Writing prompt Grade 12 Social Studies & Civics
Should Ellingsby Meter Its 1,900 Unmetered Homes?
A grade 12 argument writing prompt on a fictional town's choice to meter flat-rate homes, with background evidence, an organizer, an exemplar, and a rubric.
Objectives
- Students will state a defensible claim about a municipal metering decision and support it with evidence from the background.
- Students will answer a counterclaim that a reasonable opponent would actually raise.
- Students will attach a condition to their recommendation and justify why it belongs there.
Vocabulary
Key words: flat rate, metered rate, conservation, cross-subsidy, customer assistance, deferred project
Teacher overview
A water meter is a billing device, but it is also a price signal, and a household that pays the same amount no matter how much it uses has no financial reason to fix a running toilet. Communities that still bill some customers a flat rate face a decision that mixes conservation, fairness between neighbors, capital cost, and the privacy of data that did not exist when the pipes went in. This prompt gives students the numbers and the stakeholder positions from the fictional town of Ellingsby and asks for an argument essay addressed to the council. The tension is genuine, because the households that would save money under metering and the households that would pay more are not the same households.
Prompt
Background. The town of Ellingsby is a fictional town with 6,000 homes on its water system. About 4,100 of them have meters and pay for the water they use. The other 1,900 are older homes with no meters. Those homes pay a flat rate of $58 a month no matter how much water they use.
The town's utility reports these figures. Metering the remaining homes would cost about $1,100 for each connection, or about $2,090,000 in all. Unmetered homes use about 210 gallons a day on average. Metered homes use about 150 gallons a day. For comparison, EPA WaterSense reports that the average US household uses about 300 gallons a day. If the unmetered homes used water the way metered homes do, the town would save about 114,000 gallons a day.
Ellingsby also has a new well planned for the next decade at a cost of about $4,300,000. The utility says lower demand could push that project back by several years.
Three positions have been filed with the council. The utility supports metering and says flat-rate customers are subsidized by metered ones. A neighborhood association in the older district opposes it, because large families and households with several people in one home would see bills rise the most, and many of those homes are on fixed incomes. A resident group raises a different objection: the new meters report readings every hour, which shows when a house is empty, and the town has no policy on who may see that data or how long it is kept. The utility estimates a customer assistance program for low-income households would cost about $90,000 a year.
Your task. Write an argument essay addressed to the Ellingsby Town Council taking a position on whether the town should meter the 1,900 unmetered homes. Support your claim with at least three pieces of evidence from the background. Address at least one counterclaim that a reasonable opponent would raise, and answer it. Then recommend one condition the council should attach to your position, and explain why that condition belongs there. Write four to six paragraphs.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before drafting. Each row becomes at least one sentence in your essay, and each row matches a line in the rubric.
| Section | What you write here |
|---|---|
| Claim | One sentence naming your position on metering the 1,900 homes in the fictional town of Ellingsby. |
| Reason 1 and evidence | Your strongest reason, plus the figure or stakeholder position from the background that supports it. |
| Reason 2 and evidence | Your second reason, plus a different piece of evidence. Do not reuse the evidence from reason 1. |
| Reason 3 and evidence | Your third reason, plus a third piece of evidence. |
| Counterclaim | The strongest argument against your position, stated fairly and named with the group that holds it. |
| Rebuttal | Why your position still holds, or what it concedes to the counterclaim without giving up the claim. |
| Condition | One condition you want the council to attach, stated as something the council would vote on. |
| Why the condition belongs | The specific problem in the background that your condition answers. |
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 council should meter the remaining 1,900 homes in the town of Ellingsby, but only alongside an assistance program and a written data policy adopted in the same vote.
The strongest reason is that the current arrangement makes some customers pay for water other customers use. The 4,100 metered homes pay for every gallon, while the 1,900 flat-rate homes pay $58 a month whether they use 100 gallons a day or 400. Because unmetered homes average 210 gallons a day against 150 for metered homes, the flat-rate district is using about 40 percent more water per home while paying a fixed amount. That difference does not reflect a moral failing by anyone in the older district, because a flat price gives a household no information about how much water it uses.
