Gratton kids win state Future City contest with vision of garbage-free Cairo

Teams from Stanislaus County placed first and second at the Northern California Regional contest for the Future City Competition held in Vallejo at the California Maritime Academy.

First place went to a team from Gratton School District, a one-school district in rural Denair. Students in the HiMAP Academy program at California State University, Stanislaus, placed second. The contest included 22 Northern California schools, four from Stanislaus County.

Gratton School will represent Northern California at the national competition Feb. 13-15 in Washington, D.C. This is the sixth consecutive year a team from Stanislaus County will represent Northern California at the national competition.

Future City is judged on five components: the virtual city design, city description essay, city model, project plan and team presentation. The local competition is sponsored by the Stanislaus County Office of Education, with support from the Education Foundation of Stanislaus County and Mercer Foods.

Oriac GEM was the name of the city created by students from Gratton. The team envisioned their Future City as a bustling metropolis of 30 million people near what was Cairo, Egypt. Cairo had no official garbage service and was producing 15,000 tons of waste every day. Much of that waste was thrown in the streets.

Environmental engineers realized that Cairo needed a waste-management solution for a huge city of 175 square miles with an ever-growing population. A team of engineers developed a plan to reduce, reuse, recycle and rot, to clean and beautify the city, in keeping with the engineering contest’s 2016 theme of waste management.

The Gratton team: students Ava Chiesa, Madison Boots, Pete Wagner, Garret Hicks, Madison Threet, Morgan Gravatt, Emma Hartman, Esteban Martin, Dakota Dutey, Ryan Meadows, Heath Miller, Gavin Villarreal, Sophia Thomsen, Andrew Williams and Brenden Carne. Teacher Rexann Jensen served as the coach, and Burt Lindquist served as the professional mentor.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Gratton kids win state Future City contest with vision of garbage-free Cairo."