Bexhollow's Choice: Pay Upstream Farmers or Build a Filter

Resolution: The Bexhollow Water District should spend its state water-quality grant on paying upstream farmers to protect Talwyn Creek rather than on building a new filtration step at the treatment plant.

Background (a fictional case built for classroom debate)

Bexhollow is a fictional town of about eleven thousand people. Its drinking water comes from Talwyn Creek, which runs down a valley of row-crop farms and pasture before it reaches the town intake.

For most of the year the creek runs clear. In spring, and after hard summer storms, it runs brown. The brown color is soil washed off fields and stream banks, and the runoff also carries fertilizer. Soil in the water raises turbidity, which is a measure of how cloudy water is. Cloudy water makes the treatment plant work harder. Operators use more chemicals, clean the filters more often, and sometimes cut the amount of water they can produce in a day.

The state has offered Bexhollow a one-time water-quality grant. The district must choose one of two plans.

Plan A: Pay upstream farmers. The district would sign yearly agreements with farms in the valley. Farmers would plant cover crops over the winter, leave strips of grass and shrubs between fields and the creek, and fence livestock away from the water. The district would pay them for the work and for the yield they give up.

Plan B: Build a new filtration step. The district would add a building at the plant with a second stage of filters designed to handle very cloudy water. Once built, it would run every day, no matter what happens upstream.

Both plans are legal, and the state will fund either one. The board wants a recommendation.

Roles

• Affirmative team (four speakers): argues for Plan A. One speaker opens with the case, two present evidence, one delivers the rebuttal.
• Negative team (four speakers): argues for Plan B, with the same four jobs.
• Moderator: keeps time, calls speakers, and enforces the rule that every claim names its source in the file.
• Board panel (three judges): scores with the rubric and asks one question of each team at the end.

Format: four minutes of constructive speaking from each side, divided among the opening speaker and the two evidence speakers, then three minutes of questioning, a two-minute rebuttal from each side, and one-minute closings. Teams may use note cards and the evidence file, and may not bring outside research.

Every point below comes from this fictional case. Speakers must name the source when they use a point.

Case for paying upstream farmers (Plan A)

• District engineer's memo (fictional): The new filter building would cost about $6 million to build, plus staff time and power every year after that. The farm payment program would cost about $180,000 a year, and the district could expand it, shrink it, or stop it as conditions change.
• Talwyn Watershed Council statement (fictional): Soil that stays on a field never has to be removed at the plant. A filter treats the symptom each day, while cover crops and buffer strips reduce the amount of material that reaches the creek in the first place.
• County extension agent's testimony (fictional): Buffer strips shade the creek, hold the banks in place, and give fish cover. A filter at the plant does none of that. The creek itself would be better off under Plan A.
• Ratepayer burden, real trend: Combined water and sewer bills across the country rose about 24% from 2019 to 2024 and about 5.1% in 2025, outpacing inflation (Bluefield Research and industry rate surveys). Affirmative speakers argue that a smaller yearly program keeps future rate increases smaller than a large capital project would.
• Farmer testimony, Vane family farm (fictional): The family already wants to plant cover crops but cannot absorb the seed cost and the lost acres. Payment makes the practice possible on the farms that matter most.

Case for building the filter (Plan B)

• Plant superintendent's memo (fictional): A filter works every day it is turned on. The farm program depends on farmers choosing to sign, and a single large farm that refuses can undo the gains from three that agree.
• Turbidity rule, real requirement: Conventional filtration plants must keep finished-water turbidity at or below 0.3 NTU in 95% of monthly samples and must never exceed 1 NTU (EPA Surface Water Treatment Rules). Negative speakers argue the district is judged on what leaves the plant, not on what the creek looks like.
• Operations log summary (fictional): The worst cloudiness follows intense storms. No field practice stops a storm, so the plant must be sized for the peak in any case.
• Water district lawyer's note (fictional): Payment agreements run one year at a time, and land changes hands. A farm that signs this year may be sold to an owner who will not. The filter belongs to the district and lasts for decades.
• Bexhollow Ratepayers Association statement (fictional): Ratepayers already pay for the plant. Paying private landowners not to send soil downstream asks water customers to cover a cost that belongs upstream.

Points both sides may use

• The board has confirmed the grant covers only one plan, so the choice is real.
• Nobody claims the water is currently unsafe. The dispute is about cost, reliability, and where the money does the most good.