Students from Arlington, Fairfax County and Alexandria took part in a regional summit Friday in Bluemont Park to turn the fruits of their own research into possible solutions for local ecological problems.
"It's a festival to celebrate all that we've learned this year and to get together to learn more," said Liz Castillo, a teacher from Kenmore Middle School.
Castillo's sixth-grade class got a round-robin of science lessons from representatives of state and local environmental agencies. Alexandria City Council member Andrew Macdonald was also on hand to teach a lesson in resolving environmental issues through government. Macdonald used a role-playing game to illustrate Alexandria's ongoing negotiations to reduce emissions from the Mirant power plant along the Potomac River.
"I used the role-playing game to open up a discussion," Macdonald said. "It could really be about any civic issues. The idea is show how things are solved."
The Mirant plant, a coal-burning facility that generates electricity for the District of Colombia, is considered to be one of the nation's most significant stationary sources of air pollution. Yet it remains in operation. The game, Macdonald said, like the real scenario, remained unfinished.
"It ends up being this open-ended thing but they got to see what we go through with environmental issues like this," Macdonald said.
AT KENMORE, CASTILLO'S sixth-graders worked throughout the year to formulate a project to improve local water quality. After researching via the Internet and in class, her students focused on two threats to the water and took samples from Four Mile Run. The first was Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BDO), a reduction in water's oxygen content. The second was the level of animal waste. BDO, Castillo said, can cause fish to die off but her students found that natural processes can almost undo it. But animal waste is different, and Castillo said her students may have a way to combat its presence in the local water supply.
"We brainstormed lots of ideas, and we all worked together to come up with this project," Castillo said. "We figured out that a lot of what's found in the water is animal waste, the largest amounts from raccoons that travel in the sewer pipes. We're working on an idea now to put up better protection on the entrances to pipes to keep them from getting in. It's something we're working on."
To demonstrate the idea, Castillo's students constructed a small model, almost to scale, of Arlington's water system.
To demonstrate the concept of energy efficiency, naturalist Rich Bailey from the Potomac Overlook brought a bicycle wired to power electric light bulbs, a fan, even a blow drier. Pedal power lit up each one, and as students pedaled faster weights made the wheel easier to move.
"I drove from Tennessee to Washington on about one tank of gas in my Honda Civic," Bailey said. "How many tanks do you think it would take to get from there to here in a Hummer?"
After stepping off the cycle, Guston Middle School student Thomas O'Neil said the summit's lesson plan ties in with what his class is planning for the future. Some Gunston students, he said, want to lobby for a rain garden outside the school to reduce storm water runoff
"It's a big project," O'Neil, a sixth-grader, said. "It'll help preserve Four Mile Run."
The Summit was hosted by Earthforce, an environmental education program supported by Staples.