Worksheet Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Reading Sedgeburn County's Private Well Testing Bill
A grade 10 civics worksheet on a fictional state bill requiring private well tests at home sale, with committee roll call, testimony, and two amendments.
Objectives
- Students will summarize what a proposed bill requires and which agency carries out each section.
- Students will read a committee roll call and explain a voting pattern in terms of district interests.
- Students will evaluate two amendments by identifying who gains and who bears the cost under each.
Vocabulary
Key words: bill, committee markup, amendment, unfunded mandate, roll call, rulemaking
Teacher overview
Households on private wells fall outside the federal drinking water rules that cover public water systems, so any testing requirement for them has to come from a state or a county. This worksheet puts students in a committee room in a fictional state, where a bill would require a well test before a home on a well can be sold. Students read the bill, the roll call, and the testimony, then work out who pays, who enforces, and why the committee split the way it did. The bill as introduced places the cost on the seller, while the two amendments show how quickly a legislature can move that cost somewhere else.
Student Worksheet
The state and county named here are fictional, and so are the members of the committee. Read the bill, the roll call, and the testimony summaries, then answer the questions.
House Bill 214, as introduced.
Section 1. Before the sale of a home served by a private well, the seller shall have the well water tested by a state-certified laboratory for coliform bacteria, nitrate, arsenic, and lead.
Section 2. The seller shall give the buyer the laboratory report at least seven days before closing.
Section 3. The Department of Health shall publish the list of required contaminants and may add to that list by rule.
Section 4. A county recorder shall not record a deed for such a home unless a copy of the report is filed with the deed.
Section 5. Nothing in this act requires a seller to treat a well or repair it.
Roll call, House Committee on Local Government.
| Member | District type | Vote |
|---|---|---|
| Alder | Rural | No |
| Barrow | Rural | No |
| Chesney | Rural | Yes |
| Dunning | Rural | No |
| Ewell | Rural | No |
| Fenn | Suburban | Yes |
| Garrick | Suburban | Yes |
| Hobbs | Suburban | Yes |
| Ives | Suburban | No |
| Jessop | Suburban | Yes |
| Kellard | Suburban | Yes |
Testimony summaries. The Sedgeburn Well Owners Association opposed the bill, saying the state writes the requirement but sends no money for it, and that the burden lands hardest on the counties with the most wells. Sedgeburn County has more private wells than any other county in the state. A county health officer supported the bill, saying buyers now learn about a bad well months after moving in and that the county has no authority to require testing on its own. A statewide association of real estate agents took no position but asked for two changes.
Amendment A. The cost of the required test is paid from a state grant fund rather than by the seller.
Amendment B. A well tested within the previous five years is exempt from the requirement.
- In one or two sentences, state what House Bill 214 would require and at what point in a home sale it would happen.
- Under the bill as introduced, who pays for the test?
- Section 3 lets the Department of Health add contaminants to the list by rule. Explain why a legislature would write the list this way instead of naming every contaminant in the statute itself.
- Section 4 makes the county recorder part of enforcement. Explain how that provision would stop a sale from going through without a test.
- Using the roll call, state the vote total and whether the bill advanced out of committee.
- Compare how the rural members voted with how the suburban members voted. Describe the pattern in one sentence.
- Using the testimony about Sedgeburn County and your answer to item 6, explain why that voting pattern makes sense.
- Opponents called House Bill 214 an unfunded mandate. Explain what that term means as they are using it here.
- Amendment A would pay for the test from a state grant fund. Explain how that changes who bears the cost, and name one member from the roll call whose vote it might change.
- Which group gains the most from Amendment B, and why?
- State one problem the five-year exemption in Amendment B could create for a buyer.
- Supporters expect that fewer households will discover contamination after moving in. Name one unintended outcome that could also follow if the bill becomes law, and explain the chain of events that would produce it.
- The Well Owners Association used written testimony, a signed petition, and a private meeting with the committee chair. Rank those three by how likely each is to change a committee vote, and defend your ranking in three or four sentences.
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: It would require a certified laboratory test of a private well for coliform bacteria, nitrate, arsenic, and lead before a home served by that well is sold, with the report given to the buyer at least seven days before closing. Full credit requires both the test and its timing.
- Answer: The seller. Section 1 places the duty to have the water tested on the seller, and no section shifts that cost to the buyer or the state.
- Answer: Accept any sound reason. A strong answer notes that a rulemaking list can be updated as new contaminants are identified without reopening the statute, and that the agency has the technical staff to judge which contaminants belong on it, while a list written into law would need a new bill each time.
- Answer: Accept any accurate account of the mechanism. Because a deed must be recorded for the sale to be legally complete, refusing to record until the report is filed gives the county a checkpoint that every sale must pass through, which makes the requirement enforceable without new inspectors.
- Answer: Six yes and five no, so the bill advanced. Chesney, Fenn, Garrick, Hobbs, Jessop, and Kellard voted yes; Alder, Barrow, Dunning, Ewell, and Ives voted no.
- Answer: The rural members voted against it four to one, while the suburban members voted for it five to one, so the split follows district type rather than any other visible line.
- Answer: Accept any answer grounded in district interest. Rural districts contain most of the wells, so their constituents would pay for most of the tests, while suburban districts are mostly on public systems and their constituents are more likely to be buyers who gain the information.
- Answer: An unfunded mandate is a requirement imposed by a higher level of government that supplies no money to carry it out. Opponents mean that the state creates the testing duty while sellers and counties absorb the cost of meeting it.
- Answer: Accept any member from the no column with a stated reason. Amendment A moves the cost from individual sellers to all state taxpayers, which answers the unfunded-mandate objection directly, so a rural member such as Barrow, Dunning, or Ewell is the most plausible vote to change.
- Answer: Sellers whose wells were tested recently, along with the real estate agents handling those sales, because the exemption removes a cost and a delay from transactions that already have a recent report on file.
- Answer: Accept any sound risk. A strong answer notes that well water can change within five years, since a new septic failure, a nearby spill, or a drop in the water table can introduce bacteria or nitrate that a report from four years ago would not show.
- Answer: Accept any well-reasoned outcome with a stated chain. One example is that owners who fear a failed test put off selling, so problem wells stay in use longer without any report; another is that testing demand spikes in rural counties with few certified laboratories, and closings are delayed while sellers wait for results.
- Answer: Accept any defended ranking. A common strong ranking puts the meeting with the chair first, because the chair controls whether a bill is heard and amended at all; written testimony second, because it enters the record and must be answered; and the petition last, because signatures show breadth but rarely change a vote by themselves. Credit depends on the reasoning, not the order chosen.
Differentiation
Support
Give students a one-page annotated copy of the bill with each section labeled by function, such as duty, timing, agency power, and enforcement. Complete item 5 together as a class so that the roll-call reading is secure before students attempt the pattern questions in items 6 and 7.
Extension
Have students draft a third amendment that answers the strongest objection in the testimony without giving up the buyer protection the bill is meant to provide, then predict how each of the five no votes would respond to it and explain each prediction.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "roll call," "amendment," "mandate," and "recorder" using a simple flow diagram of a bill moving from introduction to committee vote. Allow items 2, 5, 6, and 10 to be answered in short phrases, and provide sentence frames such as "This amendment moves the cost from ... to ..." for items 9 and 11.
Extensions
Have students locate the committee of their own state legislature that handles local government or natural resources, identify one bill it considered recently, and describe in a paragraph who would have paid for what that bill required. A short comparison discussion can then ask whether the pattern of costs in the real bill fell along the same district lines as the fictional roll call here.