argument137 [Jet小组]第十一次作业

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Argument 137.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."

当前，Mason市很少利用附近的Mason河来进行娱乐活动，尽管对该地区居的几次调查一直指出他们把水上运动（游泳、垂钓和划船）作为他们最喜欢的娱乐形式。由于曾经存在对于这条河水质的投诉，居一定是因为他们认为河水不够干净才不在这里活动。但这种情况就会改变了：我们地区负责河流管理的部门公布了澄清Mason河的计划。因此，河流的娱乐用途很可能将会增加，因而Mason市的市委有必要增加用于改Mason河沿岸公共土地的预算。

WORDS:462 TIME:50min DATE:25/02/2008


The author of the editorial asserts that the Mason City(MC for short) council should increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River(short for MR). At first glance, this opinion seems to be somewhat convincing, but further reflections tell me that I cannot agree with it for the following reasons.

To begin with, there's lack of evidence showing that recreational use of the river is likely to increase even if it can possibly be recovered to the original status. Since the procedure of survey is free from clear, we cannot safely believe in the result of it. Information about the suvey's catholicity, randomicity and timeliness is not available. We just know most of the respondents prefer water sports, but are aware of nothing about how many people engage in this survey, what's the constitute of the informant, and whether the result last for a long time.

In addition, no evidence shows that agency of MC could handle the problem. Firstly, the efficiency of the agency is unknown. Announcements and plans are just wishes, instead of certain facts. It is common that an agency will more or less aggrandize its ability when bidding. However, after it succeeds, the promise usually meets a discount. Though it is arbitrary to acclaim that the agency responsible for Mason river will break its words in some extents, we cannot deny the possibility. Secondly, it is easy to damage the environment but hard to recover it. Sometimes, despite that a agency spares no effort to meet the requirements, it may still lose at last. In fact, the difficulty of cleaning a river is often underestimated. It is easy to turn fuels to gases, while it is difficult to collect gases to form fuels; similarly, recovering a river takes much more time and efforts than damaging it.

What's more, evidences proving that the publicly owned lands need improvement are not available. Even if the recreational use of river will increase and the MR will be covered to the original status, the widely developed water entertainment does not necessarily mean equally flourish on the lands. Firstly, some entertainments, such as boating, driftage and sightseeing, usually happens all on the water. If people have no interest in disembarking to have a rest, there's no need to improve the facilities on the lands along MR. Secondly, the equipments on the land may be in sufficiently good condition. Let's suppose that there're full of outdoor stools, bars, tea houses, restaurants and sauna centers originally, I don't think increasing the budget for improvements will be advisable.

In sum, this is a weak argument. The statement given merely scratches the surface of what must be said about whether to improve the facilities on the publicly owned lands along Mason River.