2007 Essay Contest Finalist

Entry by Avery Rasmussen

I often hear vacationers comment on my “tourist-based” hometown of Virginia Beach. Tourists visit Virginia Beach on vacation, and stay on one of the soaring hotels along the beach that block the view of the beach. They see the part of town that is developed beyond what it should be, and leave their vacation believing that Virginia Beach is just another one of the large cities disregarding the environment to earn money through tourists. However, locals have a different view of things. One the other side of town, our community is no less than an environment loving, Earth saving group of people.

I live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. In Virginia Beach, we have many organizations to preserve the wildlife and nature of Virginia Beach. These organizations include the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is made up of volunteers in my community to help protect the Bay and educate others about it and how to conserve it; the Clean Virginia Waterways foundation, which works to maintain Virginia’s waterways and prevents litter; and the Earth Share foundation, which educates the nation about the Earth and how to preserve it. These are just a few of the volunteer organizations in my community that work daily to help educate our society on the watershed and how to conserve it. Unlike many other uneducated people of my community, I understand the importance of the Earth and am enthusiastic to continue learning about the Earth and what I can do to help conserve and maintain the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. If the general public didn’t understand the Earth through the studies of Earth Science, we would also be ignorant to the fact that the Chesapeake Bay and its waterways must be preserved in order to keep our food chain and other systems associated with the Earth working properly.