Writing prompt Grade 11 Social Studies & Civics
Twelve-Hour Water Notices for Illerton: A Grade 11 Argument Prompt
Students argue whether a fictional state should make water systems notify every customer within twelve hours of a violation, weighing trust against small-system cost.
Objectives
- Students will state a precise claim on whether a state should pass, amend, or reject a twelve-hour water notification bill.
- Students will support that claim with at least three specific pieces of evidence drawn from the background material.
- Students will answer the strongest opposing argument instead of a weaker version of it.
- Students will identify who pays for the policy they support and who receives its benefits.
Vocabulary
- Turbidity
- Turbidity is a measure of how cloudy or murky water looks because of tiny particles floating in it. Clear water has low turbidity, and muddy water has high turbidity.
Also: public notification, treatment-technique violation, unfunded mandate, alarm fatigue, counterclaim, tiered rule
Teacher overview
Illerton is a fictional city whose treatment plant lost control of its filters for part of one night, and the notice its residents received arrived almost a month later. The state legislature is now considering a bill that would require every water system in the state to reach every customer within twelve hours of any violation, at the utility's own expense. Students take a position on that bill and defend it with the evidence supplied. Two misconceptions are worth correcting before drafting begins. The first is the assumption that a water-quality violation always means people drank unsafe water and that a slow notice proves a cover-up; many violations are treatment-technique or monitoring violations, and the deadline for telling customers is set by rule rather than chosen by the utility, so the real question is what the rule should say. The second is the belief that a federal standard prevents a state from going further, when the Safe Drinking Water Act allows states to adopt requirements stricter than the federal floor, which is exactly what this bill would do.
Prompt
Background material
Illerton is a fictional city of about 40,000 people that draws its drinking water from the Storrow River. Its plant filters that river water before sending it into the distribution system. Operators watch turbidity, which measures how cloudy the water is. Cloudy finished water is a signal that the filters are not catching particles the way they should. Federal rules require conventional filtration plants to keep finished water at or below 0.3 NTU in 95 percent of monthly samples, and never above 1 NTU.
On a night in March, a storm washed heavy runoff into the Storrow. Turbidity in the finished water climbed to 1.4 NTU and stayed above the limit for about six hours. Operators changed the chemical dose and brought the plant back under the limit before morning. The state recorded the event as a treatment-technique violation, and no illnesses were reported. The water department posted a notice on its website the following afternoon. The mailed notice reached most households 26 days later. Many residents heard about the violation first from a local reporter. Several parents told the city council that they would have bought bottled water for their infants had they known that week.
Late notice has a history behind it. In 2014, Flint, Michigan switched its water source to the Flint River without corrosion-control treatment, and the new water leached lead from the city's pipes. Residents, the pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, and researchers from Virginia Tech gathered the evidence that exposed the crisis. Legislators in many states now cite that case when they argue about how fast a utility must speak.
House Bill 471 is fictional legislation before the legislature of the state of Threave. Supporters call it the Illerton Act. It would require every community water system in the state to notify each customer within 12 hours of any violation, by text message and automated phone call, followed by a mailed notice. A system that misses the deadline would pay a fine of $500 for each day the notice is late. The state would not pay for the calling and texting systems that utilities would have to buy.
Supporters make four arguments. Public water systems are public bodies funded by the people who drink the water, so those people should hear about a problem before anyone else does. A mailed notice arrives too late to change what a household drinks that week. Families with infants, older relatives, or members receiving medical treatment may want to make their own decisions about bottled water rather than have the decision made for them. Residents who hear about a violation from their utility rather than from a reporter are more likely to believe the next notice they receive.
The Threave Rural Water Association opposes the bill as written and offers figures for Quintock, a fictional town of 900 households served by one licensed operator. Installing a calling and texting system would cost the town about $16,000, and running it would cost about $3,000 a year, which works out to roughly $3.33 per household each year plus about $18 per household in the first year. The association also argues that one operator cannot be awake and available at every hour, so a twelve-hour clock is short for a system with no night staff. Its third argument is that notices sent for every violation, including missed monitoring paperwork, would teach residents to ignore the notices that carry real risk, a pattern public health officials call alarm fatigue. The daily fine, the association says, gives a utility every reason to send a notice for anything at all rather than risk being late.
The Threave Department of Health takes a middle position. It already has the authority to order immediate notice when a violation presents an urgent health risk. It has asked the legislature to replace the single twelve-hour deadline with a tiered rule that sets a short deadline for urgent violations and a longer one for monitoring and paperwork violations. It has also asked for a state grant fund to help small systems buy notification software, which House Bill 471 does not include.
Writing task
You are writing for the Threave legislature's committee on public utilities. Write an argument essay that takes one of three positions on House Bill 471: pass it as written, amend it to the tiered rule the Department of Health proposes, or reject it. Support your claim with at least three specific pieces of evidence from the background material. State the strongest argument against your position and answer it directly rather than dismissing it. Say plainly who would pay for the policy you support and who would receive its benefits. End with a paragraph that tells the committee what to do.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you draft. Each row corresponds to a criterion on the rubric.
| Category | Your notes |
|---|---|
| Claim: pass as written, amend to a tiered rule, or reject | |
| Reason 1 and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 2 and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 3 and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| The strongest argument against your position, stated fairly | |
| Your answer to that argument | |
| Who pays for the policy you support | |
| Who benefits from the policy you support | |
| Closing recommendation to the committee |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
Exemplar response
The Threave legislature should amend House Bill 471 to the tiered rule the Department of Health proposes and pair it with the grant fund the department requested. The bill identifies a genuine failure. A notice that reaches households 26 days after a violation cannot help anyone decide what to drink, and Illerton's residents learned about their own water from a reporter instead of from the utility they pay. That result deserves a legislative answer. A single twelve-hour deadline applied to every violation is the wrong one, because it treats a filter losing control at two in the morning and a missed monitoring form as the same emergency.
