Federal and state forests, extensive though they are, are mainly confined to the ridges, as is the Shenandoah National Park. On the two forks of the Shenandoah and its main stem below their junction, very little public land exists despite the big segment of National Forest in the Massanutten range between the forks, and on the Cacapon there is hardly any. Authorized additions to the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area will bring parts of the fine, clean mountain forks of the South Branch into public ownership and use, but the main stem of that river farther down is shut off.

Fee-entrance places and State or local fishing access points are sparse, so that for the most part the Basin's main flowing streams remain a closed book for people who lack the time, youth, equipment, or inclination to come at them by canoeing or some other more or less arduous means. And, as was noted earlier, the shores of most of them urgently need some sort of reasonable protection against vacation clutter, so that a certain amount of public ownership or control would help save the rivers as well as provide recreation.

Imbalances in the kinds of recreation available in various parts of the Basin are another problem, sometimes rooted in the nature of things, sometimes remediable. The outstanding one is the shortage in the upper Basin of what is called "flat water"—lakes and reservoirs suited for mass recreation of kinds for which a really major demand exists and is growing: swimming and motorboating and water-skiing, besides fishing of the type possible only in such water.

It has been said that recreation is potentially Appalachia's most profitable industry. If so, Potomac Appalachia badly needs more such water to fill out the resource and to attract the many people who are interested mainly in flat-water activities. Middle sections of the Basin want and can use it as well. A clear indication of the demand, as well as an additional good reason for trying to meet it, is seen on weekends along the occasional narrow stretches of slack water found in the Potomac and the Shenandoah and even the slim South Branch, where ski boats roar up and down among apprehensive swimmers and unhappy anglers, a classic instance of the kind of destruction of pleasure that occurs when incompatible recreational pursuits are forced together by a want of room for both.

The obvious answer is to locate and design the reservoirs needed to meet Basin water demands in such a way that they can not only fulfill that purpose but can provide needed recreation too. The major reservoirs called for to achieve near-future supply purposes are few, but they can be planned in places where they will get a maximum of these types of use and where drawdown and other unesthetic effects will be minimal. And the smaller headwater structures needed for water supply, flood control, and other purposes throughout the Basin can quite often be designed to function as first-rate recreational attractions too.



Anglers vary widely in their tastes. Some like the pursuit of bass and sunfish in reservoirs, and for them the upper estuary as well will be a good place to go when it is suitably cleaned up. Some want wide salt water and the lonely cry of gulls, and these the Basin can provide also. Others prefer trout in highland streams, or smallmouth and catfish in the big flowing rivers, and as the state of the waters grows better, so too will all these kinds of fishing. On certain rivers and streams particularly, the assured flow that is going to be needed to cope with diffuse pollution will have a strong good effect on aquatic life and sport fishing. The Monocacy and the South Fork of the Shenandoah are examples. And in the Potomac falls and gorge below the metropolitan water intakes, as was noted in Chapter III, assurance of a certain minimum flow would be justifiable on esthetic and recreational grounds alone, even aside from the need for it below in terms of water quality.

Hunters need more room outdoors than most people, because of their guns and because they move about in search of game. Fortunately, the fall and winter months when they function are times when relatively fewer other people are out roaming. The public forests of the upper Basin are a main resource for hunting now and in the future, and the kinds of public access that are established on the estuary and the main rivers will have to take hunters' interests into account. Even so, if they increase in numbers as much as has been predicted, the added demand for places to go will require more lease and day hunting on private land in the long run than exists at present, and improvement of that land's wildlife potential.

Certain other kinds of recreational facilities, constituting the bulk of profitable enterprises associated with America's outdoor pleasure, will have to depend mainly or solely on private development of them. Amusement parks, marinas, and ski lifts are examples, and so are most of the lodging places, restaurants, and other service facilities that thrive wherever increased public recreational activity takes place.

Most Americans do some driving for pleasure, and some of them do a great deal of it, using their four-wheeled bugs not just as a way of getting to pleasant places but as an indispensable adjunct to being in them and enjoying them. In certain respects, the Basin falls short of providing for their needs. The explosive demand in the past few years for auto campgrounds where people can stop with their cars, trailers, and pickup units has caused a shortage of adequately equipped facilities of this sort, especially within easy reach of Washington, which will have to be supplied by both public and private effort. Roads specifically designed for leisurely pleasure driving, in contrast to high-speed throughways, are another need. The Basin has two such motorways now—the George Washington Memorial Parkway at the metropolis, a much-used city road in its present form though still a main amenity, and the Skyline Drive along the Blue Ridge, with the Blue Ridge Parkway extending southward through it and out of the Potomac country. This magnificent low-speed mountain-top route looks out alternately over the Great Valley and the Piedmont, and the heavy use it receives, increasing year by year, shows what the right kind of scenic motor routes can mean to people.



For a multitude of residents and visitors, nothing would contribute more to appreciation of what the Basin has to offer than a system of unobtrusive parkways and scenic wandering roads joining together the region's attractions—history and scenery and sports, rivers and valleys and mountains. A major element in such a system, being studied, would be a great loop parkway tying together the existing parkways by an extension along the river and turning southward into the country along the historic James, then back to the Blue Ridge. Scenic roads tributary to the system would utilize existing rural routes for the most part, enhanced and protected by State and local action.

For the many other people who seek a more active and less mechanized relationship with natural things, a connected regional network of trails for walking or riding or cycling is a main need and a main opportunity. Like the parkways or even more than them, it could be a framework for open space preservation and an intimate means of using that open space. Tied in with existing segments like the C. & O. towpath and the Appalachian Trail, linking the towns and cities with ridges and riversides and parks and historic places, it would provide the most fitting kind of access to the whole Potomac realm of things for anyone willing to take an afternoon's stroll or a week's hike.

More fundamentally still, it would be a powerful and continuing element in conservation education of the best kind, the participating kind. For generation after generation of the young people who would use it most, it would shape a feeling for rocks and water, creatures and trees, sun and wind and rain and hills and valleys, old houses and ruins and bloody fighting grounds, together with a sense of man's natural origins. And shaping the feeling, it would shape some comprehension.

The Potomac Basin is going to need that kind of comprehension; the whole country is. Recreation means fun, and it probably ought not be overweighed with solemnities. But outdoor fun is dependent on the wellbeing of the outdoors, and increasingly the outdoors depends on the understanding and sympathy of human beings who possess new great power of destruction and have been using it widely. So that if any form of outdoor recreation can furnish, however slightly, some comprehension of what the natural world is like and how it works, it amounts to quite a lot more than a bit of needed relaxation from the week's toil at one's job or in the kitchen and nursery, though it may be that as well. With the comprehension, it becomes an enlargement of one's grasp of things, and it adds a little substance to the hope that people will keep on caring about the integrity of the world around them and defending it as best they can. And no safeguard this present mortal generation can set up is more meaningful than that hope.

Avenues toward coping with landscape problems

Most of the known basic techniques of landscape protection have already been discussed or touched on in this report: ways of cleaning up rivers and assuring their flow, ways of halting erosion and siltation, ways of planning land's use by concentrated human populations with as little loss as possible of amenities, ways of patching up old damage. Many of them are imperfect as yet and for some problems tools are still missing, nor are the existing techniques being applied in a completely coordinated manner anywhere on this continent except in a few experimental places of restricted size. But they do exist; they are available if human beings and human institutions can be persuaded to put them to use. And it is not possible to repeat too often that the need for their use is urgent.



A great deal of legal machinery at various levels is available to stimulate the use of such techniques and to enhance outdoor recreation. Some of it has already been put to work in the Potomac Basin; some of it needs reshaping for application to the conditions found there; and to cope with certain of the problems, specific legislative action tailored to the needs is going to be required.

Active Federal programs of public works, technical assistance, grants in aid, cost sharing, taxation, home loans, mortgage insurance, and such things—often with counterparts at state levels—penetrate every level of the economy and have profound effects on the landscape. Some of them have a direct concern with the landscape as such: among these are the Department of Agriculture's soil conservation and forestry programs, Interior activities ranging from water pollution control to trails, parks, and wildlife refuges, and Housing and Urban Development programs for the restoration, protection, and creation of urban amenities—all being applied in the Basin, though some need legislative adjustment or extension if they are to be fully effective there. Most also have associated recreational purposes.

Others among the going high-level programs have only a tangential interest in the landscape per se, though frequently much influence upon it. In the past, as we have observed earlier, many of them have been responsible for a good deal of landscape damage, encouraging sprawl and other forms of bad land use, instituting great public projects without enough thought to their effect on esthetics and ecology, and so on. Some are still being conducted in this manner, though less and less as a general awareness of the need to restore and to preserve, to think twice before making massive environmental changes, soaks out through the complex network of government and has its influence on attitudes. Increasingly, not only Federal but State agencies are making decent land use, recreation, and scenic preservation a partial condition and sometimes a whole reason for aid programs and public works.

