Argument137 求拍，往死里拍，谢谢

hooeiUID: 2543579

TOPIC: 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."
WORDS: 407          TIME: 00:35:00          DATE: 2009-8-15 18:19:18
In this editorial the author recommends that the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River. To support his or her recommendation, the author notes that, despite of the survey about recreational activity of Mason city's residents, they will avoid the river because of the water quality. And the author also cites the plan of the agency about cleaning the river. For several reasons, I find the recommendation logically unconvincing.
A threshold problem of the argument involves the reliability of the survey. The author provides no information about how was the survey conducted and about  the representativeness of the respondents. Without such evidence, it is entirely possible that the survey only covered the residents near swimming pools and their responds didn't represent the overall people of Mason city. If this is the case, the author cannot draw any conclusion about the preference of Mason City' residents, let alone the reason why they seldom use the river.
Even assuming that the people in the city prefer water sport related activities, the author's assertion that residents avoided the river because the river is not clean enough based on the complaints is still unwarranted. Perhaps there are lots of swimming pools in the city and residents needn't to drive to the river for this activities. Or perhaps the river is too far from the city and the road leading there is still at low levels. Any scenario, if true, would undermine the author's conclusion about why people don't use the river frequently.
Even if the quality of river is the main factor causing the seldom use, the author also provides no strong support that the recommendation of increasing budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands to be necessary. Perhaps the river lands is still in good condition. Or perhaps there is already enough money for the improvement of publicly owned lands. In short, the author fails to provide any evidence that more money is needed for improving the river lands.
In sum, the argument is not strong supported. To convince me that the cause for seldom use of Mason River is water quality, the author needs to provide the information about how many water sports relative spots are there in Mason City. To better bolster the recommendation, the author should also provide sound evidence that the situation of river land is not good enough for recreational activities.