The University of Hawaii is looking to tap into the creative minds of students around the world in a quest to begin restoring an Oahu waterway teeming with bacteria and pollutants.

The university has launched what it’s calling the “Make the Ala Wai Awesome” student design challenge, an international competition open to students of all ages which comes with $10,000 in prizes.

While the man-made drainage canal is the most visible part of the ecosystem, the university’s flagship Manoa campus sprawls across the Ala Wai watershed, from Lyon Arboretum in the back of Manoa Valley to the Waikiki Aquarium on Waikiki Beach, said UH President David Lassner, who came up with the idea for the student contest.

Lassner announced the competition during a Monday night session on sustainability at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress.

Lassner said that while research and studies are ongoing by various state departments and organizations to address flooding, UH wants to see the entire ahupuaa restored. Flood experts say heavy rain could cause the Ala Wai canal to overflow, potentially sending a gushing wall of contaminated water into Waikiki.

“Waikiki is the engine of our economy, of our tourism sector,” he said. “And it just seemed like we should be able to do something that is not just figuring out how to manage the 100-year flood activity, but really restore the ecosystem along these streams.”

He said he was inspired by a recent visit over the summer to the New York Harbor School on Governors Island, where students have come up with a long-term plan to restore 1 billion live oysters to the harbor over the next 20 years to naturally restore the ecology and economy of the marine environment there.

The visit was part of Lassner’s work with the Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hokule‘a, which visited the East Coast as part of its global voyage, dubbed “Malama Honua,” or “Caring for island Earth.”

“Apparently around the turn of the last century, New York Harbor was totally full of oysters. … Then the harbor got super polluted and you couldn’t eat them,” Lassner said. “These kids are part of something called the Billion Oyster Project, and the idea is to repatriate the harbor with a billion oysters that will then become natural filtration systems, cleaning up New York Harbor.”

He said Nainoa Thompson, master navigator and Polynesian Voyaging Society president, issued a “brazen challenge” at the school. “He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could figure out how to make the Ala Wai awesome?’” Lassner recalled. “And I just thought, what an inspiring vision.”

Matthew Lynch, UH’s sustainability coordinator, said the university wants to harness the best ideas from students ranging from youth to college age.

“What we’re looking to do is to try to crowd-source ideas from our brightest young minds and then really showcase those ideas as potentialities to be explored for what the Ala Wai could be,” Lynch said. “We’re going to need fresh ideas so that we can look at interconnected solutions … and what could be possible from the perspective of restoring ecological function.”

With the competition formally launched, the university now plans to do outreach and encourage interested students to register. The official call for submissions will open in January, and winners would be announced next summer when UH Manoa hosts the World Youth Congress.

For more information go to alawaichallenge.org.