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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nation's River, by 
+United States Department of the Interior
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Nation's River
+       The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac
+
+Author: United States Department of the Interior
+
+Commentator: Stewart L. Udall, Kenneth Holum and James J. O'Donnell
+
+Release Date: February 2, 2007 [EBook #20503]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATION'S RIVER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgfcover.jpg"  width="500" height="359" alt="Front cover" title="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><br /><br />THE NATION'S RIVER<br /><br /></h1>
+
+<blockquote><h4>A report on the Potomac from the U.S. Department of the Interior, with
+recommendations for action by the Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the Potomac.<br /><br /></h4></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img000.jpg"  width="550" height="435" alt="CONFUCIUS" title="CONFUCIUS" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>LETTERS OF TRANSMITTAL</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img002.jpg" alt="DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR" title="CONFUCIUS" /></div>
+
+
+<h3>UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR</h3>
+
+<blockquote><h4>OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY&mdash;WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240</h4>
+
+<p class='author'>
+October 1, 1968</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dear Mr. President</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The enclosed report, <i>The Nation's River</i>, is submitted in response to
+your February 8, 1965, request that we prepare a program for your
+consideration which would assure that the Potomac would serve as a model
+of scenic and recreation values for the entire country.</p>
+
+<p>This is the final report of your Potomac planning team. In my opinion,
+the study contributes significantly to a more complete understanding of
+both the opportunities and the problems of this magnificent river. The
+proposed program of action, when implemented, will move the area a long
+step forward toward the challenging goals identified in your directive.</p>
+
+<p>Your call for a broadly based conservation plan for the Potomac has
+stimulated a wide range of useful actions by citizens' groups and by the
+Federal, State and local governments during the course of our studies.
+While these are too numerous to recite, the participation and
+involvement of citizens in decisions affecting the future of the Basin
+are most promising and deserve recognition and encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Our recommendations for action cover three broad aspects:</p>
+
+<p>... those related to present and future water resource problems in the
+Basin; ... those related to the protection and restoration of the
+Basin's scenic and natural assets; ... those to ensure that future
+planning and action will proceed in a wise and coordinated manner.</p>
+
+<p>I call particular attention to the following recommendations:</p>
+
+<p>... to protect the mainstem Potomac River and its banks from Washington
+to Cumberland, Maryland, and to make it accessible to the public, the
+report calls for prompt legislative authorization, funding and
+establishment of a Potomac National River consisting of Federal, State
+and local components. The proposed legislation to establish the Potomac
+National River which you sent to the Congress on March 6, 1968, and
+which was introduced as S. 3157, is based on the new and exciting
+concept that the urgent objectives of Potomac River conservation can and
+should be accomplished through cooperative action by all levels of
+government;</p>
+
+<p>... to achieve the water-quality goals established as State standards,
+the report recommends coordination of Federal, State and local powers to
+achieve the waste treatment measures required, within five years, and
+effective action toward meeting similar requirements in handling wastes
+at all Federal establishments in the Basin. It calls, also, for
+immediate reconvening of the 1957 Enforcement Conference on the Potomac
+to focus attention on the timetables for controlling pollution in the
+estuary;</p>
+
+<p>... to provide a measure of drought insurance, the report calls for
+early completion of Bloomington Dam and Reservoir;</p>
+
+<p>... to meet growing needs for municipal and industrial water to achieve
+anticipated economic growth in upstream areas, the report identified six
+reservoirs which are consistent with other aspects of the report. The
+river management afforded by operation of the reservoirs could also meet
+the water supply needs of the Washington metropolitan area for at least
+20 years. The report urges continuing research and study of alternative
+sources for the metropolitan area supply, including use of the upper
+estuary to meet critical short-term demands;</p>
+
+<p>... to assure continuity of comprehensive planning and management, the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>report recognizes the need to mobilize the skills and authorities of
+all levels of government and support therefore by alert and informed
+citizens and citizen groups. The Governors of the Basin States and the
+District of Columbia have proposed a Federal-Interstate Compact for the
+Potomac and arranged to have a draft prepared by the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee. The Water Resources Council will continue to work
+with the States in this effort&mdash;anticipating that proposals will emerge
+which merit both State and Federal support.</p>
+
+<p>Your assignment, Mr. President, has been exciting and challenging. We
+hope that our effort has contributed to achieving your dreams for this
+magnificent valley.</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+Respectfully yours,<br /><br /><br />
+Stewart L. Udall<br />
+Secretary of the Interior</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">The President</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The White House</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Washington, D.C.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enclosure</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img002.jpg" alt="DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR" title="CONFUCIUS" /></div>
+
+<h4>OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY&mdash;WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240</h4>
+
+<p class='author'>October 1, 1968</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dear Mr. Secretary:</span></p>
+
+<p>Since early February 1965, when President Johnson asked you to develop a
+program which would make the Potomac "a model of scenic and recreation
+values", there has been a continuing joint effort to achieve this
+exciting objective.</p>
+
+<p>The Interdepartmental Task Force, which you and your fellow Cabinet
+officers established, has coordinated the Federal effort. When the four
+Basin State Governors and the Commissioner of the District of Columbia
+acted to establish the Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, we had a
+genuine opportunity to achieve useful and effective Federal-State
+cooperative relationships. As you know, our two groups have worked
+together in a cordial and productive way.</p>
+
+<p>We have listened carefully to the views of individual citizens and
+citizen groups in a real effort to sense the needs and aspirations of
+the people who live in the valley and the millions who visit our
+Nation's Capital and the historic and beautiful Potomac valley.
