Student Competition To Tackle Oklahoma's Water Woes

Several middle school students are being asked to theoretically do something about Oklahoma's low water levels.

They'll showcase their ideas during Saturday's Future City Competition at Oklahoma Christian University. The event is sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation.

Student teams plan and design virtual cities with SimCity 4 software donated each by Electronic Arts, build physical models with recycled materials and a budget of just $100, research and write a solution to an engineering problem, write a narrative describing their city, and present their ideas before a panel of judges.

This year's essay topic is "Rethink Runoff: Design clean solutions to manage storm water pollution." Students will research and write an essay in which they design a way to manage storm water runoff in their future cities.

Teams are judged on their presentation, virtual city design, physical model, research essay and city narrative.

There are 16 teams from Oklahoma that are ready to compete. The winner will travel to Washington D.C. for the national Future City Competition.

The event on Saturday is open to the public and begins at 8 a.m.

Learn more about the Future City Competition.