Many programs can be adapted to such purposes. One interesting example in the Potomac Basin is a study being undertaken in the Georges Creek valley of western Maryland by Frostburg State College. Under an educational grant from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, members of the college's faculty have embarked on research aimed toward a demonstration project of economic, social, and landscape restoration in the whole Georges Creek watershed as a unit. Action resulting from the study will involve a number of their State and Federal programs.

Often, of course, the benefits of such practices are "intangible" in terms of the market values that have traditionally been used for justifying government projects, and adequate ways of giving them their true weight against other values that may be in conflict with them have not yet really been worked out. Nevertheless, the fact that they have strong and sometimes overriding benefits is being recognized.

Insofar as such programs encourage Basinwide landscape improvement and protection and major recreational opportunities, they are instruments for accomplishing overall Basin aims, usable as such now by Federal and State agencies and at the future disposal of any Basinwide coordinative organization that may evolve. Insofar as they permit and stimulate counties and municipalities to do better environmental planning and give them money and morale to implement and enforce planning, they are available at this indispensable level of action where—as we have seen—the obstacles to doing things right are often huge. The programs put within reach of local officials the principles of good planning and management, and help them to achieve its details, from wildlife refuges to neighborhood parks, from the maintenance of riverside beauty and the restoration of historic shrines to the construction of small reservoirs. As knowledge of their existence and their advantages gets around, they are beginning to have much effect, especially at larger centers of population.

Nevertheless, it is impossible at present to be sure that any given locality is going to take meaningful steps toward staving off blight and landscape destruction, and a great many of them in the Potomac Basin have not done so. Partly this is because the imperative need for planning is only now beginning to dawn upon many smaller communities. But even where it has dawned and planning has been undertaken by men of good will, the great obstacles still exist and often block their efforts—the lack of money to match Federal or State program funds, the inability to convince fellow citizens who have to approve actions, the fat profits in real estate, the pervasive influence of personal relationships.

Ideally, for a number of attractive reasons, it would be preferable to let local people solve local landscape and recreation problems in every case, with outside higher levels of government furnishing only advice and money on request. In regard to many types of problems, this is what is being done and will be done on into the future, for people living in a place are the ones who determine whether the place is going to be ugly or pretty, pleasant or grim. The trouble is, however, that as understanding of the interrelationships between land and water and the other elements of the landscape, even on a Basinwide scale, has grown, it has become more and more obvious that there are only a few strictly local landscape problems. Most local jurisdictions have within their boundaries critical watersheds, unique scenic assets, flood plains whose unwise use will require elaborate and costly structural protection later on, and other such features. This being so, the effects of mismanagement are certain to reverberate elsewhere, and it becomes the concern of people other than those who live in that neighborhood. It becomes other people's business, distasteful though this idea may be to communities with a tradition of self-sufficiency.

Regional planning organizations that can pool counties' and towns' resources, take a broad view, and pay for professional help can overcome some of the obstacles, if local governments can be persuaded to join them. Certain of the State and Federal programs mentioned above are being applied mainly through such bodies. But it seems to be an unavoidable conclusion that if local government continues to be the weakest link in the chain of planning, preservation of the environment is going to require not only stouter incentives to elicit cooperation from communities, but also more authority at higher levels of government to guard against at least the worst types of landscape abuse. In terms of water, this kind of authority will shortly be operative with the enforcement of the new State water quality standards. In terms of the other elements of the landscape, it is equally justifiable.



And, just as in water management in all its phases, central and continuing Basinwide coordination of practices to restore the landscape, to protect it, and to make possible its pleasant use by the public is going to be needed. If landscape problems could be divorced from water problems it might be a good deal easier, at this point in time, to identify a fairly full range of "right" measures that could be taken to achieve such restoration and protection for a long, long period into the future than it would be to do the same thing for water problems. Restoration and protection are not irreversible actions in the sense that some of the technological measures associated with water management are, and the main danger of rigid landscape planning would not be that it might go too far, but that it might not go far enough to save all that ought to be saved.

But, as we have observed time and again in these pages, no divorce is possible between land and water. They are interdependent, and whoever concerns himself with one must perforce concern himself with the other. Much of the action in regard to both is going to have to be long-term, continuing into the future. New threats are going to arise, some of them quite possibly based in a divergence of aims among various government programs with environmental effects. Thus, if a Basin-oriented agency is required—as we strongly believe—to oversee continuing action to clean up the Potomac river system and keep it clean, and to develop it for man's use in a wisely flexible and coordinated manner, that organization is going to have to take on a degree of responsibility for landscape matters as well, and is going to need some authority over them.

Many things can be identified that need doing now if irreplaceable assets in the Potomac environment are not to be lost, and if people are to be given a full chance to enjoy what is there. Some of these things that need doing have been named in this chapter or previously, and others are implicit in the report's discussions. We have worked out recommendations for action that can get them done, and the recommendations are presented with this report. They include some specific recreational proposals, and they urge prompt and authoritative protection of certain assets that are going to be destroyed if protection does not come soon, long-term programs to bring about detailed and overall restoration and protection and continued study and research into means of coping with threats not yet fully understood, like some of those along the estuary and the North Branch.

The main recommendation with a specific objective of preserving the landscape and providing recreation proposes the designation of the main river from Washington to Cumberland as the Potomac National River. Though it is to remain accessible for appropriate use by towns and industries, its banks and islands will be protected and public access assured by means of a sheath of park land, in Federal, State, and local ownership and with associated areas preserved by easements and similar devices, for the entire 195 miles. The proposal, refined since its initial mention in the Interim Report, is a major one—but so, as we have seen, is the need it is designed to meet. This main reach of the flowing river, the Basin's hydrologic and scenic lifeline, is greatly menaced by rapid and inappropriate development along its banks, and through most of its length it is hard for people to reach. It has unique majesty and beauty and both historic and symbolic associations that warrant a special degree of protection for it, and warrant also the assurance of the kind of public appreciation and enjoyment the park sheath would permit.

* * * * *

The recreation and landscape recommendations as a body are attuned to reality as well as to needs. They represent things that can be done, at prices that can be paid—minimum initial steps toward ultimate achievements that would be inferior to none that our changeful age might produce. This is an insistently momentous time, with boom, frenetic pleasure, sophisticated communications, space exploration, racial crisis, young rebellion, and all the other contemporary phenomena demanding attention and stirring up a dust that makes clear vision hard. There is nothing minor about any of them. But one thing seems clear enough. When the dust settles down and those who walk here afterward look around them for the eternal wholeness of earthly things, they are going to have a hard time finding it if matters keep going as they have been going lately. If we who are here now fail to hand over to them a physical world that relates them to old reality and serves them well and helps to make them glad to be alive, then whatever other things we hand over to them may seem very small potatoes.

The Potomac Basin is only a piece of what needs to be done. But it could be a beginning.



V COMPLEXITIES AND PRIORITIES

A river basin is a good functional unit of topography, admirably suited for study and for certain types of resource planning. Because of this, there is a temptation for those who undertake such study and planning to assume that river basins have, or ought to have, human unity as well—unity in politics, economics, and culture—with a consequent "basin public" inclined to think in basin terms. Basin identity of this sort would facilitate conservation, development, and management. It would "make sense," and clearly enough a a great deal of sense needs to be made, and soon, if people are going to have any hope of balancing their use of resources against the inevitable continuing requirements of the long future.

Small watersheds often do have unity of this human sort, but very few major river basins. And usually the question of whether they ought ideally to have it or not becomes irrelevant in the face of the rock-hard reality of the forces working against it. In the Potomac Basin, the boundaries that ramble among the various political subdivisions—the District of Columbia and portions of four separate States, with all or part of some 39 counties and a number of independent cities—only accidentally and occasionally follow watershed ridges. More often they reflect the caprice of Stuart kings and Fairfax lords, the accidents of history, the fortunes of war, and the trampings of young George Washington and the Messrs. Mason and Dixon and hundreds of less renowned linemakers. These boundaries, some of them sanctified by centuries of existence, are one of the Basin's most fundamental sets of facts, creating genuine differences in the interests, activities, viewpoints, and even accents of the people. And they emphasize a healthy political diversity and complexity that in many ways is simply not amenable to change.

None of the capitals of the four Basin States lies within the Basin's limits. This means that some of the strongest political loyalties and energies of the region are directed outward toward Richmond and Annapolis and Charleston and Harrisburg, and that much action relating to the Potomac must be sought in those cities, or is decided on incidentally there by legislators, many of whose strongest interests may lie along the James or the Susquehanna or the Ohio or other streams.

