Worksheet Grade 11 English Language Arts

Who Counts as a User? Definitions in the Hollingmere Well Rule

A grade 11 worksheet on stipulative definitions, in which students apply five defined terms from a draft groundwater ordinance to a table of five wells.

Grade: Grade 11
Subject: English Language Arts
Material: Worksheet
Time: 45 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

RST.11-12.7 Common Core ELA

Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., quantitative data, video, multimedia) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

How this material aligns: Items 2, 3, and 9 can only be answered by reading the well table against the definitions section and the operative sections together, since no single part of the packet decides them.

All materials for RST.11-12.7 →

W.11-12.2 Common Core ELA

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

How this material aligns: Item 10 requires a three-sentence explanation of a defined term for basin residents, which asks students to convey a technical definition accurately in different words.

All materials for W.11-12.2 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-04.

Objectives

Students will apply a stipulative definition to cases the drafter did not name.
Students will identify a term used in an operative section but left undefined.
Students will restate a legal definition for a general reader without changing its scope.

Vocabulary

Beneficial use: The rule that water rights must be used for something useful, like farming, drinking, or industry. In many states, if you stop using the water you can lose the right.

Also: stipulative definition, operative section, de minimis, exemption, basin

Teacher overview

This worksheet treats a definitions section as the argument it actually is. Students apply five defined terms from a draft groundwater ordinance to five wells the drafter never mentioned, then rewrite one definition and one exemption. The point of the exercise is that a stipulative definition does not report what a word means in ordinary use. It assigns a meaning for one document, and the assignment decides who is covered. One misconception about the water content is worth correcting first: many students picture a well as drawing from a private pool under one owner's land, or from an underground river. Wells in a shared basin draw from the same connected body of water in the spaces between grains of sand and rock, so what one owner pumps lowers the level available to a neighbor.

Who Counts as a User? Definitions in the Hollingmere Well Rule — Grade 11 English Language Arts

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The town of Hollingmere and its basin are fictional, and so is every figure below. The packet holds three parts.

Part 1. Draft Hollingmere Basin Groundwater Rule, Section 2, Definitions.

(a) Existing user. A person who withdrew groundwater from the basin in at least three of the five years before this rule was adopted.
(b) De minimis well. A well whose withdrawal does not exceed 2,500 gallons per day, measured as an annual average.
(c) Beneficial use. Use for household supply, livestock, irrigation of a commercial crop, or fire protection. Landscape irrigation of more than one quarter acre is not a beneficial use.
(d) Basin. The area shown on Map 1, attached.
(e) Drought stage two. The condition the board declares after the basin index has stayed below the level in Table 2 for two months in a row.

Part 2. Operative sections.

Section 4. Reporting. Every existing user other than a de minimis well shall report monthly withdrawals during drought stage two. Wells used solely for domestic use are exempt from this report.
Section 5. Curtailment. The board may curtail any withdrawal that is not for a beneficial use.

Part 3. Well survey, five wells in the basin.

Well	Owner	First pumped	Average daily withdrawal	Stated use
Well 1	Corbeigh farm	14 years ago	31,000 gallons per day	Irrigation of a commercial hay crop
Well 2	Tenmarch Nursery	9 years ago	4,600 gallons per day	A greenhouse and a half-acre display lawn
Well 3	Sallowmere household	22 years ago	310 gallons per day	Household supply
Well 4	Whitgrove orchard	6 years ago	2,480 gallons per day, rising to 6,000 gallons on some August days	Irrigation of a commercial fruit crop
Well 5	Glasscombe Storage	2 years ago	1,900 gallons per day	Dust control on a gravel yard

Answer every item in complete sentences unless the item says otherwise.

Well 5 first pumped two years ago. Using definition (a), state whether Well 5 is an existing user, and quote the words that decide it.
Well 4 averages 2,480 gallons a day and reaches 6,000 gallons on some August days. Using definition (b), state whether Well 4 is a de minimis well, and quote the words that decide it.
Well 2 waters a greenhouse and a half-acre display lawn. Using definition (c), explain which part of Well 2's use falls outside beneficial use and what Section 5 then permits the board to do.
One definition cannot be applied without a document that is not printed here. Name that definition and state what a reader cannot check from the rule alone.
Definition (e) turns on a declaration by the board rather than on the index by itself. Explain what changes for a well owner because of that wording.
Definition (a) uses "at least three of the five years" instead of a word such as "regularly." Explain what the drafter gains, and name one case the threshold decides badly.
Rewrite definition (b) so that Well 4's August pumping brings it under the rule. Change as few words as you can, and list the words you changed.
Section 4 exempts wells used solely for "domestic use," yet that phrase is not defined in Section 2. Name the defined term it most likely means and explain the problem the mismatch creates for the owner of Well 3.
A neighbor summarizes the draft as "a rule that exempts small wells." Using the definitions and Section 4, explain in two sentences why that summary is inaccurate.
Write a three-sentence explanation of "existing user" for a mailer to basin residents. Do not reuse the ordinance's wording, and do not change what the term covers.

