Quiz & test questions Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics
Financing Safe Water in Brackenridge: A Policy and Economics Quiz
A grade 9 quiz mixing multiple-choice, short-answer, and computation items on water infrastructure funding, affordability, and the outcomes of delaying pipe replacement.
Objectives
- Students will identify key facts about US water infrastructure condition and funding needs.
- Students will calculate per-household costs and an affordability percentage.
- Students will evaluate the outcomes of delaying pipe replacement.
Vocabulary
- Deferred maintenance
- Repair work that keeps getting put off to save money now. The longer it waits, the worse and more expensive the problems become.
Also: affordability, rate increase, infrastructure, burden
Teacher overview
This 30-minute quiz is worth 24 points and checks a unit on water infrastructure, funding, and affordability. It mixes multiple-choice, short-answer, and computation items, several built around the fictional city of Brackenridge, so students both recall key facts and apply them. The computation items ask students to find a per-household cost and an affordability percentage from stated figures.
Assessment
- (2 points) The ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave US drinking water infrastructure which grade?
- A) A
- B) C-
- C) F
- D) B+
- (2 points) About how often does a water main break somewhere in the United States?
- A) Every two minutes
- B) Every two hours
- C) Once a day
- D) Once a week
- (3 points) Define "deferred maintenance" in your own words, and give one example involving water infrastructure.
- (4 points) The fictional city of Brackenridge must raise $9 million over 10 years to replace pipes, spread evenly, and it has 15,000 households. How much does each household pay per year?
- (4 points) A Brackenridge household earns $30,000 a year and pays $1,200 a year for water and sewer service. A widely used rule of thumb, built by adding two EPA benchmarks, treats combined water and sewer costs above about 4.5% of household income as a high burden. What percent of this household's income goes to water and sewer, and is it above the threshold?
- (2 points) EPA estimates about $625 billion in drinking-water investment is needed over 20 years. About what share of that is for distribution pipes?
- A) One-tenth
- B) One-third
- C) Two-thirds
- D) All of it
- (3 points) Combined US water and sewer bills rose about 24% from 2019 to 2024. Explain one reason bills can rise faster than many households' incomes, and why that raises an affordability concern.
- (4 points) A city keeps rates low now by delaying pipe replacement. Using the idea of intended and unintended outcomes, explain one benefit and one long-term cost of that choice.
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: B) C-. The 2025 report card gave US drinking water a C-, as stated in the unit's infrastructure facts.
- Answer: A) Every two minutes. A water main breaks in the United States roughly every two minutes, which signals how much of the pipe network is aging.
- Answer: Deferred maintenance is putting off needed repairs or replacement to a later time. Accept any water example, such as leaving old water mains in the ground until they break instead of replacing them on schedule.
- Answer: $60 per household. For the city of Brackenridge, $9 million divided across 10 years is $900,000 per year, and $900,000 divided among 15,000 households is $60 per household each year.
- Answer: 4.0%, which is below the threshold. The household's $1,200 divided by $30,000 income is 0.04, or 4.0%, just under the 4.5% high-burden threshold.
- Answer: C) Two-thirds. Of the roughly $625 billion in needed drinking-water investment over 20 years, about two-thirds is for distribution pipes.
- Answer: Accept answers noting that replacing aging pipes and meeting new standards is costly, so utilities raise rates, and the roughly 24% rise in bills from 2019 to 2024 outpaced many incomes. When bills climb faster than income, water takes a larger share of a household's budget, which is an affordability concern.
- Answer: Accept one benefit and one long-term cost. Intended benefit: lower rates now, which eases household bills in the short term. Unintended cost: pipes keep aging and can fail, leading to emergency repairs, service outages, and higher spending later, as delayed maintenance builds up.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a fact sheet with the four key figures (C- grade, main break every two minutes, $625 billion need, 24% bill rise) for students to reference on the recall items, and give the division setups for items 4 and 5 with the numbers already placed.
Extension
Ask students to rework item 5 for a fictional Brackenridge household that earns $24,000 instead of $30,000, decide whether that household is above the 4.5% threshold, and explain in one sentence why the same water bill can be affordable for one household and a burden for another.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "deferred maintenance," "affordability," and "burden" with simple definitions and one example each. Allow the short-answer items to be completed with a provided sentence frame, such as "One reason bills rise faster than income is ___, which is a problem because ___."