+Publication of an Interim Report two years ago proved to be a useful
+means for obtaining citizen participation.</p>
+
+<p>This report summarizes a series of studies made in response to the
+President's directive. Although it is our final report, we urge that it
+be looked upon as the next step in a continuing plan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>ning process. It
+points to action to meet present and near-term needs and to the
+desirability of continued planning to provide sound bases for the
+further resource-use decisions which citizens of the Basin will be
+called upon to make as those decisions become more timely.</p>
+
+<p>The body of the report is a Department of the Interior document, couched
+whenever possible in nontechnical language in the hope that it may find
+a wide lay readership. The program for action, which constitutes the
+final chapter, is concurred in by the Federal agencies on the
+Interdepartmental Task Force. Comments of the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee are set forth in the attached letter from its
+Chairman, Mr. James J. O'Donnell. Responsibility for leadership in
+proceeding with the proposed actions is identified, as appropriate, to
+specific Federal agencies, States or local governmental entities.</p>
+
+<p>Other reports have been or will be issued which form integral parts of
+this endeavor. These include the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Potomac Interim Report to the President</i>&mdash;January 1966 ... <i>The
+Creek and The City</i>&mdash;Urban Pressures on a Natural Stream&mdash;Rock
+Creek Park and Metropolitan Washington&mdash;January 1967 ... <i>The
+Potomac</i>&mdash;The Report of the Potomac Planning Task Force&mdash;Assembled
+by the American Institute of Architects&mdash;September 1967 ... <i>Report
+of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army Corps of Engineers,
+Potomac River Basin, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia,
+Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia</i> (This report, now in
+the process of official review, will provide a basis for action on
+water supply and related matters.)</p></div>
+
+<p>In addition to the published documents, each of the four Sub-Task Forces
+established by the Interdepartmental Task Force prepared reports which
+constituted invaluable working documents on several aspects of Potomac
+Basin planning. These include the following:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Report of the Water Supply and Flood Control Sub-Task Force</i> ...
+<i>Report of the Water Quality Sub-Task Force</i> ... <i>Report of the
+Sedimentation and Erosion Sub-Task Force</i> ... <i>Report of the
+Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>Copies of these working documents will be distributed to concerned
+local, State and Federal agencies and will be on file in those offices.</p>
+
+<p>You will note particularly that the attached report emphasizes the
+urgent need for a continuing and broadly based planning effort. If we
+are to fully achieve the objective of making the Potomac a model, and we
+must, resource planning and management must mobilize the authorities and
+the skills of the Federal Government, the States, the local
+jurisdictions and the citizens. I am convinced that the Potomac Basin
+needs:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>... an alert, active, basinwide citizen organization with the
+perspective to see the area's total needs and the determination to
+make certain that action is taken to meet those requirements;</p></div>
+
+<p>... a formally established relationship between the various levels of
+government to continue comprehensive planning&mdash;and to make certain that
+action at all levels is consistent with the established objectives.</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+Sincerely yours,<br /><br /><br />
+Kenneth Holum<br />
+Assistant Secretary</p>
+
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Honorable Stewart L. Udall, Secretary</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Department of the Interior</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Washington, D.C. 20240</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Enclosure</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<h2>POTOMAC RIVER BASIN ADVISORY COMMITTEE</h2>
+<p class='author'><b>1025 VERMONT AVENUE, N.W.,</b><br />
+<b>WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005</b></p>
+
+
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><b>MARYLAND</b></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><b>PENNSYLVANIA</b></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><b>VIRGINIA</b></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><b>WEST VIRGINIA</b></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><b>DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA</b></span></p>
+
+<p class='author'>September 15, 1968</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dear Mr. Holum,</span></p>
+
+<p>The Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee was pleased to have the
+opportunity to review the recommendations compiled by the Federal
+Interdepartmental Task Force for inclusion in the forthcoming Report to
+the President. These recommendations represent the culmination of
+intensive studies in the areas of water supply and flood control, water
+quality, sedimentation and erosion, and landscape and recreation. As
+such, they are of the utmost significance to the people of the Potomac
+River Basin.</p>
+
+<p>We note in particular that the recommendations</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>(a) Highlight today's most pressing problems and propose feasible
+solutions;</p>
+
+<p>(b) Recognize the interrelationship of the separate needs of the
+urban and rural areas of the Basin, and propose action by federal,
+state and local governments;</p>
+
+<p>(c) Specifically consider the economic growth of the Basin in
+relation to water resources development; and</p>
+
+<p>(d) Emphasize the need for an intergovernmental organization, along
+the lines of the proposed Potomac River Basin Compact, which would
+have continuing responsibilities for the planning and development
+of the Potomac River Basin.</p></div>
+
+<p>During the past two years the Advisory Committee has focused attention
+on preparation of a draft of a proposed interstate-federal compact which
+has been submitted to the governments and the people within the Potomac
+River Basin for comment. We believe that an interstate-federal agency
+for the planning, development and management of the Potomac, envisaged