The fact that the capital of the United States, together with its attendant metropolis, is located solidly within the Basin at the Fall Line is of immense if problematic significance. For one thing, it fosters a concentrated Federal interest in the Potomac and the Potomac region, in both esthetic and utilitarian terms and at both legislative and administrative levels, which have led to some special amenities in the way of parks and such things and to some Federal efforts to treat the river in "model" terms, however these terms may have been defined at various points. On the other hand, it has also led to a special concern with the river on the part of the almost innumerable interest groups that possess leverage in Washington, from wilderness conservationists to industrial lobbyists, who exercise pulls in a number of different directions.

And the presence of the capital has set up other special currents of influence and sympathy that bypass normal political channels. Many Basin towns and counties look more toward Washington for certain kinds of action than toward their State agencies and legislatures. Federal programs have long been active here close to the main-office sources of expertise and cash, building up respect and trust through local agents, and Basin Congressmen who hardly have to leave home to exercise their legislative function have further strengthened these ties.

The metropolitan jurisdictions, especially, in many ways find more common cause with one another and the Federal Government than with communities and governing bodies elsewhere in their own States. Politically, this sense of collective identity gets official expression in the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, a regional body which, like its counterparts in other urban conglomerations throughout the country, is geared to work directly with the Federal Government in dealing with its own regional problems rather than having to come at Federal programs and agencies along the more lengthy traditional route through the States. The implications of this new kind of alignment are still a matter for debate and conjecture.

Other forces at work along the Potomac similarly have less to do with boundary lines, drainage limits, or Basin thinking than with human ways of being. There are a number of kinds of country here, as we have seen, in various stages of development and with various sorts of people inhabiting them. Yeoman tillers of the Shenandoah's limestone soils may find scant occasion to identify their interests with those of the Washington slums, or even with those of the fox-hunting Piedmont gentry just across the Blue Ridge. Coalmining Potomac Appalachia has more common economic and cultural outlook with eastern Kentucky than with the Potomac Tidewater; southern Maryland and the Northern Neck and the Monocacy's dairy farmers all have their own ways of interpreting human existence and defending themselves against its pitfalls. Within the county governments and the Congressional and State-legislative districts, these local and regional viewpoints choose political leaders who joust for them in higher arenas, often aligning there with forces from outside the Basin. Hence a metropolitan Maryland Congressman may vote in the House with kindred souls from Long Island and Pasadena, and his Basin colleagues with agricultural constituencies may oppose him on some issues in alliance with representatives from Wyoming or Arkansas.

Despite the Basin's special ties to the Federal Government, many rural Basinites are suspicious of Washington and the metropolis, often out of a traditional distrust of "big government" and sometimes because they see the accumulation of city folk at the head of the estuary as a menace to rural modes of existence. Thus they may oppose water projects designed to help the metropolis, or recreational development that threatens to bring down on them large numbers of pleasure-bound outsiders, though local businessmen's hope for a boom sometimes offsets such opposition. The reapportionment of legislative districts now in progress, plus the growing political muscle of metropolitan areas, is probably going to cut down on the power of rural areas and rural viewpoints—though just how much and in what way no one is yet sure. Some prophets claim that these influences are going to erode rural influence utterly; others that they will merely shape an alliance between middle-class suburbs and rural areas against the beleaguered central cities with their slums and other huge specific problems.

Worth noting also is the fact that many erstwhile "rural areas" are getting less rural by the year. With population pressures and industry and pollution and looming water deficits, they have more and more in common with the Washington metropolis, and more need for "big government" programs. In the long run, an overwhelming majority of the Basin's future population will probably be city-dwellers, with a consequent effect on general attitudes toward Basin planning and projects—though exactly what effect is not at all certain.

Public attitudes toward environmental action

One reason it is not certain is that the average person's set of attitudes toward the world around him is not totally determined by the circumstances of his life—by whether he is a city-dweller or a farmer or a small townsman, an engineer or a poet or a hardware salesman or a factory worker. Southern or Northern, black or white, poor or rich or pleasantly salaried. These things have great weight in coloring people's attitudes, but so do individual tastes and individual ways of interpreting the fact and ideas that flood in upon all of us these days. And so also do the vast and shifting currents of emotional and philosophical response that sway our society in one direction or another from year to year, from decade to decade.

In relation to the environment, certain differing philosophical currents of this kind have surfaced to view at various points in this report, if only briefly. They have influenced the fate of past proposals for dealing with the Potomac river system and landscape, and they are still here to continue exerting influence. In individual citizens' minds, they often mix and balance with one another in various ways, but they are discernible as separate forces.

Stout among them is the traditional American—and human—view that the natural world exists for the primary purpose of bettering the lot of such human beings or groups of human beings as may have the ingenuity and the vigor to extract its treasures or to adapt it to their use. Quite often the activities for which this view provides justification are exploitative—they use up natural resources or they bring about other irreversible changes in the world roundabout. Some conservationists think this makes them automatically evil, but things are not quite that simple. Such exploitative activities have led our species the full length of the road from the Stone Age to the sophisticated and powerful technological civilization of present times. The idea that we have a full right to engage in them is deeply ingrained, particularly in this country whose memories of the frontier—a hardy, exultant line of subjugation and exploitation moving across the virgin continent—are not remote but fresh.



Certainly in its crasser manifestations—this utilitarian philosophy has widely destructive effects nowadays. Strip mines gouged out without thought of restoration, wanton land speculation and development, the casual dumping of raw wastes into streams by towns or industries and a number of other harmful practices mentioned in this report are all clearly based in a conviction that what one does to the world around him is his own sweet business. That conviction has longstanding sanctity among Americans and many who hold it are moral and upstanding folk. But in a world as heavily populated as this one, possessed of such augmented technological ability to assail and exploit the natural world, there is clearly something wrong with it.

Other exploitative human activity based in utilitarianism is not crass or all so obviously wrong, especially in today's context. Population growth poses a moral question but also a logistical one: uncontrolled growth may well be questionable, but it is a staggering reality. The additional millions of people thus invited to present and future feasts must be provided for. Many thinkers view the economic expansionism of our time, together with the vigorous technology which it fosters and is fostered by, as the only means toward this end. Some, indeed, view it as a happy and healthy state of things, indefinitely extensible as technology itself furnishes substitutes for exhausted natural substances, natural forces, and natural experiences.

Allied to this view is a sturdy and widely held American belief that "development" of natural resources is automatically a good thing regardless of the need—toning up the economy of a region or a state or a nation, keeping things moving. Most people give it some practical support, even those who in theory suspect its validity. For we are a moving people. We have known little stasis in the centuries of our presence on this continent, and each generation of us is imbued anew in childhood with certain axiomatic ideas; movement is forward, growth is up, construction is better than vacancy, not to make economic use of something is to waste it. These ideas linger in our reactions: "You can't," the saying goes, "stand in the way of progress."



Certain other philosophers, growing in numbers these days, say emphatically that you can and should. These are the history-minded people, the wilderness folk, the nature traditionalists, and the others whose main concern is that man and the pleasant world around him have lost all semblance of a balanced relationship with each other, and whose view of the sturdy plunderlust of our ancestors is that our inheritance of it, combined with the technology of bulldozers, is aiming us straight toward a world in which our own structures and destructions may be all there is to see, our own fumes and sewage all there is to smell, our own voices and machines all there is to hear. Some people of this stamp are quietly pessimistic; others actively commit themselves to fight. Some who fight see present human growth and the growth of human demands on resources as the stark unavoidable realities they are, and seek mainly to guide them and mitigate their effects. Others stiffen their necks against development to meet those demands, staunch enemies to all reservoirs and other forms of compromise, stubborn if highminded nay-sayers against the tide, consistent even when illogical.

Taken as a whole, however, these people with a sense of the imponderable human value of natural ways and natural things may constitute the most powerful support available for thoughtful planning and conservation. In a precipitate and voracious society plunging on into its future, they look back and seek to retain the best of what has always been, for conservationism at least in this sense is conservatism too. Upon their increase in numbers, in broad understanding and in political forcefulness, upon the arrival of their basic values at a point of publicly accepted respectability at least equal to that presently enjoyed by time-hallowed exploitation and the profit motive, hope for a decent future must heavily depend.

All of these ways of looking at man's problematical relationship with the crust of the planet he inhabits, plus a number of others, are at work within the minds of conscious people in this region and in the great cauldron of its politics. Here they mingle with State and regional and local loyalties and private self-interests into a fine American soup of eagerness and reluctance, faith and apprehension, awareness and befuddlement, chicanery and square dealing, altruism and frank greed, rage and reasonableness, that is as real as any mountain in the Basin and as inevitable a consideration for realistic planning as the river's own characteristics of flow. For any proposal or set of proposals for action in the Basin that does not take into account what the Basin's people are like, and how their idiosyncrasies and preferences and sympathies find political expression, is foredoomed to failure, be it ever so ideal in anyone's abstract terms.

