Statement: An engineer's report says the town's overhead water tank has lost so much of its reinforcement to rust that it should not be filled above half. The council's reply is that lining the tank afresh would cost forty-one lakh, which the council does not have, and that the report must therefore be overstated. Which of the following courses of action follows from the statement?

The council has answered a question about corroded steel with a figure from its own treasury, and the two have nothing to do with one another; what follows is to get the question of fact answered properly and then decide what can be afforded. A fresh examination by an engineer with no connection to the first does that. Pulling the tank down acts on a report the council has just called overstated, and destroys the thing before it has been looked at. Raising the water charge assumes the repair is needed, which is precisely what is unsettled. And the engineer gave no estimate of cost — the forty-one lakh is the council's figure — so there is nothing of his to bring down.