Project Grade 11 Social Studies & Civics
The Water Element of the Fallowdale County Plan: A Grade 11 Project
Across five sessions students write the water chapter of a fictional county's 20-year comprehensive plan, map its supply, and defend three ranked options at a hearing.
Objectives
- Students will build a twenty-year water demand projection from a stated per-household figure and a stated growth rate.
- Students will rank supply and demand options by cost per acre-foot and defend the ranking in writing.
- Students will produce a map showing the relationship between a county's wells, its recharge area, and its planned growth.
Vocabulary
- Indirect potable reuse
- Recycling water into drinking water with a natural stop along the way. Highly cleaned water is put into the ground or a reservoir, then drawn back out later and treated again for drinking.
Also: comprehensive plan, water element, demand projection, safe yield, recharge area, aquifer storage and recovery, capital ceiling
Teacher overview
Many states require or encourage counties to adopt a comprehensive plan, and some, such as Arizona and Florida, require that plan to address water supply, which makes the twenty-year supply question a document a citizen can read rather than a decision made quietly by a utility. In this project students write that document for Fallowdale County, a fictional county whose wells draw on a declining aquifer, and defend it at a mock planning commission hearing. The final deliverable is a written water element of 2,000 to 2,500 words with a map, a demand table, and three ranked recommendations, each naming who pays.
Project Brief
Driving question: Where should Fallowdale County plan to get its water over the next twenty years, and who should pay for it?
The client: The Fallowdale County Planning Commission, a fictional body of seven appointed members that must adopt a water element before the county's growth plan can take effect. The commission wants a document its own residents can read.
The situation: Fallowdale County is fictional, and every figure in this brief was invented for the project. The county has 62,000 residents in 23,000 households. Nine county wells draw from the Whetstone Aquifer, and the county buys a small volume from the city of Sturbridge next door under a contract that ends in twelve years. The nine wells can safely yield about 6,500 acre-feet per year, and the Sturbridge contract supplies 600 acre-feet per year until it ends. Static water levels in the county's wells have fallen an average of 1.4 feet per year for the past two decades. The county's designated growth area sits on the north side, directly over the aquifer's main recharge area, and the county expects households to increase by 1.5 percent per year.
Published context available to every team: The average US household uses about 300 gallons of water per day, roughly seventy percent of it indoors, according to EPA WaterSense. The ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave US drinking water a C- and wastewater a D+. Seawater reverse osmosis uses roughly 11 to 15 kWh per 1,000 gallons (about 3 to 4 kWh per cubic meter), against about 1 to 2 kWh for conventional treatment and delivery.
The options menu. Every team ranks the same six options. All costs below are invented for this fictional county and are stated as cost per acre-foot of new or saved supply per year.
| Option | Invented cost per acre-foot per year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Residential conservation program | $310 | Rebates and fixture replacement; savings decline after ten years |
| Distribution leak repair | $420 | Requires a survey first; also reduces main breaks |
| Three new wells in the north basin | $640 | Draws on the same declining aquifer |
| Expanded purchase from Sturbridge | $980 | Depends on a contract renewal the county does not control |
| Aquifer storage and recovery | $1,250 | Stores winter surplus underground for summer use |
| Indirect potable reuse | $1,880 | Highest cost, and the only option independent of rainfall |
Constraints. The plan covers twenty years. The demand projection must be built from the stated household figure and the stated growth rate, and it must be shown as a table by five-year interval. The recommendations must together close the projected gap. Total capital spending may not exceed $4,000,000 per year. Each recommendation must name who pays, choosing among county ratepayers, new development through impact fees, county property taxes, and state or federal grants. The map must show the nine wells, the designated growth area, and the recharge area on one image. The written element runs 2,000 to 2,500 words.
Final deliverable. A written water element submitted to the fictional planning commission, accompanied by the map and the demand table, and presented in a final hearing at which each team takes questions from three classmates acting as commissioners.
