The New Lebanon Central School District announced Tue., Jan. 19, a group of its junior high school students took first place in the Capital District Future City Competition for the second year in a row. The event was held at Proctor's Theater in Schenectady on January 9. The team of nine students scored higher than 19 other participating teams. The group worked for months to develop their city of the future "Marhielo," under the direction of teacher Mary-Beth Liles. They now go on to represent the region in the national competition in Washington D.C. next month. This theme of the competition this year was “Waste Not, Want Not.” Students were asked to design a waste management system for residential use, taking into consideration issues such as collection, separation, processing, recycling, health and safety, energy-efficiency, environmental impact, and cost. The New Lebanon team designed their virtual city using SimCity software, constructed a scale model out of recycled materials, wrote a 1,500 word city description, and made a short presentation to a panel of science, technology, engineering and math teachers.