Pecuniary matters

Then there is money. Restoration and protection of the scheme of things and its adjustment to needful human use, on the scale we are considering in the Potomac Basin, is expensive, often involving many millions of dollars for action against only one phase of deterioration or threat or shortage. In accordance with the breadth of overall aims, much of this money must be Federal. Where benefits or responsibilities are clear, as in relation to sewage treatment plants and sources of water supply, states or communities or institutions usually pay a share. If Federal policies regarding flood protection and river flow augmentation for pollution control are made more logical in the ways sketched earlier in this report—as seems likely—such sharing will increase. Private investment or philanthropy may often play a part, as in the purchase of municipal bonds, the donation of scenic property for public use, or—a hopeful trend of recent date—a private organization's use of its money to facilitate high public purposes. The main example of this last service on the Potomac is the recent purchase and interim retention of important wildlife and park lands on Mason Neck by the Nature Conservancy, for later resale without profit to public agencies when needed authorizations and funds have been obtained.



Nevertheless, most such projects do have a public purpose with diffuse benefits, and sooner or later most of their cost has to be paid out of public dollars deriving from collected local, State and Federal taxes. Sometimes it is dispensed through Federal grant programs created by Congress to meet pressing needs, or from other special sources fitting the occasion. More often it must be sought in the standard established manner: concrete proposals for action shaped and presented, with a computation of the cost and the value of expected benefits, to Congress, State legislatures, or local governments for examination and authorization, and funds or bond issues later voted for carrying them out.

The cash available for both regular programs and special proposals from year-to-year will vary according to the state of the economy, the number and severity of other demands on government budgets, and their relative apparent urgency. This imposes on planners not only an obligation to make sure that what they propose has public value that fully justifies its price, but also a need to gear immediate priorities and projects realistically to the amount of money there is some hope of getting for them. It is an unhappy fact that there is often less than no point in presenting even fine proposals for legislative consideration at a financially inappropriate point in history. Once defeated, whatever the reason, they may forever languish in limbo.

At this particular point in history, this country has been for some time involved in a tough, costly conflict in Southeast Asia which inexorably absorbs much of the available Federal money. Americans are a rich people, riding a wave of prosperity, and much is left over for other things. But in this turbulent and questing era, they also have a good many other urgent and expensive problems and projects on their hands besides those dealing directly with natural resources and conservation. The problems are familiar words on the front pages of newspapers and in evening conversations: poverty, urban crisis, transportation, national defense, public health, world hunger and unrest, space exploration, schools, and the rest. All cost hugely. And, though individual conservation proposals of clearly critical importance most often receive fair and full consideration, one or two or more of these other realms for action usually loom larger to the eye of the public and the Congress than do environmental programs in general. Therefore they get first shot at the funds available for spending year by year.

Most people have a bias in favor of their own chosen field of interest. To some, the right use of the natural earthly framework of things matters supremely. They tend toward a conviction that sooner or later it will stand very high on any list of priorities for spending, as the magnitude of what is being lost and diminished is borne in on the consciousness of the general public. Yet, as of now, it faces heavy competition for limited funds, and this is another reality for consideration, as solid for the moment as the Basin's physical problems, as solid as the politics of which it is a facet.

The implications of complexity

These are not the only uncertainties and complexities that confront anyone who would act toward restoring and preserving the waters and landscapes of the Potomac and making them serve man, but some of the more specific and potent ones not dealt with earlier in this report. Others have been discussed in former chapters or at least have received cursory mention. Among them are water technology's state of flux that offers a strong if hazily defined hope of being able to do things better and better as time passes; the need for more and better data; the problems for which workable solutions simply do not yet exist; the inequities or inconsistencies created by certain present Federal water policies; the dubiousness inherent in forecasts of future human pressures and problems; the frequently crossed purposes of high agencies regarding environmental action; the difficulty of feeding true esthetic and recreational values into cost-benefit computations; and the paralytic tangle of motives and loyalties in regard to planning at the local level. And a great many others could be found.

Taken all together and linked to the assumption—fundamental in this report—that the Potomac and its landscape deserve rescue and coordinated right use, these areas of doubt, changefulness, and difficulty add up to a strong body of argument for flexible continuing planning on a Basinwide scale and for a specific, authoritative Potomac Basin institution to guide it and put it into effect.

There are two main alternatives to such flexible planning and coordination and they both, under present and probably future conditions, point toward slightly modified chaos. The first would be to allow going or incipient Federal and State programs for water quality improvement and erosion control and such things to take their overall course, while water supply, landscape protection, and other problems are dealt with in the traditional, piecemeal, localized manner as conditions here and there become bad and force action, or as "fall-out" from non-Basin programs takes casual effect. This relinquishment of coordination would make the task of clean-up immensely harder and less effective in the long run, and it would turn over most of the Basin's unprotected scenic amenities to exploitation on the basis of their short-term utility and the profit they could be made to yield.

The second alternative would be to shape a rigid overall plan for the Basin prescribing definite solutions, feasible in terms of tried and true technology, for all its problems that exist today and are expected to materialize in the future, and then to seek authorization and funds to put the plan into effect. This procedure has disadvantages already noted in detail in this report. It makes large irreversible decisions that future generations, stuck with the results, may find less than totally attractive, especially since they very probably will have better ways of doing things. It pins itself to fallible assumptions about those future generations, and must be formed in terms of present laws and policies, which are not always ideal. Physically, a plan of this kind could be worked out that would function with reasonable efficiency, at least in water matters, for there is nothing primitive about today's technology. But esthetically it would leave much to be desired even by present standards, and politically, furthermore, its very wholeness and rigidity would mean that it would have to be sold as a complete package or else be doomed to fragmentation, which would lead to much the same sort of piecemeal expedient development as no plan at all. Quite aside from the budgetary difficulties of the moment, the Potomac Basin's political complexity makes whole acceptance and implementation of such a plan extremely doubtful.

The question of an agency

If flexible coordinative planning's advantages for a place like the Potomac Basin are recognized, and it is accepted as the most reasonable and hopeful way to approach problems there, the question arises as to what kind of agency is best suited to carry it forward and to act on it. Besides certain unique agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority several types of institutions are available that can be oriented toward a whole interstate river basin.

An interstate compact is a detailed agreement between two or more States to act toward a common specific goal. It needs the approval of Congress, but the Federal government usually takes no formal part in the compact commission's activities, nor are Federal activities in the basin subject to compact commission control. A Federal-interstate compact, on the other hand, does have Federal participation and provides for some limitation on Federal freedom to act on basin problems without compact commission consent. Compact commissions under either of these types of agreement can have wide or quite limited powers in regard to planning, construction, management, and such things, depending on the specific agreement itself.

Two kinds of Federally-directed bodies with primary emphasis on planning are in operation in various river basins. A Title II river basin commission, as defined in the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965, is formed by the President to carry out comprehensive basin planning, with a Federal chairman and members from Federal agencies, Basin States, and approved interstate or international agencies with jurisdiction in the Basin. A Basin inter-agency committee is created by agreement among Federal agencies for an assigned mission, usually the coordination of Federal and State planning through the exchange of information about programs and projects.

The main work of the Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the Potomac has been done at the same time that the new Water Resources Council has been studying out its powers and putting them to use. Formed before the Water Resources Council, the Task Force was assembled as a unique entity rather than as one of the categories of Federal planning organizations mentioned above. But, having been shaped after a directive from the President and having worked in cooperation with the Basin States' Governors' Advisory Committee, the Task Force together with that Advisory Committee has been exercising some of the main functions of a Title II river basin commission. These commissions can plan flexibly, in stages, if this is desirable. They make recommendations for comprehensive development which can quite compatibly be implemented by a separate basin management authority, perhaps of a type recommended by the commission.

In these terms, the water-related recommendations that accompany this Interior Department report, which have been concurred in by the other Federal agencies on the Task Force and by the Governors' Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, can be considered a first stage in a new approach to comprehensive planning for the Potomac. Hence it is time not only to undertake these recommended initial actions toward the balanced development and preservation of the Basin, but also to consider an agency or agencies to take over such coordinative planning, management, and operation as may be necessary. From the start, it has been recognized that a long-term management agency was going to be desirable, and we have been inquiring toward its definition. From the start also, it has seemed obvious that some form of Federal-interstate compact offered the most promise, for various reasons.