+by the Compact, offers by far the most promising opportunity for the
+people of the Basin to guide the water resources development of the
+Potomac, and for the implementation of many of the Report's
+recommendations.</p>
+
+<p>The Advisory Committee wishes to commend the Federal Interdepartmental
+Task Force for the constructive and imaginative manner in which this
+difficult assignment has been carried out. The Committee wishes also to
+thank you for the opportunity of being associated with the work of the
+Task Force through our state observers.</p>
+
+<p>As representatives of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
+and the District of Columbia, we shall recommend that our heads of
+government, the legislatures, and the state and local agencies accord
+the most careful consideration to this report.</p>
+
+<p class='author'>
+Sincerely yours,<br /><br /><br />
+James J. O'Donnell, Chairman<br />
+Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Honorable Kenneth Holum</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Assistant Secretary</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Department of the Interior</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Washington, D.C. 20240</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img006.jpg"  width="500" height="401" alt="River scene" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="50%" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>THE RIVER IN TIME</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_8'><b>8</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'>THE WAY THINGS ARE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_15'><b>15</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'>TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_23'><b>23</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'>THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_39'><b>39</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'>A GOOD PLACE TO BE</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'><b>65</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'>COMPLEXITIES AND PRIORITIES</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_93'><b>93</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'>THE NATION'S RIVER&mdash;AN ACTION PLAN</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_105'><b>105</b></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class="trans-note">
+        Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected.
+All other inconsistencies are as in the original.
+    </div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_RIVER_IN_TIME" id="THE_RIVER_IN_TIME"></a>THE RIVER IN TIME</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img008.jpg"  width="400" height="210" alt="THE RIVER IN TIME" title="" /></div>
+
+<p><br /><i>Time, abetted by man and nature, has changed the face of the Nation's
+River. Nature's rains, snows, ice and floods continually carve the
+shores. Man, also, changes the Potomac through man-made fills, walls,
+docks, bridges and piers. The arbitrary changes by man and nature have
+reached the point where careful planning and consideration must be given
+to the river's future in order to preserve its majestic beauty as The
+Nation's River.<br /><br /></i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img009.jpg"  width="500" height="346" alt="Pastoral scene" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img010a.jpg"  width="500" height="367" alt="1830" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>1830</h4>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img010c.jpg"  width="400" height="224" alt="1800" title="" /></div>
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img010d.jpg"  width="400" height="229" alt="1872" title="" /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img011a.jpg"  width="500" height="346" alt="1936 Flood scene" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>1936 Flood scene</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img011b.jpg"  width="400" height="204" alt="1936 Flood scene" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>Civil War Chain Bridge</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img011c.jpg"  width="400" height="208" alt="1936 Flood scene" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>Early 1900&mdash;canoeists near Seneca, Md.</h4><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img012.jpg"  width="500" height="367" alt="1917 Washington Waterfront" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>1917 Washington Waterfront</h4><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img013.jpg"  width="500" height="369" alt="Washington Waterfront today" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>Washington Waterfront today</h4><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img014.jpg"><img src="images/img014tb.jpg" alt="POTOMAC RIVER BASIN" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<h4>POTOMAC RIVER BASIN</h4><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img015.jpg"  width="400" height="233" alt="THE WAY THINGS ARE" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h2>I. THE WAY THINGS ARE</h2>
+
+
+<p>With good reason, people sometimes claim that the Potomac has been
+studied more often and more thoroughly than any other American stream.
+Its intimacy with the national capital at Washington and with great
+figures and events of our history have centered much American interest
+on it. In many ways it is a classic Eastern river, copious and scenic,
+that drains some 15,000 square miles of varied, historic, and often
+striking landscape, from the green mountains along the Allegheny Front
+to the sultry lowlands of the estuary's shores where the earliest
+plantations were established among the Indian tribes. It has tributaries
+large and small whose names echo with connotations for American
+ears&mdash;the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, the Saint Mary's, Antietam Creek,
+Bull Run....</p>
+
+<p>And it has long been the subject for debate and discussion over how it
+may best be handled to serve man's ends, for in common with other rivers
+in civilized regions it has developed problems of pollution, of
+landscape destruction, of occasional floods, of impending shortages of
+water for its basin's increasing population. Out of the debates have
+emerged studies and plans, some fragmentary and some whole, some
+specialized and some general. This present report concerns the latest
+study, made under the leadership of Secretary of the Interior Stewart L.
+Udall according to a directive given him by President Johnson in 1965.
