include Jack Kirby-Miller, Chloe Gribbin, Heather Leach, Rowen Neimisto and Collin Richard.  During the competition on the grounds of Leelanau Outdoor Center and surrounding Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, teams were tested in an outdoors hands‐on setting, on seven conservation topics including, agriculture, aquatic ecology, energy, forestry, soils/geology, wildlife and the 2010 Envirothon environmental issue “Agricultural, Environmental and Urban Planning for Groundwater Protection”. Each team also completed a community outreach project prior to the competition that addressed a natural resources concern in their community. The team from Glen Lake High School, whose team name was “All Natural Baby”, addressed the locally threatened Screech owl and American Kestrel populations by establishing raptor houses throughout Leelanau County.

 

2010 Community Outreach Project Winners

Of the 30 High School Teams that participated in this year’s Envirothon Competition, the following 3 Teams were awarded top honors for their Community Outreach Projects.  Winners were decided by the combined scores of their written project summaries and oral presentations, as graded by a panel of 4 expert judges.

The winning Community Outreach Projects of 2010 are:

1st Place – Wylie Groves High School, Birmingham Public Schools– Ernest the Monkey & the Wylie Baboons

Joseph Giancarlo, Kelsey Kaline, Eric Hausman, Calley Murphy and Sarah Zamler. Their team advisor is Cynthia Sherman.
Project Type: Water Conservation

The winning Team from Groves High School decided to give the residents of Beverly Hills, MI a cost effective and convenient way to help out the environment and conserve water—rain barrels. The team took it upon themselves to produce and install rain barrels in various public and private locations throughout the community.  These barrels collected and stored rainwater from downspouts and utilized a custom hose attachment to water lawns and gardens at the locations at which they were installed.

Several companies assisted in the production of these barrels, including: 

• JAX Car Wash
• ACE Hardware
• Home Depot
• Beverly Hills Parks and Recreation Board

These companies, especially JAX Car Wash helped to keep the overhead cost of rain barrel production to a minimum. A supplemental fundraising project, involving the sale of aluminum water bottles, covered the remainder of the cost. Inside each of the water bottles sold in this fundraiser was an informative sheet reminding users to be aware of water conservation, take action, and always use refillable water bottles to cut down on waste.

Results of the rain barrel efforts included the construction of 10 rain barrels for installation (free-of-charge) into private homes, as well as the construction of 2 rain barrels for installation in public locations to serve as a display to encourage homeowners to buy or make their own barrel.  Awareness was about these barrels war raised through ads in the local newspaper and informative flyers which were placed in brochure boxes at public locations and given to private homeowners for local distribution.  If these awareness efforts weren’t enough, the “Wylie” Team also developed their own website called www.beverlybarrels.com, where people could obtain information about building and purchasing barrels, as well as water conservation.

In all, Ernest the Monkey & the Wylie Baboons installed 12 rain barrels at various locations throughout their community and delivered 5 public presentations to tell about their benefits.  The team estimates that their project reached over 2,000 students and 100 adults and cost about $200.

 

2nd Place – Caro High School - Envirotrons
Landen Tetil, Jacob Cullen, Seth Kratz, Logan Kausch and Tim Carpenter. Their team adviser is Sharon Corrion.
Project Type: Stormwater Treatment

When the Caro High School Envirothon Team named “Envirotrons” saw the effect that nonpoint pollution had on the ecosystems in their community, they decided to take action.  For their Community Outreach Project, the Envirotrons chose to implement a practice that would remove wastes from water runoff flowing into the Cass River naturally- through a rain garden. 

Specifically, the CHS team devised a plan to help partially eliminate runoff pollutants from a bus-loop situated between Caro High School, Caro Middle School, and McComb Elementary School. Inside of the loop lay a bowl shaped island of grass containing a runoff drain. The bus-loop receives high volumes of traffic on a normal day with pollution coming from various sources. The wide array of pollutants (heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, silt, salt, trash) that would flow into the drain unfiltered and make their way into Michigan's water posed a threat worthy of consideration. As the academic year moved forward, the team met regularly in order to formulate and compile a solution to this problem.

The CHS team came to a consensus to build a rain garden and utilize its natural processes of bioretention, filtration, and adsorption to refine the runoff water from the bus-loop going straight into the Cass River. 

The design of the rain garden was planned to cover an area of 450 square feet and have an outer boundary of stone to hinder erosion. The team as aided by several local Resource Professionals, including Steve Schaub of the Tuscola County Conservation District and Mrs. Montei and Mrs. Phillips from the Master Gardeners Association. With the help of these experts, the Envirotron team was able to pick numerous species of native and perennial flora that will required minimal maintenance and thrive in a wet environment while efficiently cleaning the inflow of contaminated water.

Since completion of the rain garden, the team has to made the community aware of its location and communal benefits. They have used a variety of means to publicize the garden such as the quarterly education news pamphlet, Education In Our Town and the Tuscola County Advertiser.

 

3rd Place – New Lothrop High School - Hornets
Jacob Emmendorfer, Mitchell Delemeester, Jonathan Knieper, Robert Bisel and Brandon P. Mann. Their team adviser is Ernest Delemeester.
Project Type: Sustainable Resource Management  

For the 2010 academic year, the New Lothrop Ecology Club began a local resource management project that involved inventory and selective harvest of a small school-owned woodlot.   Not only did the Hornets of New Lothrop set a goal to enhance their woodlot by using sustainable forestry practices set forth in a pre-existing forest management plan, they also chose to involve their community by making it into a public demonstration of how to utilize forest products in an environmentally friendly manor.  Over the course of two years, the students of New Lothrop will facilitate public demonstrations of the timber sawing process and will be drying the wood cut from their woodlot with a homemade solar kiln.  Over the course of this two year project, New Lothrop has proposed many presentations at community events, including some on-site demonstrations.

The project demonstrations are intended to showcase some of the many ways that people can effectively and sustainably manage one of Michigan’s most important local resources for long term economic and recreational benefit.  Other tasks the Hornets will undertake during the course of this project will be to seek funds through grants and donations, harvest selected trees from the woodlot, saw suitable logs into rough cut lumber and enlist local volunteers to clean debris from the woodlot after harvest.  To measure the effects of the disturbance caused by their activities, New Lothrop plans to compare ground cover, light intensity, wildlife activity, and tree growth in managed and unmanaged sections of the woodlot.

Partners of the New Lothrop Woodlot Management Project included:

• Melissa Higbee of the Shiawassee Conservation District
• Jeff Tuller, local forester
• Mark Shultz, local sawyer

Costs for the project totaled $2,400 and included paying the logger, obtaining materials for building a solar kiln, and renting miscellaneous demonstration equipment.  The New Lothrop Hornets are slated to present their efforts at the Saginaw County Fair, the Shiawassee County Fair, the Shiawassee Conservation District Annual Meeting, and a New Lothrop Forestry Outreach event later this year.