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The Bio Building at Eagle Valley High School by Joy Overbeck Four years ago, three high-school advanced technology students showed teacher Dave Scott their senior project plan for a 2,500 ft2 structure that they wanted to design, build, and use as a working aquaculture and hydroponics laboratory. He thought, “Why not?” This was the latest wave of agriculture, a logical modern outgrowth of the farming and animal raising that are longtime traditions of the Colorado high country. “This is the new nature of things,” Scott says. “With the land being turned into golf courses and such, these are new forms of agriculture. Technology like this will eventually feed the world.” Eagle Valley High School is set amid the peaks of the Red Table range in the small town of Gypsum, Colorado, about a half-hour west of Vail and its world-class skiing. Although cattle still graze in the lush pastures behind the school and herders still run their sheep up to the high mountain meadows as they have done each summer for generations, the big ranches are vanishing. Much of the open country has been given over to the residential and resort development that lures visitors from all over the world to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Raised in Colorado on a cattle ranch and a teacher at the Eagle Valley high school for 17 years, Dave Scott was saddened as he saw the vocational agriculture courses being dropped from the high school’s curriculum because of the lack of student interest. But the hydroponics and aquaculture project was an alternative that quickly ignited the students’ imaginations. Prodded by Scott’s vision of unlimited possibilities and fired by his contagious enthusiasm, the project took off. The original team of Joseph Terry, James McCollum, and Cody O’Neill rapidly grew to include several more students. They applied what they had learned during three years of Scott’s technology courses in computer-aided drafting, wood- and metalworking, construction, lasers, fiber optics, and computerized robotics to create a design for the Bio Building. And what they didn’t know, they researched or picked experts’ brains to find out. Fortunately, much of that expertise was nearby. For the aquaculture know-how, the students consulted Keating Fisheries in Fort Collins, which designs commercial fish hatcheries and aquaculture systems worldwide. The fledgling designers burned up the fax lines sending their plans to the Keating folks. The consultants returned their drawings redlined with corrections, giving valuable free guidance on what would and wouldn’t work. Hydro-Gardens in Colorado Springs supplies hydroponic equipment to large growing operations in the United States and other countries. The company donated equipment and took the time to give much-needed advice and encouragement to the small high school. Construction help came from even closer. Two engineering companies just down the road in Avon gave the project leaders all the engineering specs they needed. The students also consulted with local plumbers and electrical companies. The more the students and their teacher learned about these new growing technologies, the more excited they became, and not just about the educational possibilities. Scott knew that Colorado is one of the largest producers of hydroponic tomatoes in the United States. Then he found out that the tomato growers make among the highest profits of any company in the state. Why not set the project up as a real-life free-enterprise lab as well as a science lab so that the students could experiment with a variety of businesses, from construction and accounting to marketing and advertising? “There is money to be made out there in this technology, and it’s just going to keep getting bigger and bigger,” Scott says. “The job opportunities for kids are going to grow with it.” When he told the students they were going to have to make their project profitable, the young entrepreneurs checked out local grocery stores, asking produce managers what they would pay for hydroponically grown lettuce, basil, and tomatoes. Once all the planning, drawings, and preliminary cost estimates were done, it was show time. The students carted their scale model, blueprints, and cost sheets to an evening meeting of the Eagle County School Board and explained what they were up to. The immediate reaction of the seven-member board of the school district was, “Let’s build it!” The next day, on a brisk morning in November 1994, Herb Pacheco of Pacheco Construction showed up with a bulldozer and started scooping out the rich black dirt for the excavation behind the high school while the students stood around watching with big grins on their faces. Pacheco’s daughter, Heather, was in Scott’s class; dad’s gift to the project was the free excavation. And that’s mostly how the school financed the construction — the way American westerners have traditionally raised their barns and harvested their fields — as a community of helping hands. In this region of booming development, nearly every student had a parent involved in some aspect of construction. Some of them showed the students how to do