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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: 221
TIME: 00:24:03
DATE: 2010/7/9 19:31:56
The author urges the Mason City (MC) council to increase their budget to ameliorate the public lands along the Mason River (MR). His/her suggestion mainly rely on a survey demonstrating citizens' favorite of water sports, the complaints about quality of water in MR and the plans to clean up MR. However, his/her reasoning and therefore suggestion suffers from many logic flaws.
The author presumptuously relates the complaints with the survey, and thus implicitly conclude that it is the inferior quality of water that makes citizens seldom use MR. The author merely mentions these complaints, without the number of dissatisfied people. We have to be skeptical about whether these complaints are capable to demonstrate a widely spreading attitude. Maybe only very few people in MC have complains, while others, as major, totally not.
Furthermore, even assuming that the quality of the water in MR is disturbing a large number of residents here, it is not necessarily the reason why people do not like to use MR for recreational activity. Perhaps MR is not the only river in MC, namly another river is feasible alternatives for recreation. It is even fair to imagine other rivers are more agreeable places, regardless of water pollution in MR. In this scenario, residents would not be inclined to play in MR even if the agency cleans up MR.
Besides, whether the project of agency to clean MR would make a success is a question. According to the author, the agency just announced their plans. When putting these plans intro practice, some practical problems may occur in pertinent engineering. To perform their plans well, the agency need thorough investigation about the polluting condition of MR, as well as hydrological regime there. And during engineering, capable engineers, workers and managing officials are required. And don’t forget that adequate funds are prerequisite. Since the author doesn’t provide such information, we cannot be convinced that the cleaning up project will be accomplished, and invite increased use of recreation in MR as the author predicts.
Finally, under the condition that MR is cleaned up well and more people arrive there for entertainment, the author’s urgency to promote expense for improvements of common land there is still unwarranted. The author tells us nothing about exiting facilities for entertainment in MR, or how many people are expected to deploy them at one time, thus we have no ground to judge whether the facilities there are sufficient or not. Moreover, it is a reasonable conjecture that number of people playing in MR will increase gradually, rather than immediately after MR is refreshed. Considering this, deciding to promote budget when the plans are just proclaimed turns to be especially hasty.
To conclude, insofar as the evidences the author provides, complaints on the quality of water in MR cannot strongly become responsible for the seldom use of this river for entertainment. And whether more people will go to MR after agency’s plans are finished is open to question. So it has been with the author’s urgency for budget to improve common lands. |
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