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Reading passage Grade 6 Careers & CTE

Ardenridge Water Reuse Plant: A Day With the Operator

A grade 6 careers reading passage following a water reuse plant operator through one shift in a dry town, with six comprehension questions and an answer key.

Objectives

  1. Students will describe the treatment steps a water reuse operator monitors.
  2. Students will cite passage evidence to explain why an operator repeats daily tests.
  3. Students will compare water reuse with building a new reservoir.

Vocabulary

Reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis cleans water by pushing it through a membrane with holes so tiny that salt and most other dissolved things cannot fit through. It can even turn seawater into fresh water.
Indirect potable reuse
Recycling water into drinking water with a natural stop along the way. Highly cleaned water is put into the ground or a reservoir, then drawn back out later and treated again for drinking.

Also: water reuse, membrane, aquifer recharge

Teacher overview

This passage follows one shift with an operator at a water reuse plant in a dry fictional town, and it names the training that leads into the job. Teachers can assign it as a stand-alone reading or as background before a unit on drought. The passage is built to correct a specific misunderstanding: students often picture reuse as a single filter that makes dirty water clean. The passage instead shows a chain of steps, each removing something different, with an operator checking each one.

Ardenridge Water Reuse Plant: A Day With the Operator — Grade 6 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The town of Ardenridge sits in a dry valley. Rain falls hard in winter and almost never in summer. Every August the reservoir drops, and the town asks people to stop watering lawns. Ten years ago the town council looked for a new supply. There was no new river to tap. So Ardenridge built a water reuse plant instead.

Water reuse means cleaning water the town has already used, then using it again. The plant sits next to the wastewater treatment plant. Water that has been through the sewer plant flows next door and starts a second, much harder cleaning.

Ines Bracamonte runs that plant on the day shift. She has been an operator for eleven years. Her shift starts at six in the morning with a walk through the building. She listens to the pumps. A pump that whines usually has something wrong with it. Then she opens the control screens and checks pressure.

Pressure is the number Ines watches most. The plant cleans water with membranes, which are sheets full of holes far too small to see. Water is pushed through the holes, and dirt stays behind. As dirt builds up on a membrane, it takes more pressure to push water through. When the pressure climbs past a set point, Ines starts a cleaning cycle. If she waits too long, the membrane clogs, and a clogged membrane costs the town thousands of dollars to replace.

The water moves through three main stages. First it passes a fine screen and a set of membranes that catch tiny particles and germs. Next comes reverse osmosis, a second and much tighter membrane. Its holes are small enough to stop salt and many chemicals. Last, a small dose of peroxide is added, and the water passes under ultraviolet lamps. The bright light breaks apart chemicals that made it through the other steps.

Ines tests the water at every stage. She measures how cloudy it is, how much salt it carries, and how much chlorine is left. She logs every reading. She runs the same tests each shift even when nothing has changed, because a slow drift in a number is the first warning that a membrane has torn.

Where does the water go? Purple pipes carry some of it to parks, ball fields, and the highway median, where it waters grass but never reaches a faucet. The rest goes down a set of deep wells and soaks into the ground. Months later that water is pumped back up as part of the town's groundwater. Engineers call this indirect potable reuse, because the water goes through the ground before anyone drinks it.

Ardenridge is a small plant, yet the idea is not new. In Orange County, California, a much larger system cleans 130 million gallons a day and returns it to the aquifer, which makes it the largest indirect potable reuse facility in the world. Along the coast, the Carlsbad plant takes a different path and turns seawater into drinking water, about 50 million gallons a day, or roughly 10 percent of the supply for San Diego County.

Ines took a common route into this work. She finished high school, then took a job as a helper at the sewer plant. Her employer paid for a training course, and she passed the state wastewater operator exam. She earned a higher license class as she gained years on the job, then added a certificate in advanced water treatment. Two of her coworkers came a different way, with four-year degrees in environmental engineering. A third started at the plant lab after a two-year college program.

The hardest part of the job is not the machinery. Some residents still call the plant by an unkind nickname and say they will never drink it. Ines takes school groups and neighbors through the building. She shows them the log sheets, the alarms, and the test results. Most people leave calmer than they came, she says, because they can see who is watching the water.

Questions

  1. Name two places the cleaned water from the Ardenridge plant goes after treatment.
  2. What does the ultraviolet stage do to the water, according to the passage?
  3. Ines watches pressure more closely than any other number. Explain why pressure tells her so much about the membranes.
  4. The passage says Ines runs the same tests every shift even when nothing has changed. Explain why she does this.
  5. Ardenridge could have tried to build a new reservoir instead of a reuse plant. Using the passage, give one reason the town chose reuse.
  6. The passage calls the Ardenridge plan indirect potable reuse. Explain what makes it indirect rather than direct.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Purple pipes to parks and fields, and deep wells that put it into the ground.
    The passage states that some water waters parks, ball fields, and the highway median, while the rest soaks into the ground through deep wells and is pumped back later.
  2. Answer: It breaks apart chemicals that got through the earlier steps.
    The passage describes ultraviolet lamps used with a small dose of peroxide, and says the bright light breaks apart chemicals the other steps missed.
  3. Answer: Rising pressure means dirt is building up on the membrane.
    The passage explains that water is pushed through very small holes, that a dirty membrane takes more pressure, and that a membrane left too long will clog and cost thousands of dollars to replace.
  4. Answer: So she can catch a slow change before it becomes a failure.
    The passage says a slow drift in a number is the first warning that a membrane has torn, which she would miss if she only tested when something looked wrong.
  5. Answer: There was no new river to tap.
    Accept any answer grounded in the passage, including that the valley is dry, that rain almost never falls in summer, that the reservoir drops every August, or that the town already had used water available next door at the sewer plant.
  6. Answer: The water passes through the ground before anyone drinks it.
    The passage explains that the cleaned water soaks into the aquifer through deep wells and is pumped back up months later, rather than going straight into the drinking water pipes.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a five-box flow strip labeled Sewer plant, Screens and membranes, Reverse osmosis, Ultraviolet and peroxide, and Wells or purple pipes, and have students place a finger on each box as they read the paragraph that describes it. Allow questions 1 and 2 to be answered by underlining the sentence in the passage rather than writing a full response.

Extension

Ask students to write the short script Ines would use at the start of a public tour, aimed at a neighbor who arrives skeptical. The script must name each treatment stage in order, state what that stage removes, and say what record the visitor can ask to see. Students should include one honest limitation rather than claiming the process is perfect.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "membrane," "reverse osmosis," "aquifer," and "reuse" with a simple sketch of a sheet with tiny holes, water pushing through, and dirt held back. Provide a two-column glossary card with the term and a one-sentence meaning. Allow questions 3 and 4 to be answered orally, and provide the sentence frame "The pressure goes up because ____."

Extensions

Have students find out whether any nearby city, park district, or golf course uses recycled water, which is often marked by purple pipes and signs. Students then write a short paragraph explaining where that water comes from and what it is allowed to be used for in their state.