the electrical wiring, others helped with putting up the drywall and installing the plumbing. In all, Scott estimates that the donated labor and materials amounted to around $150,000 of the project’s $280,000 budget. The rest of the funds were cobbled together, using about $30,000 from a recent bond issue plus what the high school had earned from new homes constructed by students in its building trades classes. Because the whole idea of the Bio Building is learning while doing, the students built about 90% of the structure. But with class construction periods of only 90 minutes, it took two full school years until the building was finished. Altogether about 100 of the 450-member student body worked on the project to complete it for the start of the 1996 school year. When opening the door of the Bio Building, you’re treated to a chilly rush of sea-scented air and a noise like you’re standing behind a waterfall. The nippy temperatures make the Colorado River cut-throat, rainbow, and brown trout feel right at home. They arrive as 3/4-in. fry from the nearby Glenwood Springs Hatchery where the Colorado Department of Wildlife (DOW) raises millions of fish annually to be released into the state’s streams, rivers, and lakes. In their first year of operation, the Bio Building’s technology students have raised about 35,000 of the golden-green and spotted, big-eyed newborns. Now, the nine tanks in the 33 x 50 ft aquaculture room hold about 15,000 fish; when the students begin raising Tilapia, they’ll have 50,000 altogether. As they grow, the fish are moved from the initial 180-gal rectangular tanks to the larger 500-gal round tanks. Once they are 4 in. or so, the students transfer them by net to the huge 950-gal tanks which can hold about 2,000 larger fish. After six or seven months at the Bio Building, the students’ fish are known as “sub-catchables” — at 51/2 in., they’re just below the size fishermen are allowed to keep. Then the fish are ready to graduate from their protected life in captivity to the watery wilds of Colorado. Releasing about 9,000 fish is an art in itself, and the students are supervised by DOW experts while they free only 20 or 30 fish at a time at various points along the river. Because fish are territorial and stay close to where they’re released, they would quickly be gobbled by predators or starve to death if they were set free in a mob. Last year’s fish-raising was a test run for the school’s aquaculture operation, and DOW managers, who had never before entrusted their charges to teenagers, are pleased with how it went. “I’m pretty impressed with the system they have here,” says Rich Kolecki, who runs the Glen-wood Springs Hatchery. The student-run fishery is one of the few safe places to raise a population of trout. In the past several years, they have been devastated by whirling disease, a parasite-spread deformity which twists a fish’s backbone so that it twirls in the water. The disease doesn’t kill the fish; instead, they become easily spotted prey. Highly contagious, the whirling disease parasite may be knocked out by ozone and ultraviolet systems such as those used at the Bio Building. At the present time, only two and a half of Colorado’s 13 fish hatcheries are free of the disease, according to Scott. And, he says, that one-half is the Bio Building. The students were excited when local officials told them that the only fish stocked that year in the Eagle Valley would be their trout. They constantly test the growing fish to make sure they’re not infected, and so far there’s been cause for celebration because each test has come up negative. When the trout are released, they have grown safely past the stage when the disease has its effect. The fish are marked with clipped fins to help the DOW gauge local trout survival and movement patterns. “We’re doing this as a service to our community,” says Scott. “And the kids are taking great pride. Lots of them like to go out and fish, and now when they catch one, they can say — ‘Hey, I had a hand in this.’” The computerized brain of the Bio Building helps the students keep all of their fish and plants happily thriving. The state-of-the-art equipment from Priva Systems out of Canada automatically feeds the fish at timed intervals set by the students. It also regulates water temperature for the fish and plants, circulates the water, releases water and nutrients to the plants, controls the fans and heating to regulate air temperature, and mixes acid in with the local water which is too basic (the town water is 8, while the plants like a pH of 5 to 6.) To figure out how to run the computer system, the students visited Dick Burtness who has a similar arrangement at his Fox Run Roses greenhouse in Lafayette, Colorado. Scott credits Burtness with an enormous amount of help in showing the Bio Building students how to set up the different growing systems with the computer. Scott says he often marvels at the self-sufficiency of the system. “Two or three times a week, the students clean the tanks and fill the feeders — that’s about it.” They have become adept at reading the highly technical computer printouts that allow them to monitor all of the variables and