Reading passage Grade 7 Social Studies & Civics
Elm Harbor's Lead Pipe Inventory: A Federal Rule Reaches Home
A grade 7 informational passage following a fictional city's lead service line inventory, tracing how a federal drinking-water rule becomes a local public works project.
Objectives
- Students will identify the steps a city follows to comply with a federal lead service line rule.
- Students will explain why public reporting of test results and pipe materials matters for civic trust.
Vocabulary
- Service line
- A service line is the small pipe that connects the water main under the street to the plumbing inside one home or building. It is the last leg of the trip water makes to your tap.
- Corrosion control
- Treatment that keeps water from slowly eating away at the inside of pipes. It helps stop metals like lead from getting into drinking water.
Also: inventory, compliance
Teacher overview
Federal drinking-water rules are written in Washington, D.C., but they take effect on specific streets, in specific basements, and at specific water meters. This passage follows a public works employee in the fictional city of Elm Harbor through the practical, unglamorous work of complying with a real federal rule: identifying which of the city's pipes are made of lead and reporting that information to residents. It gives students a concrete look at how a national policy becomes a local project with a deadline, a budget, and a public report that anyone in Elm Harbor can read.
Passage
Maria Delgado works for the Elm Harbor Department of Public Works. She has worked there for eleven years. Most of that time, she repaired water main breaks and checked fire hydrants. This year, her main job changed. A federal rule now covers every water utility in the country. It is called the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. The rule requires each utility to complete an inventory. An inventory is a complete list. Maria's utility must list the material of every service line. A service line is the short pipe that connects the water main under the street to one building. Maria's new job is to help sort Elm Harbor's service lines into three groups: lead, safer material, and unknown.
Lead pipes are not a new problem. Lead was a common pipe material for much of the twentieth century. Back then, people did not fully understand its health risks to children's growing brains. Lead was later banned from new plumbing. Even so, about 4 million lead service lines remain in water systems across the country, according to a 2025 EPA estimate. EPA built that number from inventories like the one Maria is working on. It added the lines utilities reported as needing replacement to its prediction of how many unknown lines are lead. These pipes are not spread out evenly. They sit mostly in older neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are often lower-income communities. In these areas, old property records can be hard to find.
Maria's inventory work is like detective work. Some buildings have clear paperwork. City records or old permits state the pipe material directly. Maria's team just checks that the record matches what is still in the ground. Other buildings have no clear record. This is true for much of Elm Harbor's oldest neighborhoods. For these buildings, Maria's team must inspect the pipe in person. They look at it where it enters a basement or crawl space. Sometimes they scratch the pipe with a coin or key. Lead is soft, so it leaves a bright, silvery mark. Iron and copper do not.
Once a pipe is confirmed as lead, or its material stays unknown, it goes on a public list. Any Elm Harbor resident can look up their own address on this list. This public reporting is not a small detail of the rule. It is one of the rule's main goals. There is also a key number at the center of this work: the lead action level. Right now, that level is 15 parts per billion. Water testing above that level triggers a required response from the utility. The action level is not a safe level. EPA's health goal for lead in drinking water is zero. In 2027, the action level drops to 10 parts per billion. That stricter number will flag more homes for attention. The same federal rule requires Elm Harbor to replace nearly all of its lead pipes within ten years.
For Maria, the inventory is just the first step. It is also the least visible step of a much bigger, more expensive project. Knowing exactly which addresses have lead pipes helps Elm Harbor in three ways. The city can plan its replacement work. It can apply for state and federal funding. It can prioritize buildings where lead exposure is most dangerous, such as schools and homes with young children. Residents once had no way to know what kind of pipe carried water into their kitchen. Now they can check a public map. They can see the answer, plus a timeline for when their street's lead pipes will come out of the ground.
Questions
What federal rule does the passage describe? What task must every water utility complete under this rule?
What two methods does Maria's team use to find out what a service line is made of?
The passage says public reporting is "one of the rule's main goals," not a small detail. Why?
Based on the passage, why do lead service lines sit mostly in certain neighborhoods instead of being spread evenly across a city?
What happens to the lead action level between now and 2027? What does the passage say that change will do?
According to the passage, what three things does knowing which addresses have lead pipes let Elm Harbor's department do?
Use evidence from the passage. Explain how a federal policy made far from Elm Harbor changes the daily work of a local employee like Maria.
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: The Lead and Copper Rule Improvements, which requires every water utility to complete a full inventory of the material used in every service line.
Answer: Checking existing city records or old permits when they clearly state the pipe material, and physically inspecting the pipe (sometimes scratching it with a coin or key) when no clear record exists.
Answer: The passage states that public reporting lets any resident look up their own address, which gives residents direct access to information about their own risk rather than requiring them to simply trust an unverified assurance from the utility.
Answer: The passage explains that lead pipes were common for much of the twentieth century, so older neighborhoods, which are often lower-income communities with harder-to-track records, are the ones most likely to still have them.
Answer: The lead action level drops from 15 to 10 parts per billion in 2027, a stricter standard that the passage says will flag more homes for attention.
Answer: It lets Elm Harbor plan its replacement work, apply for state and federal funding, and prioritize buildings such as schools and homes with young children where lead exposure poses the greatest risk.
Answer: Answers will vary but should reference that a rule written by federal regulators (the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements) turned into Maria's specific new job duties, tracing service lines house by house, showing that a national policy decision directly reshapes the daily tasks of local government workers.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Provide a simple flowchart (Federal rule → City inventory → Public report → Replacement plan) for students to reference while answering the questions, and allow question 7 to be answered as a short spoken response instead of writing.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask students to research, using only the passage and teacher-provided facts rather than outside sources, what information a resident would likely want to see on a public lead-service-line map beyond just "lead" or "not lead," and to justify their answer.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "service line," "inventory," and "compliance" with a labeled diagram showing a water main, a service line, and a house. Allow students to answer literal questions (1, 2, 5, 6) with short phrases rather than full sentences.