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Lesson plan Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics

Wickhaven's Service Line Ordinance: Who Pays for the Pipe?

A 55-minute grade 9 civics lesson in which students price two lead service line replacement plans for a fictional city and judge which one meets the federal deadline.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain how ownership of a water service line is divided between a utility and a homeowner.
  2. Students will calculate the total cost and the funding timeline of two competing replacement ordinances.
  3. Students will evaluate which ordinance meets the federal replacement deadline and who bears its cost.

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.
Action level
A trigger number in lead and copper testing. If too many homes test above this level, the utility must take steps like improving treatment and telling the public.

Also: ordinance, surcharge, cost share

Teacher overview

A lead service line usually has two owners. The utility owns the section under the street, and the property owner owns the section running under the yard to the house, which means no single government can order the whole pipe out of the ground without deciding who pays for the private half. This lesson uses the fictional city of Wickhaven to price that decision two ways and test each plan against the federal requirement that systems replace nearly all lead service lines within ten years. The misconception this lesson corrects is the common student belief that a city can simply "replace the lead pipes" as one municipal act; students frequently assume the utility already owns the entire line, and they are surprised that a partial replacement can leave lead in the ground on the homeowner's side.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Project a simple cross-section sketch showing a water main under a street, a curb stop at the property line, and a pipe continuing under a lawn into a house. Ask students to mark where they think city responsibility ends. Take three or four answers without correcting them, then reveal that in most systems the property owner owns the pipe from the curb stop to the house.

Direct instruction (12 min): Explain the federal frame using only the two rule facts in this lesson: the lead action level is 15 ppb and drops to 10 ppb in 2027, and the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require systems to replace nearly all lead service lines within ten years. Note that EPA estimates about 4 million lead service lines remain in US systems, based on the service line inventories utilities reported in 2025. Then introduce the fictional city of Wickhaven and put its cost table on the board: 4,200 lead lines, $6,000 to replace one whole line, split into $2,500 for the city's half and $3,500 for the homeowner's half, and 15,000 water accounts that can be billed a surcharge.

Guided practice (10 min): Model item 1 and item 2 of the handout at the board so students see the two moves the rest of the work depends on, which are multiplying a per-unit cost by the number of units and converting a monthly surcharge into annual revenue. Do not work items 3 through 9 for the class.

Independent practice (18 min): Students complete the Student Handout individually or in pairs. Circulate and watch for two predictable errors: forgetting to multiply the monthly surcharge by twelve, and treating the income-based discount in Plan B as a discount on the whole $6,000 rather than on the $3,500 homeowner portion.

Formative check and closure (10 min): Poll the class with a show of hands on the question "Does Plan A, as written, meet the ten-year federal deadline?" Do not move on until at least three-quarters of the class answers no and one student can state the number of years the surcharge would actually need. Close by asking two students to read their answers to item 9 aloud, then state the lesson's takeaway in one sentence: an ordinance that is affordable per household can still fail the deadline it was written to meet.

Wickhaven's Service Line Ordinance: Who Pays for the Pipe? — Grade 9 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The fictional city of Wickhaven has 4,200 lead service lines. A service line is the small pipe that carries water from the main under the street into a house. In Wickhaven, the city owns the half under the street and the property owner owns the half under the yard. Replacing one whole line costs $6,000 in this scenario, made up of $2,500 for the city's half and $3,500 for the owner's half. Wickhaven bills 15,000 water accounts each month.

Federal rules that apply: the lead action level is 15 ppb and drops to 10 ppb in 2027, and systems must replace nearly all lead service lines within 10 years.

Plan A. The city replaces every whole line at its own expense and pays for the work with a surcharge of $4.50 per month on each of its 15,000 accounts.

Plan B. The city pays only for its own half of each line. Each owner pays the $3,500 for the yard section. Households earning less than $48,000 a year pay 25 percent of that $3,500, and the city covers the rest for those households.

  1. Under Plan A, what is the total cost of replacing all 4,200 lines at $6,000 each?
  2. Under Plan A, how much revenue does the $4.50 monthly surcharge raise from 15,000 accounts in one year?
  3. Using your answers to items 1 and 2, how many years of that surcharge would be needed to pay the full replacement cost? Round to the nearest whole year.
  4. Let s be a monthly surcharge in dollars. Write a one-variable equation stating that 15,000 accounts paying s each month for 10 years raise the full cost you found in item 1, then solve the equation for s.
  5. Under Plan B, a Wickhaven household earning $41,000 a year pays 25 percent of the $3,500 owner section. How much does that household pay?
  6. Using your answer to item 5, how much of that household's $3,500 owner section does the city cover?
  7. Under Plan B, a Wickhaven household earning $52,000 a year pays the full $3,500. Express that amount as a percentage of the household's annual income, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent.
  8. Using your answer to item 3, explain in two or three sentences why Plan A as written would not meet the federal ten-year replacement requirement.
  9. Explain one reason Plan B could leave lead pipe in the ground even though the city is willing to pay for its own half of every line.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: $25,200,000.
    4,200 lines multiplied by $6,000 per line gives $25,200,000.
  2. Answer: $810,000 per year.
    The surcharge raises 15,000 accounts times $4.50, which is $67,500 per month, and $67,500 times 12 months is $810,000 per year.
  3. Answer: 31 years.
    Dividing $25,200,000 by $810,000 per year gives 31.1 years, which rounds to 31 years.
  4. Answer: $14 per month.
    The equation is 15,000 times 12 times 10 times s equals 25,200,000, or 1,800,000s = 25,200,000. Dividing both sides by 1,800,000 gives s = 14.
  5. Answer: $875.
    Twenty-five percent of $3,500 is 0.25 times 3,500, which is $875.
  6. Answer: $2,625.
    The city covers the remainder of the owner section, so $3,500 minus $875 is $2,625.
  7. Answer: 6.7 percent.
    Dividing $3,500 by $52,000 gives 0.0673, which is 6.73 percent and rounds to 6.7 percent of annual income.
  8. Answer: It would take about three times as long as the deadline allows. At $4.50 per month the surcharge needs roughly 31 years to raise the full cost, while the federal requirement is that nearly all lines come out within 10 years, so Wickhaven would have to raise the surcharge, borrow against future revenue, or find outside grant money.
  9. Answer: A homeowner may refuse or be unable to pay the $3,500 share. When that happens the crew can replace only the city's half, which leaves lead pipe under the yard, and a partial replacement can also disturb the remaining pipe and release lead into the household's water.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a partially completed cost table for the fictional city of Wickhaven with items 1 and 2 already filled in, so the independent work starts at item 3. Provide a worked percentage example using a different household income and a different bill amount before item 7, and allow calculators throughout.

Extension

Ask students to design a third ordinance for Wickhaven that meets the ten-year deadline while keeping every household's out-of-pocket cost under $1,000. They must state the surcharge, show the equation that funds the full $25,200,000, and name one group that would object.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "service line," "curb stop," "surcharge," and "action level" using the labeled cross-section sketch from the hook, with the city portion and the owner portion shaded differently. Provide sentence frames for items 8 and 9: "Plan A would take about ___ years, which is longer than ___ because ___," and "Some lead pipe could stay in the ground because ___."

Extensions

Have students find how their own state or water utility divides service line ownership, using only the utility's published customer-service documents, and write a short comparison to the fictional split used in Wickhaven. A second option is a five-minute mock council comment period in which four students speak as a retiree on a fixed income, a landlord who owns twelve rental houses, the water department director, and a parent of a young child, each arguing for Plan A or Plan B.