Fledgling policymakers tackle tough issues.

There's sure to be a good idea in there somewhere ...

When nearly 3,000 active and intelligent middle and high school students put their heads together to devise solutions to pollution, cultural diversity, or travel and trade problems--they can come up with some amazing answers. And policymakers might like to take a quick peek and a second look.

Whether it was saving a desert or tracking nonpoint oil pollution, teens from across the nation who engaged in a spring geography competition produced analysis and public policy a lawmaker might use.

As an example, one of the prize winners in the American Express Geography Competition was an in-depth project by four seventh graders to determine whether Arizona laws protecting saguaro cacti and ironwood were sufficiently strict. (The Sonoran Desert, which, in part, surrounds Tucson, Ariz., is the only place on earth where the two species grow.)

When some Tucson citizens contended the laws were not strong enough, the students looked up the statute--"commercial business [shall be encouraged] to salvage native plants to the greatest extent feasible." The teens then conducted public opinion polls, surveyed development and relocation sites, and conducted interviews with experts on planning and the environment.

The students proposed that a bill be introduced in the Legislature that would make it a crime to take or move a saguaro without permission from a landowner, move a saguaro without taking precautions to prevent its death or move or destroy a saguaro in national habitat preservation areas. Violators could be subject to a penalty of up to $25,000 for each saguaro harmed and $500,000 for each acre that can no longer be used as habitat.

A group of four South Carolina High School students investigated the sources and magnitude of oil and grease contamination within a 35-mile radius of the Charleston, S.C., harbor.

The students reported that while newly drafted legislation in South Carolina would eliminate disposal of oil and oil-contaminated products in solid waste facilities or runoff areas, it did not subject household oil disposal to regulation.

The student project emphasized education--such as the fact that disposal of one pint of oil from a car filter into a drain pipe can produce a slick of one acre on surface water or taint 125,000 gallons of storm water.

Other winning projects included a study of Alaska's Tlingit Indians and their culture; an examination of the effects of riverboat gambling in Tunica County, Miss.; and the transformation of 3.1 acres of barren Illinois wasteland into a wetland by the youngest person ever to receive a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, ninth grade Eagle Scout Jason Spanel.