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Project Grade 8 Engineering & Design

Wickmoor Well Field Drought Triggers: Designing a Response Plan

A four-session grade 8 project in which teams design a staged drought trigger plan from well-level data and defend it to a water board with a one-page notice.

Objectives

  1. Students will write criteria and constraints for a drought response plan before setting any trigger.
  2. Students will fit a linear model to monthly well-level data and interpret its rate of change.
  3. Students will set three staged triggers and justify each one with the data and the stated constraints.
  4. Students will present a plan and a public notice to a panel acting as a water board.

Vocabulary

Aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.
Drawdown
Drawdown is how far the water level in a well drops when a pump pulls water out. The harder and longer you pump, the bigger the drawdown gets.
Recharge
Recharge is water soaking down through the ground to refill an aquifer, the way rain refills an underground sponge. Aquifers stay healthy only if recharge keeps up with pumping.

Also: static water level, trigger, demand reduction

Teacher overview

Teams design a staged drought trigger plan for a fictional town that pumps all of its water from an aquifer, then defend the plan to a panel acting as the water board. The driving question is how a town should decide when to ask residents to cut back, and by how much, using only the data it already collects. A misconception worth naming early is that a well "runs dry" suddenly; in an aquifer the static water level usually falls slowly and measurably for months first, which is what makes an early trigger possible at all. The final deliverables are a one-page trigger table, a graph with trigger lines drawn on it, a public notice, and a five-minute presentation.

Wickmoor Well Field Drought Triggers: Designing a Response Plan — Grade 8 Engineering & Design
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Project Brief

The client. You work for the fictional town of Wickmoor, which has about 9,000 residents and pumps all of its drinking water from four wells in the Wickmoor valley aquifer. The water board has asked your team for a drought response plan.

The driving question. When should Wickmoor ask residents to use less water, how much less, and how will the town know the ask worked?

The data you have. The town gives every team the same records: the static water level in the town's monitoring well, measured on the first of each month for the past eighteen months; the total gallons pumped each month; and the monthly rainfall recorded at the fire station. In a normal spring the monitoring well sits about 42 feet below the ground surface. Last August it fell to 61 feet, the lowest reading in the record.

The records. Depth to water is measured from the ground surface down, so a larger number means a lower water level. Pumping and rainfall are totals for the month before each reading.

Reading date Depth to water (ft below ground) Pumped in the month before (million gallons) Rainfall in the month before (inches)
Oct 1, year 1 51 26 2.4
Nov 1, year 1 49 25 2.8
Dec 1, year 1 47 23 3.4
Jan 1, year 2 45 23 3.1
Feb 1, year 2 44 22 3.6
Mar 1, year 2 43 22 3.0
Apr 1, year 2 42 23 3.9
May 1, year 2 43 25 3.5
Jun 1, year 2 49 30 1.8
Jul 1, year 2 55 34 0.9
Aug 1, year 2 61 36 0.4
Sep 1, year 2 59 31 2.9
Oct 1, year 2 56 27 3.3
Nov 1, year 2 53 25 2.6
Dec 1, year 2 50 23 3.2
Jan 1, year 3 48 22 3.0
Feb 1, year 3 46 22 3.8
Mar 1, year 3 44 22 2.7

Your criteria. The plan must do all of the following, and your team decides how to measure each one.

  1. It gives the town warning before the wells are in trouble, not after.
  2. It asks for the smallest cutback that will do the job at each stage.
  3. It says how the town will check whether the cutback worked.

Your constraints. These limits come from the town and cannot be changed.

  1. The plan uses only data the town already collects. No new meters or sensors may be required.
  2. Residents get at least 14 days of notice before a stage takes effect.
  3. Any new equipment or software must cost the town no more than $12,000 in the first year.
  4. The trigger table fits on one page and can be read by a resident, not only by an engineer.

The deliverable. Each team turns in a one-page trigger table with three stages, a graph of well level over time with the trigger levels drawn as horizontal lines, a public notice of at most 150 words announcing Stage 1, and a five-minute presentation to the panel. The presentation must answer one question directly: why these trigger levels and not others.

Milestones

  1. Session 1, define the problem (50 minutes). The team writes its three criteria with a measurement method for each and lists the four constraints in its own words. Output: a signed one-page problem definition, checked by the teacher before the team may propose triggers.
  2. Session 2, model the data (50 minutes). The team plots eighteen months of well-level readings, fits a straight line through the summer decline, and states the rate of change in feet per month and the level the line starts from. Output: a labeled graph plus a sentence interpreting the slope in context.
  3. Session 3, set the triggers and draft the notice (50 minutes). Using the model, the team sets three trigger levels, names the actions at each stage, and projects how many months of warning each trigger gives. Output: the draft trigger table and the draft public notice.
  4. Session 4, panel review (50 minutes). Teams present to the panel, which asks each team to justify one trigger level and one action. Output: the five-minute presentation plus a short written response to the panel's question, turned in at the end of class.

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

Rubric
Criterion 4, exceeds 3, meets 2, approaching 1, beginning
Problem definition Every criterion names a measurement method and a target, and all four constraints are restated accurately with their source Criteria are measurable and all four constraints appear Some criteria are vague goals, or one constraint is missing Criteria and constraints are mixed together or mostly missing
Use of the data The linear model is fitted sensibly, the rate of change is interpreted in feet per month, and the projection to each trigger is shown A line is fitted and the rate of change is stated correctly in context A line is drawn but the rate of change is unstated or misread The graph is incomplete or the model is not used to set triggers
Meeting the constraints Every constraint is met and the team shows where each one shaped a decision Every constraint is met One constraint is violated, such as a notice period shorter than 14 days Two or more constraints are violated or ignored
Staged response design Three stages escalate sensibly, each action is proportionate, and each stage states how the town will check that it worked Three stages with distinct actions and at least one check Stages overlap or repeat the same action Fewer than three stages, or actions unrelated to the triggers
Communication The notice is clear, under the word limit, and free of jargon, and the presentation answers the panel's question directly The notice and presentation are clear and complete The notice uses jargon a resident would not know, or runs long The notice or presentation is missing

Differentiation

Support

Give these teams the graph with the axes already scaled and the eighteen points already plotted, so the work begins at fitting the line. Provide a three-row trigger table with the stage names filled in and only the level and action cells blank, and allow the public notice to be drafted from a sentence-frame template.

Extension

Ask the team to test its plan against a second, drier data set supplied by the teacher and report whether the triggers still give enough warning. Teams that finish early can add an off-ramp rule stating when each stage is lifted, which is often harder to write than the trigger itself.

ELL supports

Provide a labeled cross-section of a well showing ground surface, static water level, pumping water level, and screen, with the key terms in the student's home language alongside English. Offer sentence frames for the presentation, such as "We set Stage 1 at ___ feet because the data show ___" and "This stage asks residents to ___."

Extensions

Invite a local utility staff member or a county water planner to sit on the review panel, and ask them to describe how their own system decides when to issue a restriction. Teams can then revise one trigger in response to what they hear and submit a short note explaining what changed and why.