+The report is "final" only in that it sums up this study. It is by no
+means final in terms of the Potomac, for it points toward future action
+and continuing study and planning, and an important part of its function
+will be to show why a degree of inconclu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16a" id="Page_16a">[Pg 16a]</a></span>siveness in such matters is
+necessary and desirable.</p>
+
+<p>Within a remarkably few years after Captain John Smith sailed up the
+Potomac estuary in 1608 to assess its treasures and to make the
+acquaintance of the Algonquian tribesmen whose villages flourished on
+either shore, other vigorous white men came there to stay, on both the
+Maryland and Virginia sides. In the century that followed they raced and
+leapfrogged one another upriver, elbowing the Indians out, and with the
+aid of indentured labor and later of African slaves they helped to shape
+the Tidewater tobacco civilization that engendered so many future
+leaders of the American republic. Near the head of navigation, shipping
+centers grew up&mdash;among them Alexandria and Georgetown, forerunners of
+the metropolis that bestrides the river at the Fall Line today. Above
+there in the upper Piedmont, and then across the Blue Ridge in the Great
+Valley, the westering waves of migrant English met other waves of
+Scotch-Irish and the Germans coming down from Pennsylvania, and before
+the American Revolution the combined breeds of men had built up enough
+pressure to push Indians almost entirely out of the Potomac Basin and to
+occupy all the good farmland, even in the Basin's ridged western areas.</p>
+
+<p>Since then their successors have used the land for farming and for other
+purposes. In using it they have changed it, and the changes have
+registered in the river system that drains it. For land, water,
+vegetation, wildlife, minerals, and men's habits are not separable from
+one another in the natural frame. So that if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16b" id="Page_16b">[Pg 16b]</a></span> the early planters, using
+methods of hoe tillage scarcely less primitive than those of the
+Indians, mined the Tidewater soils for tobacco production in a way that
+required new fields every few years, one result was that those soils
+tired and thinned and finally stopped supporting the social magnificence
+that had grown up there, for production and prosperity moved inland and
+west. And another result was that the Potomac estuary itself grew
+shallower and different with the silt that washed down off the land, and
+many a tributary bay that once served as harbor for oceangoing ships is
+now a rich, reedy marsh with a single narrow gut of shoal water
+wandering down across it to the Potomac.</p>
+
+<p>And if later generations of men cut down the forests on the mountains in
+the western Basin, and fire followed the cutting, thousands of years of
+soil washed down from those slopes too to change both mountains and
+river, and elk and panther vanished. And if along the Potomac's North
+Branch there was once a fine coal boom, there is now the boom's legacy
+in the form of gray dour towns and dark sad streams corrosive with mine
+acids.</p>
+
+<p>And if old Alexandria and Georgetown and all the land around them have
+burgeoned into one of the nation's great cities, there has been a price
+to pay for that also. The stately upper estuary on which they front is
+often turbid with silt and sometimes emerald green with algae nourished
+on sewage and other septic riches, and the hills stretching back from
+the river are spiky with tall buildings linked by urban and suburban
+clutter, where life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16c" id="Page_16c">[Pg 16c]</a></span> lacks the natural elbow room that the old Tidewater
+folk&mdash;planters and yeomen and bondsmen and slaves alike&mdash;were able to
+take for granted.</p>
+
+<p>These are facets of an Age of Problems, of course. They and other
+related troubles have been growing apace lately as men have grown in
+numbers, in the demands they make on the natural environment that shaped
+and nourished their species, and in their technological power to enforce
+those demands. The troubles pose a threat to men of flavorlessness and
+grayness and the loss of essential meanings, a threat of diminished
+humanity. For dependence on that environment, intricate and deep-rooted,
+psychological as well as physical, has not grown less with the human
+advance toward power and sophistication.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the Potomac Basin as a whole the threat so far is mainly still a
+threat, not a reality. Where men's employment of the land has been
+reasonable, as it has in the Great Valley almost from the start, the
+land not only remains useful and pleasant but has a specific traditional
+beauty dependent on man's presence. Where new comprehension of the
+processes of destruction has been attained and shared, as in soil
+conservation and forestry and such fields, much damage done in the past
+has been repaired.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the Potomac river system's flowing waters are unnaturally
+polluted to one degree or another, but only in spots does the pollution
+even approach the sort of poisonous hopelessness to be found along some
+more heavily populated and industrialized American rivers, and on the
+Potomac its spread is already be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18a" id="Page_18a">[Pg 18a]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>ing slowed. Water shortages loom, but
+have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at
+certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington
+metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller
+life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built
+to receive them often deny it to them. But in modern terms there are not
+really enormous numbers of them yet, and for their pleasure and
+fulfillment a great deal of varied and handsome and historic landscape
+has been more or less preserved, by design or happy accident.</p>
+
+<h3>Proposed Water Resource Development</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img017a.jpg"  width="500" height="330" alt="North Mountain" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>North Mountain</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img017b.jpg"  width="382" height="215" alt="Town Creek" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>Town Creek</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img017d.jpg"><img src="images/img017d-tb.jpg" alt="Proposed Water Resource Development" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustration legend">
