CALABASAS : Students Take 2nd at Environmental Meet
A Calabasas High School science team has won second place in a state academic decathlon that tested their knowledge on environmental issues.
It was the school’s first year in the contest, which included 23 schools throughout the state, said one of the team’s coaches, Carl Gibbs, who is chairman of the Calabasas Environmental Standards Committee.
Not a bad showing, he said, all things considered. “Most of the teams up there had been there three times, and we had no idea what to expect,” he said. “We only had six weeks to prepare.”
Calabasas City Councilwoman Lesley Devine was the other coach. Devine is an environmental consultant, and Gibbs is retired from the motion picture business.
The competition’s assigned task was to measure the environmental impact of a fictional landfill on ground water, Gibbs said. The youths studied after school and on weekends to prepare for the California Envirothon, which was held May 1 at Oakhurst, near Yosemite National Park.
The students said the decathlon was a good way to call attention to environmental problems. Team members were Jennifer Wan, Tammy Sharp, Polly Niravath, Ruth Park, Traci Craig, Ben Shapiro and Sandra Lin.
The Envirothon was sponsored by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
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