Coryal Sec­ondary School has cap­tured first place in the north zon­al fi­nals of the de­bat­ing cat­e­go­ry of the 2011 bpTT Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools En­vi­ron­men­tal Aware­ness Com­pe­ti­tion. Fired by a con­fi­dent and pol­ished per­for­mance by lead speak­er Kavi­ta Bu­jawan, the Coryal team won the nod of the judges ahead of sec­ond-placed Va­len­cia Sec­ondary.

Four schools took part in the north zone fi­nals which were held at Coryal Sec­ondary School.Holy Cross Col­lege and Ari­ma North Sec­ondary placed third and fourth, re­spec­tive­ly.Urged on by the pres­ence of sev­er­al of their col­leagues, Coryal Sec­ondary suc­cess­ful­ly re­butted the propo­si­tion: Be it re­solved that the safe lev­els for con­t­a­m­i­nants/pol­lu­tants ad­vo­cat­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency (EMA) and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) are ef­fec­tive as a mon­i­tor­ing tool.

Lead­ing off the de­bate for the propo­si­tion, Va­len­cia's Rayana Mon­segue con­tend­ed that safe lev­els of mon­i­tor­ing did ex­ist, with the "most mod­ern tools" used by both agen­cies. She not­ed that the EMA had even en­forced leg­is­la­tion against com­pa­nies not in com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions. While she pressed her case, her col­leagues took reg­u­lar sips from a con­tain­er la­belled WASA wa­ter.

Re­but­ting the ar­gu­ment, Coryal's Bu­jawan quipped that her op­po­nent's speech was quite en­ter­tain­ing but couldn't hold wa­ter. She quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from news­pa­per clip­pings which re­ferred to com­plaints re­gard­ing mon­i­tor­ing pro­ce­dures ap­plied by the EMA and WASA.The Coryal team re­in­forced its ar­gu­ment with a slide pre­sen­ta­tion show­ing pho­tographs of pol­lut­ed wa­ter cours­es in the coun­try.

Judge Richard Roop­nar­ine con­grat­u­lat­ed all four schools for their bril­liant per­for­mances, not­ing that they de­liv­ered their pre­sen­ta­tions with con­fi­dence and cre­ativ­i­ty. Roop­nar­ine praised en­er­gy com­pa­ny bpTT for "recog­nis­ing the worth and bril­liance" of the young peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.The south zon­al de­bat­ing fi­nals will be held lat­er this week, with the over­all fi­nals com­ing off next week. The de­bates rep­re­sent one of three cat­e­gories of the an­nu­al bpTT Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary Schools En­vi­ron­men­tal Aware­ness Com­pe­ti­tion. Es­say writ­ing and art are the oth­er two cat­e­gories.

Now in its fifth year, the en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness com­pe­ti­tion is spon­sored by bpTT and or­gan­ised by the Black Deer Foun­da­tion. Ar­val­on Wil­son-Smith, pres­i­dent of Black Deer, com­mend­ed all par­tic­i­pants in the north zon­al fi­nals for a splen­did job which en­tailed in­tense prepa­ra­tion. She said the com­pe­ti­tion squared off at a high lev­el, adding that the fi­nals should be very in­ter­est­ing and en­ter­tain­ing.