City Announces Drinking Water Essay Winners
Essays speak of Jalisco, Ho Chi Minh City, Atoka water
(May 10, 2006) –The City will award scholarships to three high school students for their essays about drinking water. Two student essayists are from Capitol Hill High School, Oklahoma City, and one is from Atoka High School, Atoka, Oklahoma.
Huy Pham, a 12th grader from Capitol Hill High School, Oklahoma City, is the first place winner of the Oklahoma City-area competition, and will receive a $500 scholarship. Fredy Valencia, an 11th grader, also from Capitol Hill High School, is the second place winner and will receive a $250 scholarship.
Jamie Hyatt, a 12th grader from Atoka High School will receive a $500 scholarship for her winning essay.
Pham and Valencia will receive their scholarships at the June 6 City Council meeting. They will also be recognized during their school’s annual awards assembly on Tuesday, and at the State Capitol next week during a meeting of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Hyatt will receive her scholarship at a local meeting in Atoka next month.
This is the first time the City has held an essay contest in recognition of Drinking Water Week, a national observance spearheaded by the American Water Works Association. For 30 years, water utilities, rural water associations, communities and schools from around the country promote the importance of water during this week of water celebration.
Students from public and private Oklahoma City-area high schools were encouraged to submit essays that explored why water is important to the survival of our communities and what can be done to ensure water availability to our communities. Essays were received from students from Moore, Putnam City and Oklahoma City Public Schools.
A separate competition that encouraged students in the Lake Atoka and McGee Creek areas to submit essays was held in Southeastern Oklahoma.
“We were pleased to receive essays from students who clearly recognized and understood the vital role that water plays in our communities and lives,” said Marsha Slaughter, Director, Water & Wastewater Utilities for the City. “We hope to continue the scholarship competition next year, making it an annual event.”
Pham, whose former hometown is Ho Chi Minh City, demonstrated the important role drinking water plays in our daily lives by drawing upon personal experience. “I am from Vietnam,” he wrote. “I have seen the suffering caused by lack of access to clean drinking water. In…Ho Chi Minh City, many of my friends are out of school frequently because of diseases they catch from their drinking…”
“In America, we do not even think about being able to trust our drinking water, knowing we will not get any disease from contaminated water,” he continued. “Students go to school without worrying about their drinking water and they do not have to worry when they are thirsty after playing physical games, as their drinking water is clean.”
Valencia’s essay also underscored the importance of clean drinking water based on his family’s experience living in rural Mexico. “…My grandfather, Enrique, grew his own crops for his family and farmed for other people to get money to buy what he could not grow,” Valencia wrote. “Then he would
irrigate, with water from a well or the small river, with only the assistance of his wife and children. At home, they would get the water they needed from well, as there was no plumbing…”
Valencia recalled a time when the public water system in his family’s small Mexican village was only for the most influential people, and how what is needed today in America is a water culture in which people conserve water to a greater degree and appreciate it more. “It is much easier to turn on a faucet than to use a bucket and a rope to get water from a deep well, as my grandparents, mother and I did,” Valencia wrote. “I wish that everybody would appreciate how difficult it is to get clean water.”
Hyatt’s essay also drew upon her hometown life experience. “We in Southeastern Oklahoma have an abundance of good clean water, and we have a tendency to take it for granted that we not only will always have all the water we want, but that it will always be good and clean,” she wrote. “…I would like to think that my children and grandchildren, like my parents and grandparents, will live in Southeastern Oklahoma and will be able to enjoy a wonderful way of life and have an abundance of…clean drinking water.”
City of Oklahoma City Activities in Observance of Water Week
- Media tour of the Hefner Water Treatment Plant (May 8)
- Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust meeting and tour, Draper Water Treatment Plant (May 16)
- Mayor’s proclamation presented to front-line workers in the Utility (May 9)
- Elementary school coloring and poster contest winners announced (May 9)
- Distribution of 500 shower coaches to youth ages 13 to 17 during a special, “Get Out of the Shower!” mini-campaign in partnership with the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (May 10; May 11)
