Project Grade 12 Social Studies & Civics
Auberly's Source Water Protection Plan for the Stroudmere
A six-session grade 12 project where teams map a fictional city's intake watershed, inventory contaminant sources, and defend three ordinance provisions.
Objectives
- Students will delineate the contributing area above a drinking water intake and map the land uses within it.
- Students will build a potential contaminant source inventory and rank each source by risk with stated reasoning.
- Students will draft ordinance provisions, name the authority each relies on, and defend them before a mock planning commission.
Vocabulary
Key words: source water protection, intake, contributing area, potential contaminant source, point source, nonpoint source, ordinance, spill response
Teacher overview
Treatment plants are designed for the water they expect to receive, so the cheapest protection a city can buy is usually upstream of the intake rather than inside the plant. Source water protection plans are how communities try to buy it, and they run into the hard fact that most of the land that matters lies outside the city's own boundaries. Over six sessions, teams act as the planning department of the fictional city of Auberly and produce a protection plan for its intake on the Stroudmere River, ending with a staff report and a presentation to a mock planning commission played by classmates or invited guests.
Because Auberly and the Stroudmere River are fictional, the teacher prepares the base map before session 1. A hand-drawn or simply drafted map is sufficient if it shows the river and its tributaries, the ridgelines or contour lines that bound the contributing area, the intake location, the city limits, a scale bar in miles, and at least 12 labeled land uses upstream of the intake. These must include a highway and rail crossing over the river, which milestone 4 uses as the spill point, and may include row-crop farms, a cattle feedlot, a fuel depot, a subdivision on septic systems, a golf course, a quarry, and a wastewater discharge from a small upstream town. A teacher may instead use a USGS topographic map of a local river intake and have teams identify the land uses themselves, in which case the teacher names the road or rail crossing that teams should treat as the spill point.
Form teams of four or five, so that a class of 30 has six teams. The hearing in session 6 allows nine minutes per team: five minutes of presentation, three minutes of questions, and one minute to change over. Six teams therefore need 54 minutes, which leaves about six minutes for the chair to open and close the meeting. A class with seven or more teams will need part of a seventh class period to finish the hearing, and that period should be scheduled before session 1. In session 5 the teacher assigns each team another team's staff report to read, and the reviewing team then sits as the commission during that team's slot in the hearing.
The water system figures in the Project Brief are fictional and are there so that every team works the spill response element from the same numbers. Usable storage is 7.2 million gallons less the 1.8 million gallons held for firefighting, or 5.4 million gallons. That lasts about 27 hours at average demand of 4.8 million gallons per day and about 36 hours at the conservation-order demand of 3.6 million gallons per day. Travel time from a spill point to the intake depends on where the teacher placed it on the base map; a spill 9 miles upstream reaches the intake in about 6 hours at normal flow and a little over 2 hours at flood stage.
Project Brief
The fictional city of Auberly draws its drinking water from an intake on the Stroudmere River. A new state rule requires every city that uses a river or lake to adopt a source water protection plan within one year. Your team is the planning department. The city manager has asked for a plan the commission can adopt without amendment.
The driving question is this: what should Auberly do upstream to protect the water it drinks, given that most of the upstream land belongs to someone else?
Your plan must meet all of these constraints:
- The protection program has an annual budget of $150,000, and your plan must show how the money is divided among your proposed activities.
- The plan may create at most three new ordinance provisions. Each provision must name the authority the city would rely on to adopt it.
- At least one provision must apply to land the city does not own and does not control through zoning, so your plan must explain how the city would reach that land through an agreement, an easement, an incentive, or a partner agency.
- The plan must include a spill response element that says who is notified, how fast the intake can be closed, and how long the city can operate on stored water.
- The written staff report is at most 1,200 words. Longer reports are returned unread, as they would be by a real city manager.
Use the following figures for the Auberly water system. They are fictional and apply only to this project.
| Auberly water system item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Population served | 38,000 |
| Average daily demand | 4.8 million gallons per day |
| Demand under a mandatory conservation order | 3.6 million gallons per day |
| Treated water in storage when the tanks and clearwell are full | 7.2 million gallons |
| Stored water that must be held back for firefighting | 1.8 million gallons |
| Time to close the intake gate fully after the order is given | 15 minutes |
| Stroudmere River velocity at normal flow | 1.5 miles per hour |
| Stroudmere River velocity at flood stage | 4 miles per hour |
| Who can order the intake closed | Plant operator on duty or the water utility director |
Your team turns in four items: the watershed map, the potential contaminant source inventory, the written staff report with the budget table, and a five-minute presentation to the commission followed by three minutes of questions.
