Environmental Progress - Summer/Fall 2002

Environmental Progress : Summer/Fall 2002

Taylorville Teens Represent Illinois At Youth Summit

Chesapeake Bay was background for national Clean Water event

Five students and their faculty mentor from Taylorville High School, in Christian County, joined nearly 300 other students and teachers in Edgewater, Md. in mid-October to celebrate the national Year of Clean Water.

The event was part of a nationwide observation of the 30th anniversary of the federal legislation commonly known as the Clean Water Act, signed in 1972. That Congressional action set in motion the nation's first comprehensive formal efforts to identify water quality problems and inaugurate corrective/protective actions.

Teacher Mary Dawson accompanied the student delegation that included seniors Bill Kenter and Emily Thompson, and sophomores Steven Dawson, Megan McClure and Morgan Watson.

During a busy four days at YMCA Camp Letts, located near the Chesapeake Bay, the environmental student ambassadors took part in a series of "rotations" that let them get hands-on experience with things as diverse as canoeing to a spawning area of blue crabs, going up in a crane to look down on pollution effects visible in a forest canopy, seining for fish and invertebrates during a bay boat trip, and having "dessert with the dolphins" during a special private visit to the national aquarium. Their visit to the Aquarium moved senior Bill Kenter to describe it later as "...awesome! I want to live there!"

Time for sight-seeing

The students also spent a day seeing Washington, D.C. - somewhat restricted by the heightened security measures now in effect in the nation's capital - and heard talks by Astronaut Roger Crouch, Major General Hans VanWinkle of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and U.S. EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

Each of the student delegations developed and presented projects reflecting their own regional watersheds. Students got to use Geographic Informational System (GIS) equipment to map the surrounding watershed, took part in an opening parade with each delegation displaying its state flag and exchanged pins and other souvenirs with students from other states.

The "hands on" aspect of the experience rated high with the Illinois group. Mentor Mrs. Dawson described as "fantastic" the experience of "holding the huge LIVE horseshoe crab wiggling in my hands, and the great flounder, blue crabs, squid, etc. we caught in the nets while trawling on the boat." The boating event was ranked by Emily Thompson as "the part of the Summit that I enjoyed most. We got to do a lot of things by ourselves."

Several of the students also came away with a new perception of the variety of environment-related career opportunities that are available. Morgan Watson found it eye-opening that "there are more careers than doctors, teachers and lawyers." She was impressed by "all the jobs that are in environmental sciences."

A busy and competitive summer

For the Taylorville group, the Youth Summit climaxed several months of environment-related events. In May, Steven Dawson, Watson, Kenter and Thompson, with senior Taylorville High School student Katie DeClerck, successfully competed during the Illinois Envirothon, a problem solving, natural resource education program for high school students which culminates in a field competition, and were named the official Illinois delegates to the national Envirothon competition in Boston in July.

The state championship in the Illinois Envirothon event led to the team's selection by Gov. George Ryan's office to be the state's representatives at the Year of Clean Water Youth Summit. The Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators sponsored the trip for four students and their mentor, and the IEPA underwrote the trip for the fifth summit delegate. The Agency provided the entire Illinois group with jackets and backpacks identifying them as Illinois Student Ambassadors to the summit meeting.

Bureau of Water Chief Marcia Willhite thanked the Taylorville group both for their efforts at the Youth Summit, and for their demonstrated enthusiasm for environmental issues. "These young people typify the best of their generation in their commitment, their eagerness to learn and their willingness to work for the things they see as important, both now and for the future. I congratulate them all."