The direct and special interest of the Federal government in the Basin is extensive, and clearly justifies continuing Federal participation in any planning and development. On the other hand, to invest all or most management authority for such a politically complex region in Federal hands would ignore certain powerful realities, and would throw away a chance to achieve the most meaningful kind of "creative Federalism." The Basin States have shown strong willingness to take on responsibility and authority in relation to the Basin's problems and to cooperate with one another and with the Federal government toward their solution. An organization based in such cooperation could cut through much of the Basin's tangle of jurisdictions involved and to each of them individually, and would be responsible to each and all. It could mesh the efforts of the numerous and diverse action agencies sponsored by each jurisdiction and aim them toward overall Basin goals, probably more effectively than any other arrangement could.

Early in this planning effort, primary responsibility for inquiring into the desirable characteristics of such an agency was allotted to the Governors' Advisory Committee. After over two years' hard work by a subcommittee, the Advisory Committee has lately made public the preliminary draft of a Potomac River Basin Compact. It proposes a compact commission with broad power and responsibilities to adopt and maintain comprehensive plans for water resources and amenities, and to acquire, construct and operate facilities related to water problems and use, watershed management, and recreation. It would be financed by government and private funds, could issue bonds, would absorb INCOPOT, and would consist of six members—one each from the four Basin States, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government.

The draft compact is currently being discussed at public hearings scheduled in various parts of the Basin, and is under review by the Water Resources Council. Undoubtedly it will be altered somewhat during these processes, and it will very possibly undergo further alteration at the hands of the State legislatures and the Congress, which will have to review and approve it before the agency it proposes can be created. All of this will take a good deal of time. The detailed features of the institution that may emerge cannot be precisely known at this point, and a specific Federal recommendation for its establishment is not yet possible. Nonetheless, the compact draft's essential principles—adequate authority, accepted responsibility, and protection of the interests of the participant jurisdictions while moving toward coordinated Basinwide accomplishment—are sound and needful ones, and offer the best kind of hope of implementing and continuing the sort of flexible, coordinated planning and action that we have advocated in this report.

The members of the Potomac Planning Task Force, the A.I.A. group, in their recently published independent report, have made a strong recommendation for a new type of Federal institution, a Potomac Development Foundation, which would be headed by a Presidentially appointed administrator and would have a planning staff and a top-caliber professional advisory board. It would not engage in construction, operation, or management of projects, but would be liberally financed over a period of five years out of Federal funds and would emerge as a self-sustaining agency with power to assist in Basin planning, to acquire land, to make grants for various purposes, and to sponsor appropriate development of the Basin's resources with low-interest loans. With a strong orientation toward ecological values, scenic preservation, architectural amenity, and recreation, it would emphasize a long-range approach to coordinated Basin planning.

A Development Foundation of this kind would obviously harmonize with the main principles enunciated in this present report. It is also envisioned by the A.I.A. group as compatible with a compact commission or other management agency, though they have recognized that the relationship between the two would need to be studied out at length.

The proposal is a bold one and an appealing one, with much promise, particularly in its potential for giving full weight to ecology and the amenities in planning. We are hopeful that its basic idea will get serious consideration during the period of institutional study and review that is coming up.

In the period before permanent planning and management machinery for the Potomac materializes, the Basin will get much protection against major disruptive change through the continuing interest of Federal and State agencies made aware of its problems during this first-stage planning effort, through improvement and preservation programs already in movement or initiated by this report, and perhaps most of all through aroused and informed public interest. There is room for a broadly based citizens' watchdog organization to keep tabs on Basin affairs and to exert leverage in such critical fields as local planning. It might be formed as a new group or might be built around an existing organization such as the new Potomac Basin Center, whose function has been to comment impartially and intelligently on Basin planning and prospects.

Action now

In the different chapters of this report, various things stand out that need to be started quickly, either to satisfy looming demands for water development and water quality control, or to restore or protect scenic, ecological, and recreational assets which, if not attended to quite soon, are going to either disappear or suffer irreparable damage. A few recommendations for action on certain of these immediate problems were made in our Interim Report of two years ago, together with recommendation on one or two noncontroversial items clearly not in conflict with any conceivable ultimate Basin aims. In abbreviated essence, the main Interim recommendations, made with Interdepartmental Task Force and Interstate Advisory Committee approval, were as follows:

(1) That a decision on the construction of Seneca dam and reservoir on the Potomac main stem be indefinitely deferred, but that the site be preserved as much as possible against further encroachment, in case it is ever needed;

(2) That three relatively small reservoirs be built on tributary creeks in the Paw Paw Bends area of the upper Basin, in addition to the authorized Bloomington reservoir on the North Branch, to begin providing a safe margin of water for metropolitan Washington and to serve Basin recreational needs;

(3) That a permanent "green sheath" of protection for the Potomac main stem, together with major recreational opportunity, be assured by means of a new kind of composite park of varying width along both shores from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland;

(4) That the Cacapon River and the West Virginia portion of the Shenandoah be given Wild River status by Congress to protect their shores against excessive and inappropriate encroachment;

(5) That water quality programs and research be accelerated toward certain minimum goals;

(6) That Soil Conservation Service and related Forest Service programs for erosion control, water management and development, and recreation benefits be accelerated;

(7) That the authorized boundaries of the George Washington National Forest be extended to provide public access to and protection of the two forks of the Shenandoah above their confluence;

(8) That Mason Neck on the upper estuary be preserved; and

(9) That the George Washington Memorial Parkway be extended from Mount Vernon to Yorktown as the beginning of a system of scenic roads and parkways in and around the Basin.

One of the recommendations has had to be deferred, though the need implicit in it remains acute—that the Cacapon and the West Virginia Shenandoah be included in the Wild Rivers Bill then pending before Congress. It had been thought that this Bill might be used to protect the Basin's threatened main tributary rivers, beginning with these two in West Virginia, but afterward doubt arose that the standards set up for Wild Rivers—the primary point of reference being Western streams flowing through sparsely peopled, often publicly owned country—would make sense or be feasible in a settled region.

Mason Neck has been preserved by great effort on the part of individuals, organizations, and different levels of government. More remains to be done in the way of consolidation of what is there and its adaptation to intended purposes, but the hardest part of the job is accomplished; a critically endangered asset has been protected. Funds have been voted by Congress for the acquisition of the Bloomington reservoir site in accordance with the Interim recommendation. Water quality improvement in the Basin is on the point of being significantly accelerated toward high goals, as the new State standards are reviewed and approved and start getting enforcement, though for specific trouble spots and categories of pollution special Federal or other action is going to be needed and is the subject of new recommendations accompanying this final report.

The rest of the Interim Report measures require Congressional action, which none has yet received. In some cases this is because technically detailed authorizing legislation has taken time to prepare, in others because budgetary or policy realities have brought delay or reconsideration, and in still others because of a feeling at higher levels that certain recommendations could be better evaluated in terms of a final report's whole set of proposals. In the present set of recommendations they are repeated, for they represent genuine needs. Some have been slightly altered in the light of evolving restrictive reality, more recent knowledge, or flexibility, and the suggested or implied Interim scheduling for some has been changed. It is no longer envisioned, for instance, that the parkway extension below Mount Vernon will be authorized and constructed quickly.

The present recommendations, though much wider in overall scope than our earlier ones, represent only a first step in planning for the Basin, for reasons presented in full in this report. They are attuned to present economic and technological possibilities, as they must be. We believe that if they get full and calm appraisal they will prove to be acceptable politically, for all of them that call for major projects represent solutions for acute and imminent problems for which other satisfactory solutions do not presently exist, and to the greatest possible degree they have been made flexible to accommodate possible future change in aims or techniques.

In most cases, the reasons for specific recommendations have already been given in the body of this report. However, the primary public interest that focuses on the matter of major storage reservoirs may make it worthwhile at this point to review and enlarge upon the facts. Some reservoirs are going to have to be built if the Basin is to cope satisfactorily with water supply, water quality, and recreational demands. At the time of the Interim Report, we recognized that the three reservoirs in the Paw Paw Bends area, together with Bloomington, were very possibly not going to be enough to meet the need, but we made a recommendation for their authorization because it was clear that they would take the edge off the immediately looming water problem at Washington, would mesh well with any additional future storage in the Basin, and would have no major disruptive scenic effects but instead would provide a great deal of high-quality flat-water recreation in an area where there was significant demand for it.

These considerations still apply. However, the more complete picture of Basin water problems that has emerged in our studies since the Interim Report shows that at least two more reservoirs are very possibly going to be needed, and that the most useful scheduling of initial projects will combine an answer for upstream problems with the satisfaction of near-future needs at metropolitan Washington.