The tiered rule fixes the problem the Illerton event actually revealed. Turbidity in Illerton's finished water reached 1.4 NTU and stayed above the limit for roughly six hours, which is exactly the kind of event that should trigger a fast notice, since federal rules treat any reading above 1 NTU as a failure of the barrier that filtration is supposed to provide. Under a tiered rule that event would carry the short deadline, and parents deciding about bottled water for an infant would have heard within hours rather than weeks. A missed monitoring report, which tells residents nothing about the water they drank, would carry the longer deadline and would not consume the same urgency.
Applying one deadline to everything would also weaken the notices that matter most. The Threave Rural Water Association argues that notices sent for every violation, including paperwork, teach residents to ignore later notices, a pattern known as alarm fatigue. The bill's fine of $500 for each late day makes that outcome more likely rather than less, because a utility facing a penalty for being late and no penalty for being excessive will send a notice for anything at all. A rule meant to inform the public would end up training the public to stop reading, which is the opposite of what the sponsors want.
The cost of the bill as written falls in the wrong place. Quintock, a town of 900 households with one licensed operator, would spend about $16,000 to install a calling and texting system and about $3,000 a year to run it, which comes to roughly $3.33 per household each year and about $18 per household in the first year. Those amounts are small for a household but not small for a utility that has no night staff and no state help, and the bill offers none. The grant fund the Department of Health requested would place the startup cost on the state, which chose to impose the requirement, while ratepayers would cover the modest annual cost of a system that protects them. The households that gain are the ones with infants, older relatives, or members in medical treatment, who need hours rather than weeks to act.
The strongest argument against amending the bill is that a tiered rule invites delay, because a utility that classifies its own violation has an obvious reason to place it in the slower tier, and Flint showed how badly officials can misjudge a hazard when they are the ones being judged. In 2014, Flint switched its source to the Flint River without corrosion-control treatment, and residents, the pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, and Virginia Tech researchers had to assemble the evidence themselves. That history is a fair warning. It argues for writing the tiers into the statute rather than leaving them to each utility, and for keeping the Department of Health's existing authority to order immediate notice on any violation it considers urgent. With the tiers defined by law and the department holding an override, the risk of self-serving classification is small, while the risk of alarm fatigue under a flat twelve-hour rule is large and permanent.
The committee should report House Bill 471 favorably with two amendments: replace the single twelve-hour deadline with the department's tiered deadlines, written into the statute, and add the grant fund for systems serving small towns. Illerton's residents were owed a faster notice, and this version delivers one without making every violation sound the same.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No position on House Bill 471 is stated | Names a position but shifts between two of the three options | States one of the three positions clearly and holds it throughout | States the position precisely, including which amendments are meant, and previews the reasoning |
| Evidence and reasoning | Uses no evidence from the background material | Restates one item from the background without explaining its relevance | Uses at least three specific items and explains how each supports the claim | Uses at least three specific items, explains each, and connects them into one line of reasoning |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No opposing argument appears | Mentions an opposing view but offers no answer | States a strong opposing argument fairly and answers it with evidence | States the strongest opposing argument, answers it with evidence, and shows what the answer changes about the proposal |
| Costs and beneficiaries | Says nothing about who pays or who gains | Names either the payers or the beneficiaries, not both | Identifies who pays and who benefits, with a figure or fact from the background | Identifies both, uses the figures accurately, and explains why that distribution is defensible |
| Organization and conventions | Ideas are disconnected and errors interfere with meaning | Some paragraph structure; errors are noticeable but do not block meaning | Clear paragraphs, orderly progression, few errors | Purposeful structure with a recommendation the committee could act on, and virtually no errors |
Differentiation
Support
Give students a version of the Planning Organizer with the three positions already listed and one piece of evidence supplied for each, so the work begins with selection rather than with a blank page. Allow the counterclaim and the answer to it to be drafted as two sentences before they are expanded into a paragraph. Students who struggle to start the essay can write the closing recommendation first, then build the reasons that lead to it.
Extension
Ask students to draft the amendment language itself: two or three sentences that define the tiers and assign the deadline for each, written the way a statute is written. Students then exchange drafts and identify any violation type their partner's language leaves unassigned, which is the same review a legislative counsel would perform.
ELL supports
Pre-teach turbidity, treatment-technique violation, tiered rule, and alarm fatigue with a short labeled diagram showing water moving from the fictional river through filters to homes, with the point where a violation is recorded marked on it. Provide sentence frames for the counterclaim paragraph, such as "Supporters of the bill would argue that ___, because ___." Permit the Planning Organizer to be completed in phrases, and allow a first draft in a student's stronger language before translation for the graded draft.
Extensions
Students research how their own state handles drinking-water public notification, using the state's primacy agency website and their local utility's most recent water quality report, then write a one-page memo comparing that real system with the fictional bill they argued about. A second option is a mock committee hearing in which four students testify as the utility director, a parent, the rural water association, and the health department, after which the class votes on the bill and compares the vote with the positions taken in their essays.