The second reason is capital cost. Metering the district would cost about $2,090,000. The well the town expects to build costs about $4,300,000. If metering moves those homes toward the usage of metered homes, the town saves roughly 114,000 gallons a day and can postpone the larger project for several years. Spending the smaller amount to defer the larger one is a defensible use of ratepayer money, and the meters keep working after the deferral ends.
The third reason is that a meter finds leaks. A household paying a flat rate has no bill that would reveal a running toilet or a broken irrigation line, and neither does the utility. Metered accounts generate a record that flags continuous flow, which converts an invisible loss into a repair.
The neighborhood association raises the serious objection. Large households in the older district would see their bills rise, and many of those residents are on fixed incomes. This is the real cost of the policy, and it should not be minimized. The answer is not to abandon metering but to price it honestly: the utility estimates a customer assistance program at about $90,000 a year, which is small next to a $4,300,000 well, and the council can size the program to the households that the transition actually moves above their current bill. A conversion that raises a fixed-income family's bill with no assistance available is a policy failure even if the meters are correct.
That is why my recommended condition is a single ordinance covering both the assistance program and the meter data. The council should adopt, in the same vote as the meters, a funded assistance program and a written rule stating who may see hourly readings, how long they are kept, and what process is required before they are released to anyone outside the utility. The resident group's objection is not hypothetical, because hourly readings do show when a house is empty, and a town that installs the meters first and writes the rules later will write them under pressure. Metering is the right decision, and the conditions are what make it a fair one.
Rubric
Each criterion is scored on four levels: Emerging, Developing, Proficient, and Advanced.
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No position is stated, or the position shifts. | A position is stated but only in general terms. | A clear position on metering is stated in the opening and held throughout. | The claim is stated with its limits, so the reader knows exactly what is and is not being argued. |
| Evidence and reasoning | Fewer than two pieces of background evidence appear. | Two pieces appear, but the reasoning does not connect them to the claim. | Three or more distinct pieces of evidence appear, each tied to a stated reason. | Evidence is weighed against other evidence, and the essay explains why one figure matters more than another. |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No counterclaim appears. | A counterclaim is named but answered with a dismissal. | The strongest counterclaim is stated fairly, attributed to the group that holds it, and answered. | The rebuttal concedes what is true in the counterclaim and shows why the claim survives anyway. |
| Recommended condition | No condition is offered. | A condition is offered but is not something the council could vote on. | A specific, votable condition is offered and tied to a problem in the background. | The condition is designed to answer the counterclaim, and the essay explains that connection. |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs are unordered and errors interfere with meaning. | Structure is present but transitions are missing. | Four to six organized paragraphs, formal address to the council, and few errors. | Structure serves the argument, with a closing that names the trade-off rather than restating the claim. |
Differentiation
Support
Provide the organizer with the claim row completed for each of the two positions, so students choose a side rather than generate a claim. Supply a bank of the background figures from the fictional town of Ellingsby on a separate card, and allow a three-paragraph essay in place of four to six.
Extension
Require these students to write the neighborhood association's response to their own essay in one paragraph, then revise their rebuttal to answer it. Students may also propose a phased conversion schedule and explain which households it protects first.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "flat rate," "meter," "subsidize," and "assistance program" using a simple two-column picture of two houses with identical bills and different water use. Provide sentence frames for the counterclaim and rebuttal rows: "Opponents argue that ___, and they are right that ___." and "Even so, ___, because ___." Allow students to draft the organizer in their first language before writing the essay in English.
Extensions
Have students locate the rate schedule of a real water utility and identify whether it bills by meter, by flat rate, or by a mix, then write a paragraph comparing that structure with the fictional Ellingsby proposal. A second option is to research what a utility does with hourly meter data and draft the data policy their essay recommended as three numbered ordinance clauses.