Ecologist: The municipal government's newly proposed desalination plant represents a shortsighted approach to water management. While it addresses the immediate freshwater shortage, the plant will discharge hypersaline brine directly into the coastal estuary. Therefore, the construction of this plant will inevitably trigger a catastrophic collapse of the local commercial fishery.
A deductive argument can be made formally valid by supplying unstated sufficient assumptions. Arrange the following statements to construct a valid deductive chain that fully justifies the ecologist's conclusion.
Instructions: Begin with the ecologist's explicit factual premise regarding the plant's operation. Then, sequence the unstated conditional assumptions such that the necessary condition of one directly triggers the sufficient condition of the next. Finally, end with the argument's main conclusion.
- 1The newly proposed desalination plant will discharge hypersaline brine directly into the coastal estuary.
- 2Any facility that discharges hypersaline brine directly into a coastal estuary inherently decimates the indigenous phytoplankton population.
- 3The decimation of an estuary's indigenous phytoplankton population inevitably leads to the starvation of foundational baitfish species.
- 4The starvation of foundational baitfish species strictly guarantees a catastrophic collapse of the local commercial fishery.
- 5Therefore, the construction of the newly proposed desalination plant will inevitably trigger a catastrophic collapse of the local commercial fishery.