Career spotlight Grade 6 Careers & CTE
Fenhollow Stormwater Technician: Inspecting Green Infrastructure
A grade 6 career spotlight on a stormwater technician who inspects rain gardens and storm drains, with the training path and cost comparison questions.
Objectives
- Students will describe what a stormwater technician inspects during a work week.
- Students will explain two education paths into stormwater work.
- Students will use percent and unit rate reasoning on inspection and drainage data.
Vocabulary
- Stormwater
- Stormwater is rain or melted snow that flows off roofs, streets, and parking lots. In most towns it goes into storm drains and flows to a stream without being treated, carrying whatever it picked up.
- Rain garden
- A rain garden is a shallow planted dip in the ground that catches rain running off a roof or driveway and lets it soak slowly into the soil. Its deep-rooted plants help clean the water.
- Catch basin
- A catch basin is a storm drain inlet with a sump underneath that traps sediment, leaves, and trash before water flows on into the storm sewer pipe. Crews periodically clean out catch basins so they do not clog or send debris downstream.
Also: outfall, illicit discharge
Teacher overview
Rain that lands on a roof or a parking lot has to go somewhere, and a stormwater technician is the person who keeps that path working. This profile follows a technician in the fictional town of Fenhollow across one work week. A misconception worth naming first is that storm drains carry water to a treatment plant. In most towns they do not. Storm drains usually empty straight into a creek, which is why anything poured into one reaches the creek untreated. Stormwater work is entered through several education paths, including on-the-job training, a two-year certificate, and a four-year engineering degree.
Career Profile
A typical week. Nadia Quiroz works for the public works department in the town of Fenhollow. Her job is stormwater. On Monday she drives her route and checks catch basins, which are the boxes under street grates that catch grit before it moves down the pipe. When a basin fills with leaves and sand, she marks it for the vacuum truck.
On Tuesday she inspects rain gardens. A rain garden is a shallow planted dip that collects runoff and lets it soak into the ground. Nadia measures how deep the water stands after a storm, then returns the next day and measures again. That tells her how fast the garden drains. A garden that still holds water after two days has a clogged soil layer and needs new mulch or fresh sand.
On Wednesday she walks the creek to check outfalls. An outfall is the open pipe end where a storm drain empties. She looks for water on a dry day, because a pipe that runs when it has not rained often means something is connected that should not be. Sewer, wash water, and dumped oil all show up this way, and any of them counts as an illicit discharge. Nadia takes a sample, photographs the pipe, and files a report so the town can trace the source.
The rest of her week is records and people. She logs each inspection on a tablet, glues "no dumping" markers on storm drains with a volunteer group, and answers calls from residents whose streets flood. Her reports go into a permit report the town files with the state each year.
Getting into the role. Many stormwater technicians start with a high school diploma and learn the route work on the job. Most states or regional groups offer a stormwater inspector certificate that is earned through a short course and an exam. Community colleges offer two-year environmental technology degrees that cover soils, mapping, and water sampling. Engineers who design the pipes, ponds, and gardens hold a four-year civil or environmental engineering degree, and some go on to graduate study. A technician who wants that design work can start on the route and finish a degree later.
Pay and outlook. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not report a separate pay figure for stormwater technicians, so none is invented here. For scale, water and wastewater treatment plant operators, a related public utility job, earned a median of $60,020 a year as of May 2025, with the lowest tenth below $39,110 and the top tenth above $91,060. Stormwater positions sit in city public works budgets and post their own pay range with each job notice. Hiring is steady in part because about one-third of the water workforce can retire within ten years, and in 2016 only about 10 percent of water workers were 24 or younger.
Student Handout
Discussion questions
- Name two things Nadia looks for when she walks the creek and checks outfalls.
- Explain why a storm drain and a sewer drain are not the same thing, using the Overview and Career Profile.
- The town of Fenhollow has 340 storm drains. Nadia's crew inspected 85 of them in one week. What percent of the town's storm drains did the crew inspect?
- Suppose the town of Fenhollow has $48,000 set aside for rain gardens, and each garden costs $6,000 to build. How many rain gardens can the town build with that money?
- After a storm, water stands 18 inches deep in a rain garden. Twenty-four hours later the garden is empty. What is the drainage rate in inches per hour?
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: Any two of these signs.
Water flowing from a pipe on a dry day, an unusual color or smell, oil on the surface, or a hose or pipe connected to the storm line that should not be there. - Answer: A storm drain empties to a creek without treatment, while a sewer drain goes to a treatment plant.
The Overview states that storm drains usually empty straight into a creek, so anything poured into one reaches the creek untreated. - Answer: 25 percent.
85 divided by 340 equals 0.25, and 0.25 written as a percent is 25 percent. - Answer: 8 rain gardens.
$48,000 divided by $6,000 per garden equals 8 gardens. - Answer: 0.75 inches per hour.
18 inches divided by 24 hours equals 0.75 inch each hour.
Differentiation
Support
Before reading, give students a labeled sketch showing rain falling on a street, entering a grate, passing through a catch basin, and leaving an outfall pipe at a creek. Have students trace the path with a finger and name each part. For question 3, provide the fraction 85/340 already written. For question 5, ask only whether the rate is more or less than one inch per hour.
Extension
The town of Fenhollow can either build rain gardens at $6,000 each or replace one street's storm pipe with a larger pipe for $90,000. Have students write a short recommendation naming one benefit and one drawback of each choice, and state which groups in town gain from each.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "catch basin," "outfall," "rain garden," and "illicit discharge" with photographs or simple sketches and one-sentence definitions. Pair the term "illicit" with the everyday word "not allowed." Allow questions 1 and 2 to be answered with short phrases or labeled drawings.
Extensions
With adult supervision, send students outside with clipboards, staying on the sidewalk, to count and sketch the storm drains within two blocks of the school, noting whether each grate is clear or blocked. Have the class combine counts, calculate the percent of drains that were blocked, and compare that figure with the inspection percent from question 3.