Milestones
- Session 1, reading the county and framing the gap. Teams read the project brief and produce the twenty-year demand projection as a table by five-year interval, using the stated household count, the stated per-household figure, and the stated growth rate. They state the supply gap in acre-feet for year twenty in one sentence. Checkable output: the demand table and the one-sentence gap statement, initialed by the teacher.
- Session 2, mapping supply and growth. Teams build one map in a free web mapping tool showing the nine well locations, the designated growth area, and the recharge area, with a legend and a scale. They write a caption of 100 to 150 words naming the conflict the map reveals between where the county plans to build and where the aquifer refills. Checkable output: the exported map image and its caption.
- Session 3, ranking the options. Teams rank all six options from the menu by cost per acre-foot, then adjust the ranking for reliability, for how long the savings last, and for whether the county controls the option. Each adjustment must be written as one sentence of justification. Checkable output: a ranked list of six with a justification sentence for every position that differs from the pure cost order.
- Session 4, drafting the water element. Each team drafts the full document, with sections for present supply, projected demand, the options considered, the three recommendations, and the funding source named for each. Drafts must be complete rather than outlined. Checkable output: a complete draft of 2,000 words or more, exchanged with a partner team for review against the constraints list.
- Session 5, revision and the commission hearing. Teams revise, then present for six minutes and take questions from three classmates acting as commissioners. Commissioners must ask at least one question about who pays and one about the capital ceiling. Checkable output: the final water element with map and table, plus the completed question record from the hearing.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand projection | The table is missing intervals or does not use the stated growth rate. | The table is complete but the growth rate is applied inconsistently across intervals. | The table covers all five-year intervals and applies the stated household figure and growth rate correctly throughout. | The table is correct and the text explains which assumption the projection is most sensitive to. |
| Map and spatial reasoning | The map omits one of the three required layers or has no legend. | All three layers appear, but the caption describes the map without interpreting it. | Wells, growth area, and recharge area appear with a legend and scale, and the caption names the conflict between growth and recharge. | The map is clear at a glance and the caption explains how the spatial conflict changes which options are realistic. |
| Options ranking | Fewer than six options are ranked, or the ranking has no stated basis. | All six are ranked by cost, with no adjustment for reliability or duration. | All six are ranked, and every departure from cost order carries a written justification. | The ranking weighs cost against reliability and county control, and names the option the team would drop first if the ceiling were cut. |
| Recommendations and funding | Recommendations do not close the gap, or no funding source is named. | Recommendations close the gap but at least one funding source is named without reasoning. | Three recommendations close the gap, stay within the annual capital ceiling, and each names a funding source with a reason. | Funding choices are matched to who benefits, and the element explains why a different source was rejected for at least one recommendation. |
| Writing and hearing performance | The element is far outside the length range or omits a required section. | All sections appear, but planning terms are used without definition for a public audience. | The element is within range, defines its terms, and the team answers both required commissioner questions directly. | The writing would be usable by an actual commission, and the team concedes accurately where a commissioner identifies a weakness. |
Differentiation
Support
Give these teams the demand table with the first two intervals already computed and the growth calculation shown once as a model. Reduce the written element to 1,200 to 1,500 words, supply a section outline with the purpose of each section named, and allow the map to be completed from a printed base map with the three layers drawn by hand.
Extension
Ask these teams to add a fourth recommendation that would only be triggered if the neighboring city declines to renew the purchase contract, including the cost per acre-foot, the funding source, and a written explanation of the conditions under which the county should act on it.
ELL supports
Pre-teach recharge area, safe yield, demand projection, and impact fee with a labeled cross-section showing rain entering an aquifer, wells drawing from it, and houses being built above it. Provide sentence frames for the map caption and the recommendations: "The map shows that new houses are planned over ___, which matters because ___," and "We recommend ___, paid for by ___, because ___." Allow the hearing presentation to be delivered from a full script.
Extensions
Have teams locate the current comprehensive plan for their own county or city on its public planning page, find the section that discusses water supply, and write a one-page comparison naming two things the real plan includes that the Fallowdale element does not and one thing the Fallowdale element handles more clearly.