Besides the stretch of concentrated industry and population along the North Branch, where Bloomington Reservoir is going to be needed as soon as possible, three upper-Basin areas with major storage sites available near at hand are faced with large water shortages in the near or middle future, and have streams that would benefit greatly from flow augmentation. In the order of the critical importance of their problems, they are Frederick, Maryland, on the Monocacy; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on the Conococheague Creek; and the Staunton-Waynesboro area on the upper tributaries of the Shenandoah's South Fork, in Virginia.

Chambersburg lies in an area where opposition to any major reservoirs has been heavy. An interim solution to the local problem, though possibly not satisfactory in the long run, can be found in a system of small headwater reservoirs. The major Chambersburg reservoir site has received full consideration as an element in a water-storage package to begin dealing with Basin demands. But its immediate advantages are not so unique as to justify going against the area's apparent wishes, and it has not been included as a recommendation.

The reservoirs at Verona near Staunton and at Sixes Bridge on the Monocacy, fortunately, can be adequately coordinated with Bloomington and the three Paw Paw impoundments to provide roughly a twenty-year margin of safety in water supply at Washington, besides coping with foreseeable shortages in their immediate neighborhoods, furnishing desired flat-water recreation, and contributing greatly to water quality and recreation benefits downstream. They are also locally and State supported. For these reasons, they have been chosen to fill out the recommended system of major reservoirs to meet near-future Basin demands.

The construction schedule recommended is based on the rate at which upstream and metropolitan demands are expected to develop in relation to each other. And, in accordance with flexible principles of planning, there is provision that if more desirable alternative sources of water or any changes in expected aims or demands evolve, the schedule or the plan itself may be altered. Thus, if this first-stage plan is adopted, the reservoirs to which the region will be committed at any given time will be only those for which there is actual immediate need, but coordination will not have been lost. This same kind of flexibility is built into the recommendations relating to flow augmentation for quality control.

Other proposals for major action are self-explanatory or are analyzed in detail in separate sub-task force material. Among these latter is the Potomac National River, as the park proposal is now designated, which represents the most hopeful approach to defending the main stem Potomac against destructive encroachment and enhancing its potential for recreation.

Some of the recommendations presented are relatively small in scope but nonetheless essential to cleaning up, preservation, or other desirable ends. Others aim not toward immediate action but toward research or legislation to clear the way for needed action—examples are those regarding acid mine drainage and the possible need for a new Federal category of "pastoral" or "scenic" rivers in populated regions. And still others are only suggestions that non-Federal jurisdictions act in regard to specific problems that fall within the realm of their responsibility.



If this body of recommendations is significantly implemented as an initial program, it can lead to a good solid beginning on the things that need to be done in the Potomac Basin. Without treading heavily on the freedom of choice of future populations, it can satisfy the water demands of the Basin during a long enough span of years to give scientists time to examine the full range of evolving alternatives for water management, and planners freedom to choose perhaps better ways of meeting future demands than are now available.

The program can clean up the main streams of the Basin and assure their healthy and copious flow even in time of drought, keep their banks beautiful, and make them more available than they presently are for the people's enjoyment. Even in the major trouble spots of the present time—stretches like the lower North Branch and the metropolitan estuary—dramatic improvement in the appearance of the water and its usefulness for boating and fishing and such things will be possible if the recommendations are followed out to where they lead, though full restoration in such spots, particularly in the estuary, is going to require an expansion of present knowledge and a long-continuing effort on the part of all agencies and jurisdictions.

The program will not assure general protection of the Basin's landscape, for only the Basin's people, generation on generation of them, can assure that. But it can preserve some of the major treasures in that landscape and mitigate some of the worst threats to it. And by fostering projects to illustrate how a respect for the landscape can be put to work, and bringing people into closer contact with the old realities of the Basin's natural world, it can stimulate understanding and feeling that will lead to wider restoration and protection, possibly that general protection that only the people can assure.

If the spirit of these recommendations prevails, we believe that they can lead reasonably soon to a Potomac Basin fit to serve as a model for the nation. And if they are followed by further stages of continuing, flexible, coordinated planning that will apply the best technology to new problems as they arise, keep Basin aims in mind, maintain a high sense of values, and leave open all possible options for the people who come after, the Basin will remain a model. And that has been the aiming point of our study and our planning.



THE NATION'S RIVER—AN ACTION PLAN

I. Action aimed at coping with present and future water resource problems in the Potomac Basin as well as contributing strongly to scenic, ecological, and recreational values:

A. An effective water pollution control program is the key to the public's use and enjoyment of the Basin's rivers and streams. Programs are currently under way which will result in continued progress toward enhancing the quality of these waters. The Secretary of the Interior has approved water quality standards for the interstate waters of the Potomac Basin submitted by the States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia which call for accelerated remedial programs. Standards submitted by Virginia are currently under review to assure that they will contain comparable requirements. Achievement of the goals established by these standards will require expanded support in the form of legislation, funding, technology, and public awareness to insure their effective implementation.

1. To control organic, chemical, and bacterial pollution of the Potomac River system and achieve compliance with the water quality standards, a program of both immediate and long-run action will be essential:

a. During the next five years a series of actions must be taken to control the Basin's most immediate pollution problems:

(1) Coordination of Federal, State and local powers, in cooperation with any Basin compact commission or other agency that may be established, to achieve waste treatment measures as required in appropriate standards and comparable levels for intrastate waters. This will call for removal of at least 85 percent of the organic load, or its equivalent, from all municipal and industrial wastes throughout the Basin, besides adequate chlorination of all treated wastes, except that in the Washington metropolitan area at least 90 percent removal will be required because of the volume of wastes involved and their effects upon the estuary. The means toward these goals will consist of new plant construction, additions to existing plants, and control of combined sewer overflows. Regional or watershed approaches to the extension or improvement of these systems should be encouraged. Improved collection systems and treatment facilities also must be supported by effective training, certification and supervision of operators of the sewerage systems of all jurisdictions.

(2) Stimulation of effective action toward meeting similar requirements in handling wastes at all Federal establishments in the Basin, consistent with the nationwide program called for by the Water Pollution Control Executive Order. Where possible, wastes from Federal establishments should be channeled into municipal sewer systems. Adequate budgets for waste disposal at such establishments are a prime necessity, so that Federal agencies will be the pace setters that they must be.

(3) Immediate reconvening of the 1957 Enforcement Conference on the Potomac to focus attention on the timetables for controlling pollution in the estuary in the light of water quality standards and also to consider problems of agricultural pollution, sediment, nutrients, dredging and vessel wastes.

(4) Strengthening of the continuing surveillance program on all streams in the Basin to insure compliance with water quality standards and to help correct abuses from leaks, spills, and illegal or accidental polluting discharges. Active participation by local, State and interstate agencies with the Federal Government in contingency plans for spills of oil and other hazardous substances in the Basin also is required.

(5) Adoption and implementation of regulations and requirements by local and State authorities for control of pollution from boats and marinas. Legislation under consideration by the Congress would permit establishing national standards for control of pollution by vessels.

(6) Adoption and implementation by State and local authorities of a policy that will prevent significant quality deterioration in high quality waters.

b. Accomplishment of these measures will go far toward assuring a clean Potomac. However, to protect the Basin's waters over the long run, even more must be done.

(1) First must come research and investigations to seek better methods of control where existing information and technology are inadequate. This includes:

(a) Continuation of current pilot plant demonstration studies of advanced waste treatment processes at Piscataway, Prince William County, Virginia, and District of Columbia waste treatment plants and completion of the chemical, biological, and physical studies of the estuary to establish a basis for upgrading water quality to the maximum feasible degree.

(b) Continuation of investigations and demonstration projects to evaluate costs and effectiveness of methods of treating and controlling combined and storm sewer discharges from urban areas, particularly Washington, D.C., to provide cheaper and more effective solutions as partial alternatives to present long-range programs of separation of sanitary from storm sewers in the metropolitan area.

(c) Initiation of an engineering study or demonstration project to investigate practicable and acceptable means of disposing of sludge from conventional and advanced waste treatment plants.

(d) More complete delineation of sources of nutrients to the free-flowing streams of the Basin and evaluation of methods of nutrient control or reduction. Continued research on nutrient-algal relationships to better define the principal chemical factors which result in nuisance algal growths, particularly in the Potomac estuary.

(e) Completion of a survey of agricultural waste sources in the Basin, both organic and chemical, and the application of measures to control them.

(f) Acceleration of research to find methods of treating industrial wastes for which suitable methods presently are not available.

(g) Evaluation of major point sources of mine drainage in the upstream watersheds of the North Branch of the Potomac River and development of mine drainage abatement measures and control programs which are technically and economically feasible.

