argument137 [OB小组] 第12次作业 处理河水与修缮河边设施

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题目：ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.
"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
字数：410          用时：00:26:23          日期：2007-7-24 下午 11:00:17
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In this argument, the author concludes that the Mason City(M City) council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River, since the agency responsible for rivers has announced plans to clean it up, which settles people's worry about its polluted water. Besides, according to a survey of the region's residents, they consistently rank water sports as their favourites. However, after clearly examing the author's reasoning, I find the argument still contains several facets that are questionable.

First of all, there have been the complaints about the quality of the water in the river, which have already affected residents' view towards the river. In spite of the survey which shows water sports are still people's favourite form of recreation here, we cannot ignore the fact that residents here seldom use the Mason River for any kind of recreational activity. People will perhaps subjectively assert that the water in this river is not clean enough to do any sports here. Thus, it's still unknown that whether people will turn back to the water sports on Mason River.

Secondly, the author mentions that the agency responsible for rivers has announced plans to clean up Mason River. However, it's just a plan, which cannot guarantee that the water will be clean again. On one hand, the agency doesn't give us a accurate deadline of when the plan will be finished entirely, on the other hand, by the time the water's clean again, do residents here still miss this river and want to conduct some recreational activity on it? People's hobby is changing year by year, it's possible that during this period of re-cleaning the river, people already find other kinds of favourite form of recreation in Mason City in stead of water sports. In this way, the improvements along the Mason River become useless.

Thirdly, it's not appropriate to make such a final decision that the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for the improvements along the Mason River. According to the above-mentioned possibilities, it may be even better for the council to increase its budget on some other public establishment rather than the publicly owned lands along the river.

To sum up, the conclusion lacks of credibility. Regardless of who the author is, he or she has overlooked or chosen to ignore some aspects of his or her conclusion. To strengthen the conclusion, the author should give more evidence about the above-mentioned possibilities.