The owner of the Sunnyside Towers complex has made a proposal to its manager that all twelve buildings in the Tower complex should actively restrict the water flow to cut off the pertinent cost for extra profit. Plausible and appealing as this argument may look at first glance, several questions that are vital to a meaningful evaluation of the soundness and validity of this argument, are left unanswered in this letter, which will be listed one by one as follows.

First, in advocating for a restriction on the water flow, the owner cited the case of the first three buildings in the complex, who successfully cut off the cost by doing so a month ago. Impressive as this example seems, three questions have to be addressed to fully understand the implication of this case. First, does restriction on water flow will definitely lead to a drop in the water usage of the residents? As the owner has mentioned that it is Sunnyside Corporation that pays for the water usage fee, he/she seemingly believe that a restriction will naturally lead to a drop in water flow and the cost accordingly. However, this assumption is unwarranted, and it is equally possible that the restriction of water flow would force residents to spend more time in water usage, which may even bring up the amount of water usage.

Even if we concede that water usage and the cost will go down in the case of the first three buildings, we have to ask whether the same trick will work again for the other nine buildings in the complex. Providing that the answer to that question is negative and an investigation reveals that a restriction on water usage is either impossible or hard to implement then this plan would apparently be unfavorable. Alternatively, if it turned out that the the fee of other nine buildings are not paid by the Sunnyside Corporation but the residents themselves, then the owner may suffer more financially what than he/she can gain from this scheme.

There are even more questions to ask even if the conditions of all the twelve buildings are analogous or even identical. One such question is how will the residents react to this plan. Admittedly, the owner tries to demonstrate that the policy met little objection in the first three buildings by citing the number of compliances he/she received. However, a low number in complaints does not necessarily mean that people are satisfied. Actually, my concern is that only those who can tolerate this situation had complained about this and those who cannot might have already moved out to other apartments while the poor owner does not know this at all. Therefore, an inquiry into the acceptance of this scheme by residents, for which the change of resident number can be one indicator, is essential for us to evaluate the plan.

Finally, I wonder if the implementation of plan will cause extra expenditure which may yield the whole restriction policy unprofitable. Indeed, it is possible that the plan will cut off the cost as the owner tries to show in his/her proposal. That said, it is in all likelihood that a restriction in water flow may mean extra cost as limited water flow would cause damage to the water supply system.

To sum up, it is tempting to agree with this proposal, as it indeed has collected some impressive evidence. Nonetheless, a comprehensive inquiry into the aforesaid questions is still necessary if we really want the managerial board to consider this proposal seriously and can carry it out without scruple after approval.