spot trouble before anything goes seriously wrong. Scott says they can tell right away from the printout if the pH isn’t right or some other measure is off. “Instead of watching your plants die and wondering why they’re dying, it gives you warning a lot faster.” To isolate and diagnose problems, the computer will graph temperature vs. sunlight or number of irrigations vs. pH level: any combination of variables the grower needs. In the interactions between the amount of light, water, and nutrients, the students see first-hand the interconnectedness of nature. “It teaches them about systems impacting each other,” says Scott. “You push something here and it pulls something else there.” Part of the Bio Building’s interwoven ecosystem involves using the fish waste to fertilize the lettuce and tomatoes in one of the hydroponic growing tables. Several times a day, the computer opens a valve and flushes the fish waste water from a holding tank to irrigate the plants in the float table. In tall, murky-looking tubes in the aquaculture room, they use the recirculating system water to grow blue-green algae which they dry and will eventually use to help feed the Tilapia. During the Bio Building’s first year of operation, Scott put the emphasis on experimenting with what crops grow best in what medium and with which nutrients. They tried their luck with several different types of lettuce and tomatoes, endive, basil and other herbs, peppers, strawberries, and even roses grown from 5-in. cuttings. His classes found that the lettuce grown with the fish waste fertilizer turned out big, splendid heads colored a richer shade of green than the lettuce they grew in other ways. “We noticed the lettuce heads look a lot healthier and the green is deeper if you do it organically. But it does take a lot longer, almost twice as long,” Scott admits. Though the organic lettuce is a standout, production efficiency is also important in a would-be commercial enterprise like this one. They set different types of plants into rockwool, gravel, sand, sawdust, Oasis cubes, or nothing at all. The sand, they soon discovered, was too heavy, while the sawdust broke down too quickly into smelly mush. They raised lettuce, basil, and other herbs in the greenhouse’s aeroponic system. Nutrients were sprayed onto the roots, and the plants were suspended in stacked containers, troughs, or round towers. They learned that lettuce thrives and grows quickly in the nutrient flow technique (NFT) system; they can get a crop ready to sell at the local grocery store in about 35 days. The students theorize the explanation may be that more nutrients are getting to the plant roots in the trough system. Tomatoes, however, don’t work well in the NFT system, probably because they lack adequate root support, says Scott. The students grow about 300 pepper, basil, and tomato plants in rockwool cubes, and each plant is fed by its own small drip injector. Last spring, they began using the drip injectors on small rose cuttings donated by Jackson & Perkins, a large Oregon rose wholesaler. They constantly prune the buds to get the long-stemmed flowers so beloved of rose fanciers. Now they have nine types of roses and 230 flourishing plants. To save greenhouse space, basil, strawberries, and herbs also irrigated by drip injectors are raised in tall, multitiered growing towers. For medium, they’re experimenting with shredded paper from the school office, as well as perlite and vermiculite. Scott says in a 1-ft2 area, they can raise 20 times the number of plants when they’re stacked; plus, they’re easier to reach for harvesting. The ebb-and-flow table is where they grow most of the starts and cuttings. The table sits under a bank of grow lights. About 600 cuttings can be accommodated here, with an average flood-and-drain cycle of three or four per day, all regulated by the computer system. As the young scientists’ experimentation has widened, so has their marketing savvy. They learned that of all the lettuce they tried, Romaine is the big seller in the Eagle Valley. “We did some endive last year,” says Scott ruefully. “We’ll never do that again. It takes over everything like a weed — and nobody liked it.” The students are keeping close watch on the local tomato popularity contest, too. Though they’re now raising three kinds of tomatoes — cherry, beefsteak, and Italian paste — the students are thinking of switching over soon to growing only cherry tomatoes, because that’s what the nearby Columbine Market says their customers want. In the process of adding spring-fresh crops to the local markets even through the darkest days of winter, the students seem to have become salad heads themselves. “We’ll have these salad parties,” laughs Scott. “We have a lot of fun doing taste tests — some of the kids are really getting into eating their veggies.” Kids in agri-tech are passing the word to their friends about a different kind of class: one where you can see the results of your labors in living, growing things. Other students echo the enthusiasm of Adrianne Mongon who says, “I love it, it’s great. It’s a hands-on experiment all the time; a way to have a lot of fun with nature. And it’s really neat