SHS Envirothon team makes first ever national qualification

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

For the first time since the team was founded at Strathmore High School, local students became the overall champions of the Alberta Envirothon. 

Jessica St. Goddard, a teacher at SHS and coach for the team, explained every year there is a theme for the event handed down from the national Envirothon, which the team then uses to construct their scenario.

“It’s a high school competition about environmental science. They take you through different topics, every year there is a current issue, which, this year it was nonpoint source pollution,” added Tatum Kraatz (17), one of the members who spoke on behalf of her Envirothon team. “They have other ones where they teach you about camping and safety strategies out there. This year, they taught about bear safety, and they teach about aquatics, which is about aquatic testing and fishing, and then they teach about soil makeup, growth, pH, and they also talk about forestry.”

Teams are given five categories to research and study in addition to the current issue and were allowed a little over a month to prepare a presentation.

This SHS team chose to present as though they were a contracting company, speaking about how to build a suburb around a lake.

“They had to come up with ways to make sure that the lake was (preserved), the suburb was built properly, how watershed and waterflow in that lake was maintained, or in the town was kept at a good quality standard,” said St. Goddard. 

“The Envirothon team gives us a bunch of resources that we went through collectively. We learned about the different topics outside of Envirothon, and they gave us a scenario, and we went through that scenario and picked apart like the different points that they wanted us to cover,” added Kraatz. 

Among these included coming up with inventive ways to help the local environment and prevent nonpoint source pollution, as well as to understand low-impact development strategies.

Nonpoint source pollution refers to pollution and contaminants which appear from nondeterminate sources, such as when rain or snow washes pollutants into an area. 

Information made available by the National Geographic suggests legislative initiatives and conscientious project management are often significant contributing factors to preventing the spread of such pollution. 

Between their unique presentation, and tests evaluating their knowledge of the topics, the Envirothon is judged based on a cumulative 700-point system to determine which team qualifies for nationals. 

The team will now prepare for a trip to the National Conservation Foundation (NCF) Envirothon Competition in Mississippi in July.