Teens Harness Wind Power for School

Earth Club members studied alternative energy in their classes and asked the community to help them apply their knowledge for the good of the area. Abby Haight of The Oregonian reports the students' efforts to use the wind as a power source.

HOOD RIVER, ORE. -- With the installation this fall of a wind turbine next to the Henderson Community Stadium, the members of the Hood River Valley High School Earth Club not only turned their beliefs into practice but also learned a valuable lesson in community involvement.

The project, part of the curriculum for the school's alternative energy resources class, inspired the club's dozen members to brainstorm ways to make Hood River's famous wind really work for the local good.

To these teens and many of their generation, understanding and promoting alternative, renewable energy is a given. They want more recycling bins on school grounds and energetically embrace other green projects. Not to mention, they know they can play a bigger role for the environment by teaching their elders.

"People see kids jumping on alternative energy," said Ted Cramer, the science teacher who advises the Earth Club. "And they're dragging their parents into it."

Alice Zanmiller, a 17-year-old junior, has been a part of the turbine project since its first days, when she was a freshman. "We wanted a way for people to see, to create awareness and to start the ball rolling on energy consciousness."

That was the idea when Cramer first proposed the idea of installing a wind turbine at the high school.

"We're just trying to expand people's understanding of what alternative energy is," Cramer said. "That it's not expensive."

Cramer had already met with Energy Trust of Oregon, and he helped the club make a formal application to the trust's small wind program. But the students also had to convince the school board and residents around the 1,200-student high school, where the turbine would stand next to the Eagles' football stadium -- the school building most visited by Hood River adults.

Wind turbines are a part of the agricultural landscape around Hood River, and towering wind farms rise from the Columbia River Gorge just to the east. But they are controversial and not popular with everyone.

"The school board was not necessarily in favor of it," Superintendent Pat Evenson-Brady said. "With the development of huge wind turbines out here, it's not necessarily a popular political decision.

"But these kids went around to every landowner within sight of the turbine and spoke to them."

Senior Teresa De Sitter, now Earth Club president, remembered those visits.

"It wasn't going to be real loud, and it wasn't going to kill birds," the 18-year-old said. "I got really good at saying that."

With neighborhood and school board approval, Energy Trust agreed to pay the entire $25,000 for the turbine, installation and upkeep. Like the club, trust officials saw the turbine as a chance to sell the idea of wind energy to a broader community.

"There aren't very many small turbines," said Jan Schaeffer, spokeswoman for Energy Trust. "Most of them are in remote, rural counties. It's a good opportunity for us to demonstrate to all those others in a windy county that little generators do work."

For the complete story, visit The Oregonian.