when we let the fish go in lakes.” As the buzz spreads, the Bio Building’s agri-tech courses are becoming highly popular with the students. This year, there are five agri-tech classes instead of the usual two — and there’s a waiting list. Classes in the Bio Building are reserved for juniors and seniors who have already completed preliminary courses. Their experience is set up like a business, with the seniors in charge of the five different divisions: aquaculture, hydroponics, marketing, accounting, and maintenance. Eventually, everybody rotates to each type of duty, whether it’s overseeing one of the fish tanks, monitoring the NFT system, or a score of other jobs. Each student reports to the division head, who in turn sits down with Scott every two weeks and discusses problems and possible changes. One unique aspect of the program is that the students actually share in the profits of the Bio Building; some through scholarships, others when they’re paid to monitor the systems during the summer. Another not-to-be-underestimated plus is the ever-popular pizza party, says Scott. “We’ll pay for a party with some of our profits — but if plants start to die, we have to say, well, guess it’s off. It’s a big incentive.” But the biggest payoff is the way the students are responding. Scott says it’s a thrill for him to watch them discover they can do just about anything if they put their hands and heart into it. “These kids took the time and the pride to take it from ground zero to this really successful, working, and operating facility,” he says. “A lot of them have never grown anything or raised anything or built anything and it’s kind of neat to see a kid design something and say wow, it works. It gives them more self-confidence.” Educators know many students resist learning if they can see no relevance in the seemingly random facts emphasized in school. But Scott says the hands-on nature of the agri-tech classes makes learning anything but remote. That’s part of the excitement: students find out why they needed to know the science — every day while they’re using it. Learning by doing creates real involvement in the task, he says. A substitute teacher who took over Scott’s class recently would agree. “I told Dave I have no idea what they’re doing in there,” she recalls. “But he said not to worry, the kids know what to do. I was amazed. I’ve never seen kids work like that as a team — kids arguing about a formula for fertilizer, other kids doing timings for the different feeders — they’re completely absorbed in what they’re doing.” “In the real world, you’ve got different kinds of people and they all have to get along,” adds Scott. “This class helps them learn that too.” He sees another sign of progress — this year, his agritech classes are about 40% female. The girls quickly get over the stereotypical math and science trepidation, he says, and throw themselves wholeheartedly into the creative experimentation. Doing plumbing and electrical work gives them a healthy dose of self-assurance. Others are coming, too. Elementary school children tour the aquaculture and hydroponic rooms with excitement, and high school and college officials from across the state have come to see, learn about, and perhaps replicate Eagle Valley’s success. Administrators from the Chicago public schools were attentive visitors on a recent tour; they’re considering a similar project. Dave Scott, his students, and their school are winning important recognition for their Bio Building. Last spring, Scott traveled to Tampa, Florida, to accept an award given by the International Technical Education Association which named Eagle Valley High School’s curriculum the top technical program in Colorado. This year, the growing horizons at the Bio Building are becoming ever wider. Profits are a focus as the students hone in on what kinds of products race the pulse of the Vail consumer. They’ve discovered there’s a huge market locally for miniature rose bushes for home gar-deners, so the kids are growing eight different varieties. Last year, in projections using prices at area grocery stores, Scott’s classes calculated that just one 18 x 1 ft lettuce growing table can make up to $11,000 per year, given 38 days to grow a crop. The entrepreneurs-in-training expect to go after the gourmet dining market in a big way. They’ve opened a fungus room, where they’re using old refrigerators to raise the exotic mushrooms that the local world-class restaurants and their diners salivate over. Another delicacy on the Bio Building’s very full plate--escargot. Yes, they’re nurturing homegrown snails in the entomology lab along with a bunch of benevolent ladybugs and other critters that will keep the bad bugs away from their plants. And of course, the chefs of Vail just can’t wait to get their hands on the Tilapia from the students’ aquaculture tanks. The sign over the door of the Bio Building has never been more prophetic. It carries the proverb, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach him how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. If you teach him how to raise fish, he will feed the entire village.”
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