(2) Concurrently—and at the earliest possible date—must come application of knowledge obtained through research, demonstration projects and field investigations performed within the Potomac Basin and elsewhere. As possible, water quality standards should be upgraded to reflect this new knowledge. Application of findings should include:

(a) The progressive practical application of advanced waste treatment and improved methods of treatment or control of combined and storm sewer discharges in metropolitan Washington and elsewhere.

(b) Application of additional measures necessary for controlling estuarial pollution still present after maximum feasible waste treatment, including advanced waste treatment, has been provided in the area.

(c) Continuing reassessment of the effect of reservoir releases on water quality in the flowing streams of the Basin, after the highest practicable degree of waste treatment has been provided. Such assessment will involve:

(1) Reevaluation of the opportunities for obtaining improved water quality objectives through management of reservoir releases and stream flows as individual reservoir projects are considered for construction, in the light of advanced waste treatment, means of coping with agricultural runoff and drainage, and other alternatives made available by that time.

(2) Development of the Federal water resources policies which will provide for the most effective application of the streamflow regulation provisions of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, including equitable cost-sharing arrangements, to assure that streamflow regulation assumes its proper role in relation to other pollution control alternatives for the Basin.



2. For the control of sedimentation and erosion and their effects, the following action will be needed:

a. Cooperative Federal-State-local efforts to accelerate land-use adjustment and land treatment in the Basin.

b. Adoption by State, county and municipal governments of good strong statutes and ordinances for the control of erosion from construction sites and other sources in urban areas.

c. Completion of current experiments on Rock Creek in the reduction of storm water turbidity by means of coagulants, and extension of such research to the Potomac estuary.



B. With primary reference to problems of water supply and flood damage in the Basin, steps must be taken to cope with present or looming municipal and industrial demands and to guard against future troubles:

1. Large-scale or general problems call for large or general actions:

a. We recommend that major Basin water supply problems, including the need for some storage to restore and protect the quality of the water in the flowing rivers and the needs for flat-water recreation, be dealt with as follows:

(1) By prompt funding and construction of the authorized Bloomington Reservoir on the Potomac North Branch, for benefits in that region and downstream, including the Washington metropolis.

(2) By completing action on the reports on the several additional major reservoirs which, together with Bloomington, will constitute a "package" of drought insurance against the Basin's most critical expected water demands during at least the next 20 years. Three of the additional reservoirs are those on Town Creek, Little Cacapon Creek, and Sideling Hill Creek, recommended in the Potomac Interim Report to the President of January 1966 and detailed in subsequent studies, for benefits in terms of downstream water supply and exceptional recreational opportunity. Another reservoir, North Mountain on Back Creek, was considered to be essential for meeting these needs by the Governor's Potomac Advisory Committee in its consideration of the 1966 Interim Report and was recommended in the Corps of Engineers Potomac River Basin Report of 1963. Additional reservoirs include the Sixes Bridge Reservoir on the Monocacy and the Verona Reservoir on the Middle River tributary of the South Fork of the Shenandoah, also recommended in the Corps of Engineers 1963 report and currently being restudied in detail to meet present projections of local and downstream needs.

According to present data, for maximum usefulness and safety, Bloomington should be completed on an expeditious basis and the others at appropriate intervals thereafter in relation to growth of demand.

To make certain that desirable flexibility in planning will be maintained, the following conditions should be borne in mind by all Federal, State, or interstate agencies with present or future concern with Basin affairs, and by the United States Congress and the State legislatures, and should be taken into consideration in the shaping of authorizing legislation:

(a) Individual reservoirs should be susceptible to reevaluation and modification during design stage in light of new techniques of water supply—including demonstrated feasibility and acceptability of the upper estuary for this purpose—and of water quality control, or unforeseeable modifications of aims or expected demands, should such change be determined to be beneficial to the overall well-being of the Basin.

(b) Prior to construction of any reservoir with benefits for recreation and water quality downstream, responsible State and local agencies should be required to furnish assurances that the recreational and scenic qualities of the banks of the rivers so benefited will be amply protected.

(3) By the continuing assessment by the Corps of Engineers of the water supply needs of the Washington metropolitan area with the objective of meeting future demands as they develop.

(4) By research and investigation to ensure a sound scientific basis for future action in relation to the Basin's water resources and to provide maximum flexibility of choice to technicians, planners, and decision makers:

(a) A full-scale and continuing water data collection program to be conducted in the Basin by the U.S. Geological Survey, with the object of building and keeping up to date the facts relevant to the river system and related aquifers.

(b) Specific and continuing research by the Department of the Interior as well as other agencies into the nature and feasibility of a full range of possible alternative sources of water supply in the Basin, including new technological approaches.

(c) A special study should be made, based on extension and coordination of studies now authorized or under way to determine the feasibility and acceptability of using the upper estuary as a future source of domestic water to supplement the water supply for the metropolitan area. The States of Maryland and Virginia, the District of Columbia and the Metropolitan Council of Governments should also be associated with this study.

b. To begin to cope with major or general flooding problems in the Basin and to prevent future potential flood damages, the following actions should be taken:

(1) Assignment of high priority, by Federal, State, and local interests, to flood mapping and flood plain information studies which will provide complete coverage of the main stem of the Potomac River from Cumberland, Maryland, to below Alexandria, Virginia, including the Washington metropolitan area, with the purpose of defining flood hazards along the river for use by planners, investment agencies and Government agencies at all levels. Elsewhere in the Basin, priorities for such mapping and studies of all significant flood plains should be assigned and the program undertaken as soon as practicable, with primary attention to those areas where pressures for flood plain development and potential flood damage are greatest.

(2) Action by the Corps of Engineers to define a program of active and passive flood alleviation measures for the Washington metropolitan area, and all possible emphasis by other concerned Federal agencies on flood-proofing and other devices for averting flood damage at and around the capital city.

(3) Continuing study by all agencies of the problem of adjusting current policies so as to stimulate reasonable, fair, economic, and esthetically desirable action toward flood damage reduction not only in the Potomac Basin but elsewhere in the nation, in line with the principles enunciated in the 1966 report of the President's Task Force on the Federal Flood Control Policy.



2. Water supply or flooding problems in localized areas may often be solved with headwater reservoirs which may be included in watershed plans developed by local sponsoring organizations with assistance from the Soil Conservation Service of the Department of Agriculture. Such plans provide for the conservation and development of both the soil and water resources of the watershed. Preliminary studies indicate that headwater reservoirs are needed and feasible in 61 small watersheds in the Basin. These small headwater reservoirs, designed primarily for local flood prevention, may include storage for sediment, water supply, water quality control or recreation.



II. Action relating specifically to the protection and restoration of the Potomac Basin's scenic and natural assets, and to their enjoyment by the public:

A. At the critically important level of local planning, governments need to provide incentives toward wise and decent treatment of the environment in all possible ways, including:

1. Careful examination of all Federal and State programs and policies directly or indirectly influential on the landscape, to make certain that their effects are beneficial or their adverse effects are minimized and that they encourage rather than disrupt local efforts to avert blight even while achieving sound growth. Obvious connections exist between good local environments and such things as planning aid programs and grants for parks and recreation areas, but other grant programs, public works, road and utility routings, tax and mortgage practices, the proper or improper design of government facilities, and many other Federal or State activities have relevance in this respect.

2. Dissemination of knowledge about strong, effective planning tools and procedures, as such knowledge accumulates. Of particular Basinwide interest will be the results of the application of Soil Conservation Service watershed programs in controlling erosion in urbanizing stream basins in the Washington metropolitan area, and the lessons learned therefrom. The Geological Survey's investigations of the resources of the Basin are a continuing source of essential information for planning. For example, the studies of the effects of urban development on streams and sediment will be especially pertinent to land-use planning.

B. The lifelines of the Basin's landscape, its flowing rivers and streams, badly need protection against rapidly increasing encroachment along their banks, and should be made more available for public use and enjoyment. For these purposes, the following measures are strongly recommended:

1. Prompt legislative authorization, funding, and establishment of a Potomac National River complex consisting of Federal, State, and local components to provide a "green sheath" of varying width for the main stem of the river from Washington to Cumberland, Maryland. The preservation of this portion of the river and its banks, and their accessibility, are clearly of importance and warrant such treatment. The National River, studied and refined in the light of much government and public comment received since its initial mention in the Potomac Interim Report, is detailed in the legislative proposal now being considered by Congress.

2. Completion of the long-deferred restoration and improvement of public facilities along the C. & O. Canal, a project which can be begun immediately and will mesh with the Potomac National River proposal, since the Canal will be a part of the proposed River. Certain of the old C. & O. feeder dams should be rehabilitated or rebuilt, sections of the Canal rewatered, and better public access provided.