+<tr><td align='left'>1. Sixes Bridge</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>2. Sideling Hill</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>3. Town Creek</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>4. Little Cacapon</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>5. North Mountain</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>6. Verona (Staunton)</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>The Potomac Basin, in other words, is still generally a wholesome place
+two-thirds of the way through the 20th century. If it gets the
+protection it deserves, and is developed thoughtfully and decently to
+meet men's demands upon its resources, it can stay a wholesome place
+into the indefinite future.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Water pollution was the first Basinwide problem to make itself
+thoroughly evident, and the need to deal with it led to the first
+Basinwide activities besides studies. Soil conservation practices for
+sediment control were instituted in the 1930's, and in 1940 the
+Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, often called INCOPOT,
+was formed by compact among the four Basin States and the District of
+Columbia, with the formal permission of Congress. INCOPOT's powers are
+only advisory in relation to State and community action against
+pollution, and it has never been generously financed. But during the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18b" id="Page_18b">[Pg 18b]</a></span>
+quarter-century of its existence it has developed a wise combination of
+investigation, persuasion, and public education to fight this problem,
+with the result that on the Potomac conditions have in some ways
+actually improved during a period of wars and booms and haphazard urban
+expansion when many other rivers were headed straight down to stinking
+corruption.</p>
+
+<p>In 1956 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was directed by Congress to
+undertake a Basinwide study to develop a plan for flood control and the
+conservation of water resources and related land resources. The emphasis
+in this assignment was upon a full long-term functional solution for the
+Basin's water problems in feasible economic and technological terms. In
+carrying it out, the Army enlisted the aid of other Federal agencies,
+and their <i>Potomac River Basin Report</i>, published in nine volumes in
+1963, presented the study's results and a plan for Basin water
+development to meet needs to the year 2010. It is a monumental piece of
+work to which anyone concerned with the Basin henceforth will have to
+refer, because of the completeness with which it examines the Potomac
+water resource and the careful technical knowledge it brings to bear on
+Potomac problems.</p>
+
+<p>However, the plan it presents&mdash;including recommendations for sixteen
+major multipurpose reservoirs on the Potomac and its tributaries&mdash;would
+bring about a massive and permanent revision of the free-flowing stream
+system and would inundate much valley land. It aroused articulate
+opposition at local, state, and Congressional levels, a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18c" id="Page_18c">[Pg 18c]</a></span> deal of
+which was focused on the key Seneca dam on the Potomac main stem just
+above Washington&mdash;an area where earlier single proposals for dams, first
+at Great Falls and then at River Bend, had provoked similar resistance.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly enough, a powerful continuing body of opinion cares about
+something more than strictly functional values along the Potomac and in
+its Basin. It is a long-settled region, whose natives generally cherish
+what they have in the way of scenic and historic amenities. It is the
+part-time home of many influential lawmakers, who concern themselves
+about its beauty and well-being. And together with the national capital
+at the core of its metropolis, it is the vacation goal of millions of
+American tourists from elsewhere each year, who go home aware not only
+of monuments and marble halls of state but of crucial Civil War
+battlefields, dark mountain ridges overlooking classic river valleys,
+rolling Piedmont estates, and the wooded headlands of Virginia and
+Maryland that recede behind one another into haze as one looks down the
+estuary in summertime.</p>
+
+<p>This national interest in the river was recognized publicly early in
+1965 by President Johnson when, in connection with his noted "Message on
+Natural Beauty," he issued directives to Secretary Udall making him
+responsible for the preparation of a conservation plan for the Potomac.
+In addition to the tasks of cleaning up the river, assuring an adequate
+water supply for the decades ahead, and providing flood protection, the
+Secretary was instructed to protect the natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19a" id="Page_19a">[Pg 19a]</a></span> beauty of the river and
+its Basin and to plan for full recreational opportunities there for both
+natives and visitors. A stipulated aim, which seized the public
+imagination, was to make the Potomac a model of scenic and recreational
+values for the entire nation.</p>
+
+<p>In response, the Secretary shaped a Federal Interdepartmental Task Force
+under Interior direction, in whose specialized sub-task forces were
+enlisted the skills available in the Corps of Engineers, the Department
+of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (where
+the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was then located),
+and the various concerned bureaus and services of the Interior
+Department itself. Shortly after this, Secretary Udall met with the
+governors of the four Basin States and the commissioners of the District
+of Columbia to ensure that State and local interests would have a hand
+in the planning process. Out of this came the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee, composed of State and District representatives,
+which has conferred often with the Interdepartmental Task Force on
+overall questions and has assumed prime responsibility in studying the
+central problem of creating a planning and administrative body to handle
+Potomac water and related land problems hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>In addition, a blue-ribbon panel of distinguished planners and
+specialists, assembled by the former president of the American Institute
+of Architects at Secretary Udall's request and subsequently known as the
+Potomac Planning Task Force, undertook a separate study of Potomac
+questions, both in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19b" id="Page_19b">[Pg 19b]</a></span> general and with specific focus on the metropolis.
