Past Competition

2011 State Competition

The 2011 State Competition was held at the Forst Custer Training Center in Augusta, Michigan May 11 through 13.  The top three overall finishers in 2011 are as follows:  First Place:  New Lothrop High School Hornets; Second Place:  Iron Mountain/Kingsford High School Stream Savers; Third Place:  Branch Area Career Center Team Legit. For the latest information on competition activities, please visit the Michigan Envirothon Blog. 

 

 

New Lothrop High School Team Wins the 2011 Michigan Envirothon

Winning TeamA team of students from New Lothrop High School won the Michigan Envirothon state competition held May 12 and 13 at the Fort Custer Training Center in Augusta. The team will now represent Michigan at the North American Canon Envirothon held this year in New Brunswick, Canada in July .

The New Lothrop team finished first among 23 teams from across the state that competed against each other on their knowledge and skills of conservation topics. Finishing second in the competition was a team from Iron Mountain/Kingsford High School followed by a team from Branch Area Careers Center in Coldwater.

In addition to representing Michigan at the Canon North American Envirothon at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, each first-place team member received a $2,500 scholarship to Michigan State University. The winning team members include Jacob Emmendorfer, Mitchell Delemeester, Eric Milks, Jonathan Knieper, Brandon Mann and Joshua Reinhart.

During the competition at Fort Custer, teams were tested in an outdoors, hands-on setting, on seven conservation topics including, aquatic ecology, energy, forestry, soils/geology, agriculture, wildlife and salt and freshwater estuaries. Each team also completed a community outreach project prior to the competition that addressed a natural resources concern in their community. 

The team from New Lothrop, whose team took the name of their school mascot, the Hornets, focused on the sound scientific management of a school-owned woodlot for their community outreach project. In particular they educated their community on forestry best management practices through selective harvesting demonstrations.

 

 

2011 Community Outreach Project Winners

Of the 28 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 3 expert judges.

The winning Community Outreach Projects of 2011 are:

 

1st Place – New Lothrop High School– Hornets

Jacob Emmendorfer, Mitchell Delemeester, Eric Milks, Jonathan Knieper, Brandon Mann and Joshua Reinhart.   Their Team Advisor is Ernest Delemeester.

Project Type: Woodlot Management and Education

The students of the New Lothrop High School ecology club observed that many privately owned lands around their community were being poorly managed due to lack of education on proper forest management practices on the part of the landowners. To address this issue, the New Lothrop students set out in 2011 to educate community members about best management practices and demonstrate selective tree harvesting on their school-owned woodlot. By demonstrating these practices, community members were able to observe first-hand the benefits of making informed management decisions.  

Tasks associated with this project included data collection, tree marking and harvest, fund raising, publicizing the forestry program, coordinating with resource professionals, and involving younger students in spring re-planting activities.   During the project, the New Lothrop team also constructed a solar kiln for drying the lumber cut from the useable timber harvested from their woodlot.   The wood cut and dried in the kiln was later donated to the school's wood shop.

Partners of the New Lothrop Woodlot Management Project included:

• Shiawassee Conservation District
• New Lothrop Athletic Association
• New Lothrop FFA
• Jeff Tuller – Private Forester
• National Wild Turkey Federation
• Saginaw Conservation District
• Kohl's Dept. Store
• Pepsi Corp.
• U.S Fish and Wildlife Service at the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge
• New Lothrop Boy Scout Troop 90  

Costs for the project totaled $5,000 and included nine public presentations.   The project reached an estimated 500 students from New Lothrop Community Schools and another 300 adults from around the community.   The New Lothrop team also recruited the help of 35 volunteers for the woodlot management project in 2011.

 

2nd Place – Roseville High School–Fantastic Chloroplastics

Nick Somoski, Shelby Hyatt, Rebecca Blundell, Siju Vorughese, Vevek Vijayakumar, Breeana Canada. Their Team Advisor is Scott Wheeler.

Project Type: Stormwater treatment

As regular patrons of their local Huron Park, the students of the Roseville High School Envirothon team saw the large amount of pollutants such as oil and gas leaks, cigarette butts, empty bottles, food and other wastes that were continually being deposited in the park's parking lot on a daily basis.   This refuse, combined with the other non-point source pollutants from surrounding land use activities that were accumulating on the parking lot and flowing into a nearby storm drain was enough to raise concern among the students for the safety of their community's water supply and the wellbeing of the local aquatic ecology.

In an effort to help safeguard the local surface water quality, the students decided to design and construct a natural feature called a bioswale to help trap storm water runoff and filter out pollutants before it entered the storm drain system.

Roseville partnered with their Parks and Recreation Department to get an approved design for a 4,500 square-foot bioswale area positioned adjacent to the parking lot.   The team will be working with the parks and rec. department over the next year to implement construction.   In addition to the bioswale, the team has plans to plant numereous trees and native plants to help soak up pollutants and purify the water.   To assess the success of the project, the Roseville team plans to conduct water quality monitoring before and after construction is complete in hopes that the new bioswale area will show a decrease in pollutant levels in the water reaching the nearby storm drain.

Partners of the Roseville Bioswale Project included:

• Roseville Parks and Recreation Department
• Roseville City Council
• Roseville School Board

Costs for the project ranged from $2,000-$4,000 and included two public presentations.   The project is expected to reach over 2,000 and 1,000 through the use of the park once completed.   The Roseville team recruited the help of 7volunteers to help with the project.

 

3rd Place – Iron Mountain/Kingsford High School– the Stream Savers

Catherine Holmes, Sarah Gakstatter, Kassandra Lee, Evan Olson and Team Advisor Andrew Johnson.


Project Type: Implementation of a county-wide polypropylene #5 plastic cap recycling program

The Stream Savers of Iron Mountain/Kingsford High School in Dickinson County realized that polypropylene plastic makes up 1-2% of all plastic used in the United States, but the most common material used for plastic bottle caps- polypropylene #5 - was not accepted as a recyclable material in their county.    Because of this the Stream Savers set out to try and find an alternative use for #5 bottle caps and thus keep these un-biodegradable nuisances from amassing at their local landfills.

The first step in their project was to promote their efforts and contact local businesses for setting up collection bins around the community.  The team was able to get collection bins established at area grocery stores, hardware stores, schools and other businesses.  They also organized a cap collection competition between their school district's elementary schools.

For a recycler, the team identified a company in Evansville, Indiana that would accept the collected caps and use them to make a plastic polymer that would eventually be sold to other companies as a raw ingredient for a variety of products.

The team reports that every pound of plastic they collect and recycle will save 12,000 BTU of heat energy.  The team is currently on their way to collecting their goal of 4,000 pounds of plastic caps, which would be the equivalent in heat energy to 387 gallons of gasoline and 7,742 pounds of oil.

Partners for the Iron Mountain/Kingsford bottle cap recycling project included: