The town of Springhill frequently must declare a water emergency, making it temporarily unlawful to use water for such nonessential purposes as car washing.
Conclusion
Introducing permanent economic incentives for water conservation could avoid water emergencies in Springhill.
Intermediate Conclusion
Springhill currently discourages conservation.
Evidence (because)
Each household pays a flat fee for any amount of water under a usage threshold, and a higher rate only after this threshold is surpassed.
Evaluate
This argument involves a recommendation: the plan is to introduce permanent economic incentives for water conservation to achieve the goal of avoiding water emergencies. The argument highlights how the current pricing structure discourages conservation because people are incentivized to use less water only after a certain threshold.
That's not exactly discouraging conservation, but the author seems to be implying that you only get encouraged to conserve once you cross that threshold and the pricy per liter rates kick in (she must be assuming that most people don't cross that threshold).
To strengthen this argument, we need to emphasize the inefficiency or problems with the current pricing system and illustrate how an alternative approach would provide better motivation for conservation.
Goal
Let's identify an answer that reinforces the claim that the current pricing model fails to encourage conservation and that implementing economic incentives would better prevent water emergencies.