Graphic organizer Grade 10 Careers & CTE
Larkstone Valley Drought Stages: Who Acts at Each Level
A grade 10 careers organizer mapping four drought stages to customer rules, the utility role responsible, revenue effects, and unintended outcomes to watch.
Objectives
- Students will sequence four drought response stages by their triggers.
- Students will name the utility role responsible for the action at each stage.
- Students will identify one unintended outcome of each stage's restrictions.
Vocabulary
- Drought surcharge
- An extra fee added to water bills during a drought. It encourages people to use less water and replaces money the utility loses when everyone conserves.
- Chlorine residual
- Chlorine residual is the small amount of chlorine still left in the water after it leaves the treatment plant. It keeps protecting the water from germs all the way to your faucet.
Also: drought stage, trigger, water age
Teacher overview
This organizer is a four-stage escalation table. Each row is one drought stage, and the columns move from what triggers the stage, to what customers must do, to which utility role carries out the response, to the effect on revenue, and finally to the side effect worth watching. The setting is a fictional supplier in the town of Larkstone Valley. One point is worth naming first, because it changes how students read the fourth and fifth columns. A drought is not only a customer behavior problem to be solved by asking people to use less, since lower demand also changes plant and distribution work. Water sits longer in tanks and mains, disinfectant residual decays as that water ages, and operators may have to flush water out of a hydrant during the same month they ask customers to skip watering. That tension is real, and it is why the role column matters as much as the customer column.
Organizer
Fill in every blank cell. The stages escalate in order. The triggers are already given so the sequence is fixed. Use the role list to fill column three: conservation coordinator, public information officer, water efficiency technician, distribution operator, rate analyst, enforcement inspector.
| Stage and trigger | What customers must do | Utility action, and the role responsible | Effect on utility revenue | Unintended outcome to watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 Advisory: reservoir falls to seventy percent of capacity | ||||
| Stage 2 Warning: reservoir falls to fifty-five percent of capacity | ||||
| Stage 3 Emergency: reservoir falls to forty percent of capacity | ||||
| Stage 4 Critical: reservoir falls to twenty-five percent of capacity |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Stage and trigger | What customers must do | Utility action, and the role responsible | Effect on utility revenue | Unintended outcome to watch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 Advisory: reservoir falls to seventy percent of capacity | Voluntary cutbacks. Water lawns on alternate days and repair visible leaks. | Publish the advisory, open the rebate program for efficient fixtures, and begin weekly reservoir reporting. Conservation coordinator leads, with the public information officer. | Small revenue drop, mostly absorbed. Rebate spending rises. | Customers tune out an advisory that repeats every summer, so later stages carry less weight. |
| Stage 2 Warning: reservoir falls to fifty-five percent of capacity | Mandatory two days per week outdoor watering. No washing hard surfaces. Pools may not be filled. | Audit the largest accounts for leaks and irrigation waste, and begin pressure management on high-elevation zones overnight. Water efficiency technician leads, with the distribution operator. | Noticeable revenue drop while fixed costs for debt, staff, and chemicals stay the same. | Households that already conserved have little left to cut, so the burden falls unevenly across customers. |
| Stage 3 Emergency: reservoir falls to forty percent of capacity | Outdoor watering by hand only, one day per week. No new landscape installations. | Apply a drought surcharge to recover fixed costs, and increase flushing and residual sampling in low-flow areas. Rate analyst leads, with the distribution operator. | Revenue falls further, and the surcharge recovers part of the gap while raising bills. | Lower demand raises water age in the mains, so chlorine residual can drift toward the low end of the 0.2 to 2.0 mg/L range systems maintain. |
| Stage 4 Critical: reservoir falls to twenty-five percent of capacity | No outdoor water use of any kind. Indoor use only, with an allotment per household. | Enforce allotments with warnings and penalties, coordinate with neighboring systems on emergency interconnections, and hold daily operations briefings. Enforcement inspector leads, with the conservation coordinator. | Revenue is sharply reduced, penalties do not replace it, and the utility may draw on reserves or defer capital work. | Deferred pipe replacement during a drought stores up main breaks for later, and penalties fall hardest on renters who cannot change fixtures they do not own. |
Differentiation
Support
Pre-fill the customer requirement column so students work only on the role, revenue, and outcome columns. Provide the six role names on cards to place before writing, and give a two-word starter for each revenue cell such as "revenue falls" or "costs stay."
Extension
Have students add a fifth row for recovery, the stage after rain returns, and fill every column for it. A strong answer notices that revenue does not bounce back immediately, because customers who replaced lawns and fixtures keep using less, and that the utility must decide whether to keep the surcharge, adjust base rates, or absorb the gap.
ELL supports
Provide the exemplar with one column blanked instead of the full grid, and pair each stage with a simple reservoir picture showing the water level dropping. Allow short phrases in every cell, and give sentence frames for the last column such as "This rule helps ___, but it also causes ___."
Extensions
Have students find their own water supplier's drought or water shortage plan, which most utilities publish, and compare its stage triggers with the fictional Larkstone Valley ones. Some plans trigger on reservoir level, others on streamflow, snowpack, or days of remaining supply, and the choice of trigger tells students a great deal about where that community's water comes from. Students interested in the career side can then list which staff positions the real plan names, and compare that list with the six roles used in this organizer.