+Their independent report, The Potomac, was lately published. It makes a
+detailed, wise, and instructive plea for considering the river and its
+landscape as a whole and meaningful thing, for proceeding with their
+development and protection according to high esthetic and ecological
+principles, and for a distinctive form of management.</p>
+
+<p>Existing private, public, and semipublic organizations with an interest
+in the Potomac or in the type of problems it presents have joined in the
+present effort by sponsoring public meetings and publishing discussions
+or otherwise doing their part to help. Among them may be mentioned
+INCOPOT, the Conservation Foundation, the Metropolitan Washington
+Council of Government, Resources for the Future, Inc., the League of
+Women Voters, the Potomac Basin Center, the National Parks Association,
+and a number of local planning or action bodies. Through these meetings
+and other media, public comment on the Federal Task Force's work has
+been voluminous and often helpful, particularly since the publication of
+its <i>Interim Report</i> in January of 1966, which made certain proposals
+for immediate action to begin providing for short-term metropolitan
+water needs, to protect specific scenic treasures, and to get moving on
+the long task of cleaning up the river.</p>
+
+<p>With so many viewpoints somehow included in the planning process,
+opinions have often diverged as to how much of what ought to be done
+about the Potomac, and how soon, and in what order. Well they may
+diverge. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19c" id="Page_19c">[Pg 19c]</a></span> a time of economic expansion and population growth
+unparalleled in human history, predictions about the economy and the
+population of the distant future&mdash;necessary to full planning&mdash;verge
+perilously near to crystal gazing even when the best available
+yardsticks are applied. And this is only one uncertainty. Among the
+others which will be examined later in this report are the prospect of
+drastic technological change that may soon offer cheaper, more
+effective, and less disruptive ways of dealing with environmental
+problems including water; the doubtfulness of sufficient public money
+for large conservation projects in a time of international tensions and
+urban crisis; and the solid American political complexity of the
+boundary-laced Potomac Basin, which bristles with various forms of veto
+power and a multiplicity of assorted regional, professional, and
+philosophical viewpoints.</p>
+
+<p>Such complexities and uncertainties have a powerful reality and
+relevance for planners. They impose a need for breadth of view, for
+leaving many future options open, and by the same token they present a
+danger of piecemeal action, excessive compromise and indecisiveness.</p>
+
+<p>The body of this report is an Interior Department document, couched
+wherever possible in untechnical language in the hope that it may find a
+wide lay readership. Necessary technical supporting material mainly has
+been or will be made available in separate form. The report examines
+environmental problems in the Potomac Basin and possible solutions for
+them. Its underlying emphasis is ecologi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20a" id="Page_20a">[Pg 20a]</a></span>cal, based in a conviction that
+man's own good is heavily dependent on the good of the earth in all its
+complexity. No one at this point in time, obviously, is going to be able
+to reconstitute the primeval Paleolithic world, nor would many people
+want to. The earth has changed with people in their long surge toward
+dominion over its ways and its creatures. But there is a difference
+between adaptive change and the degeneration that modern times are
+forcing on the earth men have always known. Growing millions of people
+are coming to consider that human beings' right to see and know woods
+and plains and mountains and streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent
+condition&mdash;whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's
+use&mdash;together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there,
+is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or
+to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of
+these ancient realities future human sanity and wholeness may well
+depend.</p>
+
+<p>We who are responsible for this report believe that this point of view
+is going to gain enough strength and political acceptance to become one
+of the motive forces of this century. Already it has much power. Even
+though many established attitudes, laws, and practices are still firmly
+rooted in the old exploitative, often heroic urge to seize upon all
+resources and put them to use at whatever ultimate cost, disgust over
+pollution and the destruction of beautiful places is getting to be a
+political factor to be reckoned with at all levels of government. So is
+concern over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20b" id="Page_20b">[Pg 20b]</a></span> man's lemminglike multiplication in numbers and the way
+his technology and his expansionism are gobbling up things quiet and
+graceful and eternal&mdash;things he needs. It seems certain that political
+"muscle" and respectability for the legitimate conservationist viewpoint
+is shaping up fast enough that it will be able to dissipate the worst
+threats&mdash;the grabbing and the spoiling, the ignorance and the archaic
+attitudes, the onward shove of brute technology for technology's own
+sake rather than for man's&mdash;before they have forced mankind on into the
+gray sterility of life that would be their ultimate effect.</p>
+
+<p>And upon the emerging potency of this sound and urgent concern with the
+way the natural world is being used up, we believe a flexible form of
+planning can be based that will do away with the dilemma posed by the
+complexities and uncertainties of the moment. With a minimum of
+compromise, such planning will be able to identify and propose solutions
+for immediate problems in places like the Potomac Basin, while moving
+toward longrun solutions for other problems as those problems'
+dimensions become clearer than at present, and as technology and
+politics make better solutions feasible.</p>
+
+<p>Solutions for pressing and immediate problems have to be in terms of
+present possibilities&mdash;political, financial, and technological. Some
+such immediate problems&mdash;of water supply, pollution control, and scenic
+preservation&mdash;exist in the Potomac Basin and are analyzed in this
+report, and presently feasible action is recommended for their
+alleviation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20c" id="Page_20c">[Pg 20c]</a></span> A considerable part of the report is concerned with such
+problems, with the range of possible solutions for them and with our
+reasons for making specific recommendations.</p>
+
+<p>These immediate solutions do not constitute what has been called a
+"quick fix"&mdash;piecemeal, one-shot action to patch up things until another
+crisis arises. As much as possible, they have been worked into the
+picture of longterm Basin needs insofar as those needs can be discerned,
+and it is intended that action against future problems shall be built
+upon them. Furthermore, we have sought to maintain an ample view in