Milestones
- Session 1, delineation and map. Using the base map, mark the intake, trace the contributing area upstream of it, and shade every land use inside that area. Turn in a labeled map with a legend and one paragraph explaining where the boundary of the contributing area runs and why.
- Session 2, source inventory. Build a table of at least 12 potential contaminant sources inside the contributing area. For each one, record its location, whether it is a point source or a nonpoint source, a risk rating of high, medium, or low, and one sentence of reasoning for that rating. Turn in the completed table.
- Session 3, ordinance provisions and budget. Draft your three provisions. For each, write the text in one or two sentences, name the authority the city relies on, state the intended outcome, and name one unintended outcome the commission should expect. Then divide the $150,000 protection budget of the fictional city of Auberly among your activities in a budget table with a one-line justification for each entry.
- Session 4, spill response and stakeholders. Write the spill response element, including the notification chain, the time a spill would take to travel from the highway and rail crossing to the intake at normal flow and at flood stage (measure the distance with the map's scale bar), and the number of hours the city can run on stored water at average demand and under a conservation order, using the water system figures in the Project Brief. Then write a short consultation memo with one paragraph each for three stakeholders whose interests differ, such as an upstream farm operator, a county road department, and a downstream neighbor city, stating what each would say about your plan.
- Session 5, staff report and review. Assemble the map, inventory, provisions, budget table, spill response element, and consultation memo into the staff report and finish it within the 1,200-word limit by the middle of the period. Then exchange reports as the teacher assigns, read the report your team will review, and write at least two questions that cite specific provisions or budget lines from it. Use the last minutes to rehearse your own five-minute presentation. Turn in the final staff report and your team's written questions.
- Session 6, hearing. Present to the commission. Each team presents for five minutes and then answers three minutes of questions. The team that reviewed your report sits as the commission for your slot and asks at least two of its prepared questions, and the teacher or any invited guest may ask others.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Rubric
Each criterion is scored on four levels: Emerging, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced.
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Map and delineation | The map marks the intake but the contributing area is missing or drawn without reference to the river network. | The contributing area is drawn but its boundary is not explained, or major land uses are unshaded. | The contributing area is drawn correctly, land uses are shaded and labeled, and the paragraph explains where the boundary runs. | The map also distinguishes the reach nearest the intake and the paragraph explains why land there matters more than land far upstream. |
| Source inventory and risk reasoning | Fewer than 12 sources are listed, or ratings appear without reasoning. | Twelve sources are listed with ratings, but the point and nonpoint labels are inconsistent or the reasoning repeats. | Twelve or more sources are listed and correctly classified, and each rating carries specific reasoning. | Ratings are consistent with each other, and the inventory notes at least one source whose risk depends on the season or on river stage. |
| Ordinance design and authority | Provisions are stated as goals rather than as rules a city could adopt. | Provisions are written as rules, but authority is not named or the off-limits land requirement is unmet. | Three provisions are written as adoptable rules, each names its authority, and at least one reaches land the fictional city of Auberly does not control. | Each provision also names a specific unintended outcome and the plan says how the city would monitor for it. |
| Budget, spill response, and hearing | The $150,000 is unallocated or the spill response element is missing. | The budget is allocated but unjustified, or the spill response omits the notification chain, the travel time, or the stored water figure. | The budget divides the $150,000 with a justification for each line, the spill response gives travel times and stored-water hours worked from the Project Brief figures, and the presentation stays within five minutes. | The team answers commissioner questions with specific figures from its own plan and concedes at least one genuine weakness without abandoning the proposal. |
Differentiation
Support
Provide a partially completed inventory table with four sources already entered and classified, so teams begin milestone 2 with a model of the reasoning expected. Offer a provision template that supplies the sentence structure of an ordinance. For the hearing, give these teams a five-part presentation outline (the problem, the map, the three provisions, the budget, and the spill response) with one minute for each part, and let them bring their written questions for the reviewed team on note cards prepared in session 5.
Extension
Require these teams to add a fourth element to the plan for the fictional city of Auberly: a ten-year funding path showing what happens to the $150,000 program if a state grant that supports it ends after year three. The path must name what the city would cut first and what it would protect.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "contributing area," "intake," "ordinance," and "spill response" with a labeled river diagram and a bilingual glossary card. Allow the consultation memo in milestone 4 to be delivered as three short spoken statements recorded in advance rather than in writing, and provide presentation frames such as "Our first provision would require ___ because ___."
Extensions
Invite a local planner, a utility source water coordinator, or a county conservation district staff member to sit on the commission for session 6 and ask one question of each team within the three-minute question period. If no guest is available, have a second class read the staff reports and vote on which plan they would adopt, then write a one-paragraph explanation of the vote that names the strongest and weakest provision in the winning plan.