3. Studies of the Cacapon, Shenandoah, and South Branch Potomac Rivers to determine the most feasible way to preserve all or portions of these scenic and important tributaries in a relatively unspoiled state. Possibilities here are protection under State legislation, or the establishment of a new Federal category of pastoral or scenic rivers as a protective measure for streams in settled regions such as would be authorized under legislation pending in the Congress.

4. Encouragement of local action to preserve the banks of smaller free-flowing streams by zoning, park acquisition, or other means.

5. Provision, under auspices of State fish and wildlife agencies or otherwise, or better facilities for public access to all main streams—including, where appropriate, roads, trails, parking areas, boat launching ramps, and public transportation.

C. The historic Potomac estuary, with nearly a quarter of a million acres of water surface and hundreds of miles of varied and scenic shoreline, is a rich recreational and wildlife asset as well as a fisheries resource of enormous value. Even after water quality programs rescue its upper reaches from the heavy pollution to which they are presently subject, however, more knowledge will be needed than presently exists to make certain that its intricate processes continue to function productively; protection of its shores against growing inappropriate encroachment will be an urgent problem; and the possibility of its use by the public for recreation will need to be assured:

1. A cooperative study should be undertaken by Federal agencies, the States of Maryland and Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, coordinated through the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, to identify recreational and other open space and specific resources along the tidal Potomac downstream from Chain Bridge that should be established as estuarine units of a Potomac National River, as State or county parks, or as units of a system of recreation areas for the District of Columbia and its metropolitan environs. The Department of the Interior is assisting the Department of Defense to determine how military establishments along the Potomac might contribute toward meeting regional recreational needs, including public access and use where feasible. These studies should be completed and the findings reported to the Congress and to State and local governments at the earliest possible time.

2. As an initial measure toward achieving protection of the concentrated productivity of the estuary's marshes and wetlands, Federal, State and local agencies, and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, under the leadership of the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, should undertake a study, to be completed within three years, to identify key areas of this sort; where possible, acquisition of such areas should proceed under existing programs. In view of the recreation potential generally associated with marsh and wetland areas, this study should be coordinated closely with the study recommended under item 1 above. The Department of Defense should examine its land holdings along the estuary to determine if zones of conservation for fish and wildlife in the marshes and wetlands can be established immediately.

3. Action should be taken as quickly as possible to acquire the National Wildlife Refuge on Mason Neck in order to consolidate the protection of vital open space on that peninsula. Fiscal year 1969 appropriations for the Department of the Interior include funds to begin such action.

4. It is urgently to be hoped that legislation aimed at protecting American estuaries and increasing human knowledge of their processes, currently before Congress, will be passed in the most meaningful possible form, to the benefit of the Potomac estuary as well as all others.

5. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers should continue to regulate the development of structures built into the navigable waters and, in cooperation with local entities, study means of ridding the Potomac estuary of permanent and semipermanent debris and floating debris.

6. To guard against the loss of public assets of great worth along the estuary, the General Services Administration, in cooperation with the Department of the Interior, should give full consideration to recreation, fish and wildlife, scenic and other conservation values at the time any Federal installation becomes surplus to defense of other needs.



D. State fish and wildlife conservation agencies in the Basin need to strengthen their programs if hunting and fishing opportunities are to meet the growing demand and if the broad spectrum of wildlife essential to a healthy landscape is to be maintained:

1. High priority and ample funds should be assigned to the improvement and development of wildlife habitat throughout the Basin, and special attention paid to the stimulation of good hunting and fishing opportunity on private lands.

2. Research and management programs of the fish and wildlife agencies are vital, and need expansion based in broad public support and adequate funding.



E. National Forest lands are the most massive scenic, ecological, and recreational asset in public ownership in the Basin, and Forest Service programs have beneficial effects far beyond the National Forests' limits. Action specifically relating to these lands and programs is vital to landscape protection and recreational development, and should involve the following:

1. To preserve the natural beauty of the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River above their confluence, to assure public access, to provide for development and public use of the recreational potential of the streams, mountains, and forests in this area and conservation of its watersheds and natural resources, a National Recreation Area should be established, to be administered by the Secretary of Agriculture and to be comprised of the existing Massanutten Unit of the George Washington National Forest and such adjacent areas as may be needed to accomplish the purposes enumerated above.

2. Development of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, designated by Congress in 1965, should be accelerated.

3. Other National Forest lands in the Basin should also be adapted to a variety of compatible recreational uses, and their beauty and natural functioning protected by watershed management and the improvement of wildlife habitat, at an accelerated pace for early results.

4. In the interest of consolidation of this great resource, the Secretary of Agriculture should continue discussion with States, local governments, and private citizens, leading to extension of the National Forests on the upper reaches of the Potomac.

5. To enhance and increase the widely sought opportunity for water-related recreation in the National Forest lands as well as to contribute to the Forests' functional health, two measures are recommended:

a. Acceleration of work to improve the hydrologic characteristics of these lands, with the purpose of decreasing damage from rapid runoff and increasing the flow of clean natural water in the streams during critical low-flow periods.

b. Installation of that portion of the Department of Agriculture's upstream watershed improvement program consisting of some 40 small reservoirs within the National Forests, and recreational development of the sites in a manner compatible with State recreation planning.

6. To encourage and help non-Federal forest landowners in the Basin to maintain forest cover and develop their woodlands for fish and game production, natural beauty, and recreation, existing Forest Service, State, and private forestry programs should be accelerated.



F. The public's opportunity to appreciate and enjoy the rich variety of the Basin's landscape is hampered now by a shortage of suitable routes designed to furnish that opportunity. Two systems of such routes would link together the Basin's most fundamental attractions and connect it with the amenities of other regions:

1. Studies are already well advanced toward the definition of needs for recreation and scenic motoring tied in with the existing George Washington Memorial Parkway, Skyline Drive, and Blue Ridge Parkway. They should be completed and implemented when feasible in consultation with the Department of Transportation. A route that warrants equal consideration would be the extension of the George Washington Memorial Parkway from Mount Vernon to Yorktown as recommended in the Potomac Interim Report to the President.

2. A Basinwide system of trails for hiking, bicycling, and horseback travel has been studied and its details are presented in a separate report. This compatible and organic means of putting town and city people in touch with the natural environment and the countryside is an indispensable element of a full recreational program for the Basin, and it is strongly to be hoped that the establishment of the Potomac Heritage Trail along the river and the protection of the ridgeline Appalachian Trail—the two trunk elements of the system—will be promptly achieved under the legislation recently acted upon by the Congress.

G. Some of the most basic beauty of the Potomac Basin is found in its older towns and its inhabited countryside, where centuries of history are reflected in structures, historic sites, and types of land use. To protect this beauty and richness against unnecessary destruction and degradation, vigorous action is indicated:

1. The Basin States should consider the possibility of utilizing their State Historical Survey Commissions not only to designate and protect significant townscapes and rural landscapes as historical districts, but also to monitor encroachments and inappropriate construction affecting esthetic and associative values at or near historic sites. State legislation to restrict the exercise of eminent domain by utility companies for pipelines and transmission line routes in such areas is highly desirable.

2. If the Basin's traditional farms are to be preserved not only for their beauty and as open space near towns and cities but as an element in the economic health of the region, action at all levels of government will be needed. Tax relief as a tool to encourage continued farming on land in danger of urban development needs to be utilized more widely by counties. Programs should be developed that will help preserve the contribution that farms make to the life and landscape of the Basin. Imaginative new approaches are mandatory if there is to be any hope of coping with this problem.

H. At all levels of government also, a concerted effort must be made to clean up junk, spoil, and debris inherited from misuses of the past and to prevent new accumulations. Over 10,000 acres of surface-mined lands need reclamation, thousands of junked cars mar the landscape, and trash and litter clutter the land and streams. Existing programs must be accelerated and new ones devised. Legislation now before the Congress would establish a cooperative Federal-State program to regulate surface mining operations and to assure the reclamation of areas mined in the future. In addition, it is imperative that Basin Federal and State installations promulgate regulations to prevent accumulations of junk and debris on their lands.

III. To help ensure that future planning and action in relation to the Potomac Basin's water resources, water-related land resources, and amenities shall proceed in a wise and coordinated manner, we recommend:

A. That citizens of the Basin interested in its overall well-being give serious thought of joining together in a broad-based organization to promote all aspects of that well-being by public education, discussion, monitoring abuses, pressing for good local planning and land use, and reviewing proposals for environmental action in the Basin.

B. That the Federal and State governments continue their efforts to define and establish appropriate institutional arrangements for the management and operation of this Potomac Basin program and the furtherance of its principles of protection, preservation, good water management and flexibility. The Potomac River Basin Compact, as proposed in draft form by the Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, is receiving careful consideration by Federal agencies and citizens, anticipating consideration by State legislative bodies, and the Congress of the United States.

THE END