+identifying long-term difficulties and indicating what should be aimed
+for when it is essential to act against them.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not shaped a rigidly complete, prescriptive plan identifying
+exact measures for the cure of all present and future ills of the
+Potomac Basin. For a variety of reasons, we have concluded that such a
+rigid plan would not only be self-defeating in the long run, but that it
+is actually undesirable. We are aware that this conclusion is going to
+arouse criticism among those who during the past three years have
+consistently demanded that we provide a total answer, for the purpose
+either of unseating the governing principles of the 1963 plan or of
+reinforcing and amplifying those principles. Nevertheless we are certain
+that the conclusion is right.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img021.jpg"  width="500" height="478" alt="Reeds" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>It would be right even if the development of new technology were the
+only uncertainty confronting planners. Barring a complete breakdown in
+the present impetus of research and discovery, radical change in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+technology of water supply and water quality control appears to be
+extremely probable within the next few decades. Some of the best of the
+emerging tools, there is reason to hope, may permit men to deal with
+water problems in ways that are more harmonious with natural ways and
+less structurally imposing than present methods. Possibly the present,
+often essential reliance on large storage reservoirs, for instance, is
+going to be modified, though how much the ultimate way of doing things
+will have to combine old and new technologies is something that cannot
+be guessed.</p>
+
+<p>If it cannot yet be guessed, it cannot be incorporated in a rigid plan,
+which has to deal in technological certainties&mdash;i.e. in present
+technology&mdash;and must therefore impose that present technology on the
+future, whether or not the future is going to need it. If we are right
+in believing that from this generation on, people are going to be
+increasingly jealous in the preservation of their natural heritage,
+future Americans will not be likely to thank this generation for having
+unnecessarily robbed them of choices as to how to handle the
+streamwaters of a superb river basin like the Potomac's. Any more than
+they would thank us for having done nothing at all and leaving them to
+scramble for water, and filthy water at that. Quite simply, no one has
+the right to do either of these things to them.</p>
+
+<p>It is our belief that if genuinely conservationist values are
+established as the ruling principles in a flexible, properly paced,
+continuing planning process, there will be no need to fear that future
+generations are going to be either stuck with large mistakes on our
+part, or cursed with shortages, floods, and pollution. With this report
+we hope to initiate such a process for the Potomac.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img23a.jpg"  width="350" height="200" alt="TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img023b.jpg"  width="382" height="344" alt="TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img023c.jpg"  width="350" height="200" alt="TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h3><br /><br /><br />II. TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER</h3>
+
+
+<p>If the Potomac has been much studied, it has nevertheless been subjected
+to only meager "development" over the centuries of its service to
+civilized men. Most past attempts to alter it significantly for man's
+use have either failed or have not led to lasting results, though their
+changing purposes over the years summarize, to a degree, America's
+shifting attitudes toward the utility of flowing water. Early projects
+under George Washington and others to assure the navigability of the
+main river above the Fall Line, which they saw as an artery for eastward
+and westward currents of trade, left only some quaint ruined locks and
+flowing bypass canals around falls and rapids. The later C. &amp; O. Canal,
+which ran alongside the river and was replenished by its water above
+occasional low dams, required over two decades of toil and death and
+heavy expense to complete upriver to Cumberland, Maryland, which it
+reached in 1850. There had been some public opposition to the project
+and it was never a great success even after completion, for the railroad
+era had begun and the Canal suffered periodic heavy damage from Potomac
+floods, being finally abandoned to picturesque decay after a mighty
+inundation in 1924.</p>
+
+<p>Largely because of a stalemate between public and private power
+advocates, the early 20th century heyday of small-scale hydroelectric
+power development of rivers mainly missed the Potomac, though at one
+time a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24a" id="Page_24a">[Pg 24a]</a></span> power company acquired land at Great Falls in anticipation of
+such development. Other modern water projects in the Basin have been
+relatively modest or have run afoul of strong opposition. Therefore,
+today a sprinkling of small channel power dams and water intake
+structures, some levees and improved creek channels, and a few
+unimposing reservoirs of various sizes and types high up on small
+tributaries are the sum total of the development to which the Potomac
+water resource has been lastingly subjected, if we disregard for the
+moment its waste disposal function and the maintenance of navigation in
+its estuary.</p>
+
+<p>In general this is undoubtedly a fortunate thing, for the application of
+modern technology to rivers in the past half-century of our national
+growth has not always had happy results. "A river," Justice Holmes once
+wrote, "is more than an amenity, it is a treasure." His feeling is
+shared by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who live
+along the Potomac and its tributaries or who go there to float down them
+in bass time, to picnic and swim, to hunt, to dig into the region's
+history, or just to listen to the purl of green water against the rough
+stonework of a ruined bridge pier. Deteriorated though a few stretches
+may presently be, these rivers are still treasures.</p>
+
+<p>The lack of development also presents planners with a fairly clean slate
+on which to write. In terms of water, few massive human mistakes
+confront them except the pollution of the upper estuary and certain
+other reaches like the afflicted North Branch. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24b" id="Page_24b">[Pg 24b]</a></span>fore they can begin
+more or less from scratch and can usually find various choices for
+action against the water problems of the Basin&mdash;against pollution,
+against flood damages, and against impending or existing shortages of
+water for municipal and industrial use.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img024.jpg"  width="275" height="350" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Though for clarity in discussion we need to classify these various kinds
+of problems separately, in practice they do not so neatly divide from
+one another. Nor do they divide from the way the land in the Basin is
+used or from the pleasure and fulfillment people find in the outdoors.
