We see that Alexander is stating that the chemical waste dump should be cleaned IMMEDIATELY. He states that they have a PRESSING OBLIGATION to redress the harm they have done to local forests and wildlife.
Teresa responds by explaining that the town's FIRST PRIORITY is the health of its people and so they should not spend their resources on correcting the dump (even if it was environmentally disastrous), unless it present a significant health hazard to people - and in that case, there is only a need to remove the hazard.
So, clearly, Alexander believes that there is an obligation to fix the harm that has been done to local forests and wildlife by the dump, whereas Teresa only believes that the damage should be cleaned up if it poses a threat to human health, i.e. answer choice (D).
The words "environmentally disastrous" were never used by Alexander, so it is even a stretch to say that Alexander believes that what happened was ENVIRONMENTALLY DISASTROUS. However, even if you were to take his underlying tone and urgency to prove that he believes it was environmentally disastrous, we have no idea whether Teresa believes it was or wasn't. She merely gives the hypothetical that even if it was environmentally disastrous, they should not spend their resources on correcting it unless it bodes a significant threat to human health. We do not know whether Teresa believes it is disastrous or not. She uses "even if" to show how strongly she believes that the priority should be on human health regardless of how bad the dump was to the environment. Thus, answer choice (E) is not correct.
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Julie-VAugust 21, 2019
can you expand the explanation of (D) further by addressing the part that talks about "if that damage poses no significant health hazard to people"? I thought that since Alexander didn't seem to talk about the potential affect on humans then answer choices like (C) and (D) would be eliminated. I'm not sure if the answer explanation is saying that Alexander disagree withs (D) and Teresa agrees, so any clarification would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
LeeLarueJune 10, 2020
@Mehran v @Ravi, yes, I was thinking the same as @Jilue Regarding the answer choice D, "if that damage poses no significant health hazard to people" threw me off & I did not choose D the first try.