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: No, Well 5 is not an existing user. The deciding words are "in at least three of the five years before this rule was adopted." Two years of pumping cannot satisfy a three-year threshold, so Well 5 falls outside definition (a) regardless of how much it withdraws. Accept any answer quoting the three-of-five language.
Answer: Yes, Well 4 is a de minimis well. The deciding words are "measured as an annual average." The August days at 6,000 gallons do not matter under this wording, because the definition tests the average across the year and Well 4's average of 2,480 gallons a day sits below the 2,500 gallon line. Students who answer no without quoting a competing phrase have read the definition as a cap on any single day.
Answer: The half-acre display lawn falls outside beneficial use. Definition (c) excludes landscape irrigation of more than one quarter acre, and a half acre exceeds that, while the greenhouse can be defended as irrigation of a commercial crop. Section 5 permits the board to curtail the withdrawal that is not for a beneficial use, so the board could restrict the lawn watering without touching the greenhouse, provided the two can be measured separately.
Answer: Definition (d), the basin. It points to Map 1, which is attached rather than printed, so a reader cannot tell whether a particular well sits inside the boundary. Accept answers naming definition (e) as a second instance, since Table 2 is also outside the text, provided the student explains that the index level cannot be checked.
Answer: Nothing in Section 4 takes effect until the board acts. Because drought stage two is the condition the board declares, an owner has no reporting duty during a dry stretch in which the index falls but no declaration follows. The wording puts the timing in the board's hands and gives owners a single clear date rather than a condition they would have to monitor themselves.
Answer: The drafter gains a test that can be settled from records rather than argued. A word such as "regularly" would invite a dispute in every borderline case, while three of five years can be checked against meter or tax records. The threshold decides badly for an owner who pumped heavily in two of the five years and not at all in the others, since that owner is a real user of the basin and falls outside the definition.
Answer: Accept any minimal revision that replaces the averaging language. A strong version reads: "A well whose withdrawal does not exceed 2,500 gallons per day on any day." The changed words are "measured as an annual average," replaced by "on any day." Credit alternatives such as adding a peak-day cap as a second sentence, provided the student lists the words changed and the revision would in fact capture Well 4.
Answer: It most likely means household supply, the phrase definition (c) uses in its list of beneficial uses. The mismatch matters for Well 3 because an exemption written with an undefined phrase can be read narrowly or broadly, and the owner cannot tell from the rule whether a household well that also fills a livestock trough still qualifies as "solely" domestic. The fix is to write Section 4 with the phrase definition (c) already uses, or to define "domestic use" in Section 2.
Answer: The summary is inaccurate because the exemption in Section 4 is from the monthly report only, not from the rule. A de minimis well is still subject to Section 5 curtailment if its use is not a beneficial use, which is exactly the position Well 5 is in with its 1,900 gallons a day for dust control.
Answer: Accept any three sentences that preserve the scope without copying the wording. A strong response reads: Whether you count as an existing user depends on your pumping record in the five years before the rule was adopted. You must have pumped water from the basin in three or more of those five years. If you first pumped less than three years before adoption, you cannot meet that test. Responses that say "if you have used your well for years" lose credit, because they replace a countable test with an impression.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students items 1, 2, 3, 8, and 9, and provide the definitions with the deciding phrase underlined in each. Work item 1 with the class, showing how the quoted phrase is located before the answer is written. Allow the quotation in items 1 and 2 to be marked on the printed text rather than copied out.

Extension

Ask these students to draft a sixth definition the rule needs but does not contain, then to test the whole packet again with that definition inserted and report which of the five wells changes status. They should also name one well whose status they deliberately chose not to change and explain the drafting reason.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "stipulative," "exempt," "curtail," and "threshold" using a short non-water example, such as a school rule defining "full-time student." Provide a two-column chart with the defined term on the left and the deciding phrase on the right for students to complete before the items begin. Allow item 9 to be answered in one sentence plus a labeled arrow drawn on the packet.

Extensions

Have students compare the draft's definition of beneficial use with the list of uses the wells actually report, and write a short memo to the board naming one use in the basin the definition does not address at all. The memo should propose either an addition to the list or a reason the silence is deliberate, which is the choice a drafter faces every time a list is written.