UAA wins environmental challenge

By Sam March
Northern Light

University of Alaska Anchorage teams earned first and second place at the Pacific Northwest International Sections Environmental Challenge in Girdwood last week. The contest involved a presentation on an issue involving air pollution, water pollution, waste management and other environmental issues.

UAA students Jason Kinter and Calvin Sweeney placed first and Tim Stout, Chris Hadden, Sarah Haden and Edda Mutter, also from UAA, took second place. The teams were awarded $500 and $300 respectively.

For the contest, teams were given a four-page pamphlet detailing the environmental problems of a fictitious Alaskan village. The students had three days to prepare for their presentations.

“We had to find solutions to their environmental problems. Find all the problems, and rank them in order of importance while also detailing why we ranked them,” said Kinter, “Then we had to find solutions.”

The teams were allowed the assistance of five experts from the PNWIS delegation; a tribal liaison, a tribal elder, a drinking water expert, an air pollution expert and a solid waste and sewage expert.

At first the challenge was daunting.

“We didn’t know what to expect. Both of us had never even been in an environmental sciences class. We didn’t know what the challenge was. Luckily, we had both traveled to the Bush, and had contacts there which we could use for information,” said Kinter.

This was the first time students from UAA have taken part in the PNWIS environmental challenge. The competition included two teams from Montana Tech of the University of Montana and one team from Washington State University.

“It was a clean sweep,” said Bill Schnabel, an assistant professor in UAA’s department of environmental quality engineering.

“I think we had a strong home field advantage. And that’s for two reasons, A: The superior education received at UAA, and B: Most of the UAA teams had people who had either worked in the field, or had contacts in the Bush with an expertise on the assignment,” Schnabel said.

PNWIS is a division of the Air and Water Management Association, an independent organization that serves as a forum for discussion and continual education concerning air pollution and waste management.

They also promote networking on technical issues relating to environmental management in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Western Canada.

The Environmental Challenge was a part of the 43rd annual PNWIS/AWMA conference hosted last week at the Alyeska Resort in Girdwood. This was the first PNWIS conference hosted in Alaska since 1976.

The first place team was awarded a stipend to cover travel expenses for next year’s conference in Portland, Ore.

“We’ve already been invited…and PNWIS will help pay for our ticket, if we go down there and defend our title,” Kinter said.