The Farrowgate Ledger Water Tank Opinion Portfolio

Driving question: Should Farrowgate repair and repaint its 1958 elevated water tank, or replace it with a ground storage tank and a pump station?

The client: The opinion editor of the Farrowgate Ledger, a fictional weekly newspaper. The editor has committed a full page to the tank question and wants it to represent the argument honestly rather than settle it.

The situation: The fictional town of Farrowgate owns one elevated tank on Brambury Hill. The tank holds water high enough that gravity alone supplies pressure to the whole town, including during a power outage. It was built in 1958 and last repainted twenty-two years ago. The town's engineer has found corrosion on the interior roof and says a decision cannot be postponed past next year.

The dossier: Every team works from the same five sources, printed in full below. The town, its people, and every figure in Sources 1 to 5 are invented for this project. The published context at the end is real.

Source 1. Condition report on the Brambury Hill elevated tank

From Paul Reddick, P.E., Farrowgate Town Engineer, to the Town Council

The Brambury Hill tank was built in 1958 and holds 400,000 gallons. Its steel legs, foundation, and outer shell are in fair condition. The interior coating, applied twenty-two years ago, has failed over most of the roof. In several places the roof plates have lost close to half of their original thickness, and two roof vent screens have rusted through. Open vents let birds and insects reach the drinking water, so the vents have been patched as a temporary measure. I do not recommend carrying the tank past next year without a decision.

Option A is to repair and repaint. The town would replace the damaged roof plates and vents, blast the inside and outside of the tank to bare steel, and apply new coatings. The estimated cost is about $1.4 million, which includes about $180,000 for temporary pumps and a rented generator to keep the town supplied while the tank is drained. The work would take about five months. With routine inspection, the repair should add about twenty-five years of service, after which the town would face this decision again.

Option B is to replace. The town would build a 600,000-gallon concrete ground tank beside the old tower, with a pump station holding two electric pumps and one diesel standby generator, and then take down the old tank. The estimated cost is about $3.6 million, including about $200,000 to demolish the elevated tank. Design and construction would take about eighteen months, and the old tank would stay in service until the new system is running. A concrete tank of this kind should serve at least fifty years without repainting.

Water in the elevated tank stands high enough that gravity alone gives about 62 pounds per square inch (psi) at the downtown hydrants and about 32 psi at the highest homes on upper Brambury Road. The town's design standard calls for at least 35 psi at every home, so those homes fall short today. The water surface in the ground tank would sit about 95 feet lower than the water surface in the elevated tank does now, so the pumps would supply the pressure. They would be set to hold about 80 psi downtown and about 50 psi on upper Brambury Road.

This report compares the two options and does not recommend either one.

Source 2. Letter to the editor of the Farrowgate Ledger

From Marguerite Sandoval, chair of the Farrowgate Ratepayers' Association

To the editor: The Ratepayers' Association asks the council to choose the repair. The town has raised water rates in four of the last six years, and the average household bill has gone from $41 a month to $53. Many of our members are retired and live on fixed incomes, and every increase comes out of the grocery budget.

The engineer's own report says the repair costs about $1.4 million and buys twenty-five more years. The replacement costs $3.6 million, which works out to more than $1,200 for every water account in town. We do not see why Farrowgate should pay more than two and a half times as much for a tank that does the same job. The old tank has worked for more than sixty years without anyone paying a power bill to run it.

Twenty-five years is a long time. The council should fix what we have and leave the next decision to the people who will be paying for it then.

Source 3. Memo on fire protection and the tank decision

From Chief Andrea Kowalczyk, Farrowgate Fire Department, to the Town Council

I am not taking a side on cost. I am writing so the council knows what each option means when there is a fire.

Stored water: Our largest fire risk is the Harlan Feed Mill on Depot Street. A full fire there would take about 2,500 gallons per minute for two hours, or 300,000 gallons. Public works keeps the elevated tank between 75 and 95 percent full, so it holds between 300,000 and 380,000 gallons. At the low end of that range it holds just enough for the mill, with nothing left for the rest of town until the wells refill it. The 600,000-gallon ground tank, kept in the same range, would hold between 450,000 and 570,000 gallons.

Power outages: The elevated tank needs no power to deliver water. During the ice storm eight years ago, Farrowgate had no grid power for 61 hours. Our wells stopped, yet the tank kept water at every hydrant, and we put out a kitchen fire on Mill Street during that outage with normal pressure. A ground tank depends on its pumps, and in an outage the pumps depend on one generator. If that generator failed to start, water would still flow downhill from the ground tank, but at only about 20 psi downtown, which is the least our engines can safely draw from a hydrant. Homes on upper Brambury Road would have no water at all. I asked the engineer's office about adding a second generator and was told it would cost roughly $150,000. That amount is not in the $3.6 million estimate.

Low pressure today: Upper Brambury Road gets about 32 psi now, and the hydrants there are the weakest in town. The pumps in Option B would raise that area to about 50 psi.

