Henry County Middle Schooler Recognized as an Essay Contest Winner
Among the many challenges the Henry County Water Authority (HCWA) addresses every day is to provide quality drinking water to more than 60,000 customers, while assuring there is enough raw water supply and water production capacity to meet their demands.
This dual objective of the HCWA was the subject of the annual Middle School Essay Contest sponsored by the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District.
This past year’s Essay Contest asked students to write 300-500 words on the topic of “Why water quantity (how much water we have) and water quality (how clean that water is) are equally important.” The topic is relevant to the HCWA and its customers, which explains the Authority’s involvement in this annual event as a utility within the Metro Water District.
Aparna Ganesan, a sixth-grade student at Eagle’s Landing Middle School, was selected as the Henry County winner of the 2017 Metro Water District’s Essay Contest. Ganesan was among the winners from 14 jurisdictions recognized at the Georgia State Capitol at the end of the year for their outstanding essays. She and the other local winners each received a $100 prize, while an overall District winner receiving an additional $400.
“Henry County’s Cubihatcha Kids Field Trips provide an excellent example for how the Authority educates all of their school system’s third graders on water resource issues, which lays the foundation for their middle schoolers to be able to produce quality essays for the contest each year,” says Sarah S. Skinner, Education and Public Awareness Specialist with the Natural Resources Group of the Atlanta Regional Commission and Metro Water District.
This past year marked the 16th annual Middle School Essay Contest sponsored by the Metro Water District. The contest invites sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students from Atlanta as well as Bartow, Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Hall, Henry, Paulding and Rockdale Counties to participate. More than 1,200 students submitted essays for the Competition this past year.
The annual contest challenges students to think critically about the region’s water resources, while raising awareness of the importance of conservation and preservation of water quality in metro Atlanta. The annual essay contest is one of many educational outreach initiatives conducted by the Metro Water District to raise awareness about the region’s conservation efforts and the importance of the preservation of water quality in metro Atlanta.
“We support the Essay Contest because we are a part of the Metro Water District and because of our ongoing partnership with them to educate the public on the importance of protecting and preserving our natural resources,” says Tara Brown, HCWA Environmental Compliance Coordinator. “The essays provide evidence of how our local students are becoming more aware and involved in water conservation and environmental protection.”
The HCWA is involved in the Metro Water District because of its dedication to developing comprehensive regional and watershed-specific water resource planning being implemented locally in cooperation with the collective interests of the region. The plans of the Metro Water District and its members are intended to conserve public water supplies, protect water quality and recreational values of water bodies, and minimize potential adverse impacts of development on public waters within and downstream of the region.
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