SANDPOINT — Why is wind power so popular?

Because it has so many fans, of course. OK, so maybe it wasn’t the joke that gave Washington Elementary’s city of Ecotopia group the win on Tuesday, but their Future City impressed the judges nonetheless. Maybe it was the four solar power plants and two wind power plants that power the entire city.

“None of the power sources are harmful to the environment, and they are very self-sufficient,” Washington sixth-grader Fiona Macdonald explained to the judges.

Fiona and the rest of the sixth-grade Ecotopia team — Elle Meneghini, Abi Miller and Payton Polhemus — were one of two winners of the school competition. Granite City, built by Shaylee Benda, Bryce Tyburski, Zella Lopez, Ethan Christensen, and Mason Blaser, also took home the win.

Both teams will have the chance to take their designs to the state’s regional competition in Boise next month. The top team at the regional competition will advance to nationals, held in Washington, D.C., in February.

This year’s Future City theme is “Powering our Future.”

“It was really focused on the energy piece, creating a power grid that could withstand or be quickly recovered after a natural disaster,” said sixth-grade teacher Ann Dickinson. “They also had to address a structure and services that could keep the people safe. They had to choose a natural disaster that could occur wherever their city was located.

Ecotopia, for example, was designed to be an “energy efficient way of keeping the citizens safe from hurricanes,” Fiona said. Elle explained that the power sources resist damage during a hurricane, because the solar plants have a clear dome around it, and the wind plants are elevated to where they would receive only minimal damage.

The Washington Elementary sixth-graders have been working on their projects since the first day of school. They went on field trips throughout the fall, including a trip to Albeni Falls Dam, and to Northern Lights, Inc., where they got to see the solar panels and learn how they work. Then they created virtual models of their cities using the SimCity computer game before building scale models of their cities.

“There are some very creative ideas,” said Sandpoint High School science teacher Mamie Brubaker, who was not only one of the judges for this year’s competition, she also helped out during the engineering design phases.

One thing she loved about the project, she said, was that the students had to use recycled materials to build their models.

“It’s a lot of fun, seeing the kids’ ideas,” added Sandpoint city engineer Dan Tadic, who also served as one of the judges.

One team, he said, looked at producing some sort of ore with unique properties that, when it was burned, didn’t produce any emissions or pollution.

“Something like this, I don’t remember ever doing it, where it brings out that critical thinking and problem solving in a consistent structure,” Tadic said.

Information: futurecity.org/idaho

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.