During a repair: While the elevated tank is drained under Option A, the town would rely on temporary pumps and a rented generator for about five months. If the council chooses the repair, I ask that the work be scheduled between May and September and that the department arrange water tanker support from neighboring towns for that period.

Source 4. Statement from the Farrowgate Historical Society

From Thomas Elwell, president of the Farrowgate Historical Society

The Historical Society asks the town to keep the Brambury Hill tank. The tank has carried the name FARROWGATE in letters six feet tall since it was built in 1958, and its outline has appeared on the town seal since 1961. For travelers on the state highway it is the first sign that they have reached Farrowgate, and for residents it is the most recognized structure in town.

We understand the engineer's concerns. One of our members, a retired structural engineer, looked over the tower from the ground and told us the legs and foundation appear sound. The damage is inside the roof, which is a repair problem rather than a reason to tear the tank down.

If the council chooses a new ground tank, we ask that the old tank be left standing as a landmark instead of being demolished. The Society will raise $25,000 toward repainting the lettering. Towns that have taken down their water towers have regretted it, and once the tank is gone it cannot be brought back.

Source 5. Budget memo on the rate effect of the two options

From Renee Batiste, Farrowgate Town Manager, to the Town Council

This memo estimates what each option would do to the average residential water bill. It assumes the town borrows the full cost through the state's infrastructure loan program, which offers twenty-year loans at 2 percent interest. Farrowgate has 2,900 water accounts, and the average residential bill is $53.00 a month.

Item	Option A: repair and repaint	Option B: ground tank and pump station
Capital cost (from Source 1)	$1,400,000	$3,600,000
Yearly loan payment, 20 years at 2 percent	$85,600	$220,200
New yearly operating cost	None	$52,000 (pump electricity $38,000; pump and generator upkeep $14,000)
Total new yearly cost	$85,600	$272,200
Amount added to the average monthly bill	$2.46	$7.82
New average monthly bill	$55.46	$60.82
Increase in the average bill	About 4.6 percent	About 14.8 percent

The amount added to the monthly bill is the total new yearly cost divided among 2,900 accounts and twelve months.

Three costs are not in this table. Under Option A the town would face a second tank decision in about twenty-five years, and no one has priced that decision. The fire chief has asked about a second generator for Option B, and public works has not priced one. The Historical Society has asked that the old tank be left standing if Option B is chosen. That would save the $200,000 demolition cost, yet the town would still have to inspect and paint a tank that holds no water, and that cost has not been estimated.

Published context available to all teams: The ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave US drinking water a C-, and EPA's needs assessment estimates $625 billion in drinking-water investment is needed over twenty years, with distribution pipes accounting for about two-thirds of that need.

Constraints: The op-ed runs 700 to 900 words and must cite at least four of the five dossier sources by name. The rebuttal runs 400 to 500 words and must be written in the voice of a named stakeholder who disagrees with the op-ed's position. The editor's note runs about 150 words and explains which sources the writer relied on most and why. No figure may appear that the dossier does not supply. A figure that one source reports secondhand, such as the generator estimate in Source 3, must be attributed to the person who reported it. Where the dossier says a cost has not been priced, the writer may say so but may not supply an estimate. The three pieces are submitted together as a portfolio, formatted for the newspaper page.

Final deliverable: A three-piece opinion portfolio, submitted to the fictional Ledger opinion editor and presented in a final publication panel where each team reads its rebuttal aloud and takes two questions from the class.

1. Session 1, narrowing the question and reading the dossier. Teams read all five sources in the dossier and produce a one-page source map naming, for each source, who wrote it, what that writer is positioned to know, and what the writer is not positioned to know or has reported secondhand. They then submit a narrowed question in writing, more specific than the driving question, that their five sources can actually answer. Checkable output: the source map and the narrowed question.
2. Session 2, building the evidence chart. Teams complete an evidence chart with one row per source, recording the claim it supports, the exact detail that supports it (with any figure copied as the source states it), and the objection a reader could raise. Teams add a final row listing the costs the dossier says have not been priced. Each team also marks the one point on which their sources conflict most sharply. Checkable output: the completed chart, initialed by the teacher before drafting begins.
3. Session 3, drafting the op-ed. Each student drafts the full op-ed individually, citing at least four sources by name and stating a claim in the first two paragraphs. Checkable output: a complete draft, not an outline.
4. Session 4, the rebuttal and peer review. Each student writes the rebuttal in the voice of a named stakeholder who disagrees with the op-ed, then exchanges both pieces with a partner. Partners use the review protocol to mark every claim without an attributed source and every place the rebuttal argues against a weaker position than the op-ed took. Checkable output: the rebuttal draft plus a completed protocol sheet from a partner.
5. Session 5, revision and publication panel. Students revise both pieces, write the editor's note, and assemble the portfolio. Each team reads its rebuttal aloud to the class and answers two questions. Checkable output: the finished three-piece portfolio and the panel reading.