A group of students at Venture Heights School in Martensville finished in the top 10 of the “Caring for our Watersheds” contest.
The students are Kaden Shumay, Kazden Mathies, Corben Schnurr and Tyson Goguen, who are all in Grade 7.
Their idea to conserve water is to get new faucets installed into the six dressing rooms at the Martensville Arena.
They noticed how much water was getting wasted when they fill up their water bottles. The current faucets are very short, so when you fill up your water bottle half of the water from the bottle gets dumped out when you take it away from the faucet.
Usually after the top ten is selected, the respective groups would present there proposal in a public forum and then be awarded prize money, as each group usually received different amounts up to $1,000. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic they couldn’t do that portion of the contest.
“They weren’t able to do the final presentation so everyone who place in the top 10 is getting the same amount of money ($250),” said Venture Heights Grade 7 teacher Karen Heit.
Heit has implemented the “Caring for our Watersheds” contest as a project for her respective classes over the past six years and she has noticed how much the students are learning.
“They learn the idea of writing a proposal and doing all of that scientific research that goes behind it. They also learn a lot about how humans interact with their environment really locally here and how we actually affect our own watershed,” she said.
As part of the contest, the students have to research watersheds.
“If we don’t take care of our watersheds, people can get sick with everything like water quality. If we keep using pesticides and herbicides, like we do, we will be drinking contaminated water.” Kaden Shumay said.
The students were able to work on the their proposal for the contest in class before school was closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and all proposals from Venture Heights School were submitted right before the February break.
Some of the proposals from the students don’t get implemented but some do and the proposal that these boys came up with has a high chance of getting implemented.
The first step they had to do was contact someone from the City of Martensville to see how they can get this project done and how much it will cost.
“The first person we contacted was the Parks and Facilities manager Don Crowe, because to do the project we had to get permission from him, or else we wouldn’t be able to install the taps in,” Shumay said. “One day we met him in person and he gave us permission (to go ahead in implementing the project). He said if we come up with the majority of the money he could install them.”
The overall cost of getting the faucets installed is $1,651. Since the boys finished in the top ten, the school was awarded $600 and because that amount is going toward the project, Nutrien, who sponsors the contest, will give them a matching grant. Now they are just needing $250 which they hope the city will help them out with.
All of the boys play hockey so they’ve seen first hand that longer faucets are needed and that it will definitely help conserve water.
“Instead of taking a couple tries to fill up your water bottle fully, it will take less time if there are longer faucets,” Tyson Goguen said.
This is the third year in the row that a group from Venture Heights School finished in the top 10 as the contest has hundreds of submissions each year.