ARGUMENT112 [Victors小组]7月11日作业 by H-Kevin

H-KevinUID: 2182070

TOPIC: ARGUMENT112 - The following proposal was raised at a meeting of the Franklin City Council.

"Franklin Airport, which is on a bay, is notorious for flight delays. The airport management wants to build new runways to increase capacity but can only do so by filling in 900 acres of the bay. The Bay Coalition organization objects that filling in the bay will disrupt tidal patterns and harm wildlife. But the airport says that if it is permitted to build its new runways, it will fund the restoration of 1,000 acres of wetlands in areas of the bay that have previously been damaged by industrialization. This plan should be adopted, for it is necessary to reduce the flight delays, and the wetlands restoration part of the plan ensures that the bay's environment will actually be helped rather than hurt."

WORDS: 478          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2007-7-13

The memo argues that the flight delay in Franklin airport would solved by filling in 900 acres of the bay and the bay's environment will actually be helped rather than hurt by the fund from airport. The memo is flawed in several critical aspects.
To begin with, we do not know whether the capacity on which all the action is based is the only or main reason for flight delays. Perhaps the reason for this is the problem from the management that they do not have the proper skill on arrange all the flight time, so a lots of flights want to take off at the same time. Or perhaps the reason is that the environment around Franklin airport is often not good enough for flight, and there is always a lot of fogs due to the environment pollution or ecosystem destroy.

Also, even I concede that the problem of delay should be the number of capacity; we still do not know whether these 900 acres of bay is enough for their needing. If the needing of capacity is more than 900 acres, this filling not only could not satisfy solving the delay problem but also would destroy the local ecosystem. Maybe the suitable way for Franklin Airport is rebuild a new airport in other widely area.

More over, the fund for restoration of 1000 acres of wetlands is also problematic in two aspects. First, in lighting of the notorious of Franklin airport and the needing of rebuild a new airport, we should considering that airport maybe lack of money due to the decreased customers influenced by notorious and increased cost in filling the bay. Second, we do not know whether this fund could cause a proper result in this wetland. We do know that the restoration of an ecosystem always need many years even one century, hence I doubt that whether this fund would really recover this wetland.

Finally, the memo neglect that whether the restoration of wetland would counteract the damage caused by the filling in 900 acres of the bay. The memo cites that filling the bay will disrupt tidal patterns and harm wildlife, however the memo have not mention that the effect of restoration of that wetland. Perhaps the restoration of wetland still could not change disrupting tidal patterns and harming wildlife.

In conclusion, the memo is poorly supported. To strengthen it the author should convince me that the flight delay is caused not by other mistake and problems but the capacity of Franklin Airport. The author should also provide evidence that the wetland would be repaired by enough fund and return to the original feature like that before the damage form industrialization. Finally, to better assess the memo, we would like to know whether this disrupting tidal patterns and harming wildlife would disappeared or counteract by the restoration of wetland.