+If a region's use of a stream's water is heavy in a dry August, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24c" id="Page_24c">[Pg 24c]</a></span>
+instance, whatever pollution the stream gets below towns and factories
+will be more concentrated and damaging than if the stream were flowing
+well. Pollution itself can affect the utility of water as well as
+people's enjoyment of it in a stream. A creek watershed that has been
+ignorantly farmed or roughly assaulted with bulldozers for urban
+development is an eyesore of erosive destruction, unproductive of crops,
+wildlife, or poetic appreciation, and can cause both heavier stream
+flooding in time of storm and lower flow in time of drought by the way
+its disruption alters the normal behavior of rainwater. The silt that
+storms wash off of it is not only a major ugly pollutant of flowing
+water below that point but can complicate flooding and bank-cutting and
+navigation and other things by settling out into bars and shoals in
+still stretches, including reservoirs.</p>
+
+<p>All of these things, and others as well, have to be considered together
+as parts of a whole problem. And that problem is that men's hugely
+increasing numbers and their multiplying technological power over their
+environment have made it necessary to readjust the balances somewhat in
+great natural units like river basins&mdash;to restore, manage, and protect
+them in such a way as to be able to hand them over decent and whole and
+useful to the people who come after.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Problems of Water Supply in the Potomac Basin</h3>
+
+<p>Wisely handled, the water that runs annually through the streams of the
+Potomac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25a" id="Page_25a">[Pg 25a]</a></span> river system can be counted on to satisfy any demands that
+people there are likely to make on it in present times or during the
+foreseeable future. More than 2� trillion gallons of fresh water
+normally flow down the Potomac in a year. It would be pleasant to
+believe that this means that the natural and unassisted river system is
+going to continue to serve human needs in the future as it has served
+them heretofore&mdash;that after cleaning up the network of streams and
+ensuring against their repollution and the desecration of their
+landscape, men will be able to leave them respectfully alone to run down
+toward the Chesapeake Bay as they have run during and before human
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>However, it is not so. Whatever human population might be considered
+ecologically tolerable under natural conditions for the nine million or
+so acres of earth, rocks, vegetation, and water that make up the Basin,
+it has long since been exceeded by hundreds on hundreds of thousands.
+And if those who predict such things are right, it is going to be
+exceeded much further in the near and middle future. Today's
+approximately 3.5 million Basin inhabitants are expected to double by
+the turn of the century, with accompanying complex shifts in the ways
+they will be making their livings and in the numbers of them who will
+live in the country as compared with the cities and towns. Thereafter,
+further geometric increases are contemplated, calmly by some
+contemplators and less so by others.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of past and present populations and their activities,
+conditions in the Basin&mdash;including the river system&mdash;are necessarily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25b" id="Page_25b">[Pg 25b]</a></span>
+far from natural, for specific structural development is not the only
+form of change. The Potomac environment has been adapted to man's use,
+and in places where that use has been unreasonable it is already in
+trouble. Clearly it is going to have to be manipulated artificially to
+some extent to meet people's demands on it and to guard it against the
+worst effects of their numbers. In fact, very luckily, it already is
+being so manipulated in dozens of ways ranging from methods of farming
+and forest management to sewage treatment. It is possible to hope that
+present population forecasts may somehow find less than ample
+fulfillment, but it is not possible to count on it for planning
+purposes. Nor is it possible to wish out of existence situations already
+serious.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img025a.jpg"  width="400" height="385" alt="WATER SUPPLY POTOMAC RIVER" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<h4>WATER SUPPLY POTOMAC RIVER, WASH. D.C.</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img025c.jpg"  width="400" height="335" alt="WATER SUPPLY POTOMAC RIVER" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>GROUND WATER LEVELS WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA</h4>
+
+<p>At times during the hot months of drouthy 1966, the climax of a dry
+cycle that had begun to develop five years earlier, the Washington
+metropolis was not too far from the bottom of its water barrel. The
+situation was not as bad as in some other Northeastern regions, nor as
+bad as some local analyses claimed, but it was bad enough. The highest
+daily withdrawal of the year was on June 26, when the metropolitan water
+intakes in the Potomac sucked out approximately 380 million gallons. Of
+this some 30 million gallons had to do with a pumping pattern pertinent
+to adjustments within the system, and the other 350 million went for the
+use and refreshment of a metropolis afflicted by summer's heat. The
+total figure represented less than half of the river's flow at that
+time.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>For a couple of days in September, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26a" id="Page_26a">[Pg 26a]</a></span>ever, the Potomac's flow reached
+an all-time low of about 390 million gallons a day. Even if the demand
+on those days had risen as high as in June, which it did not, there
+would still have been an excess, but not a very safe one. Heavy storms
+shortly thereafter eased the situation, and rainfall since then has
+definitely broken the long drought pattern, returning stream and
+groundwater levels to normal.</p>
+
+<p>The sober fact is that the Washington metropolis is nearing the point
+where its traditional main dependence on the Potomac's free and
+fluctuating flow for water supply&mdash;with supplementary quantities from
+Occoquan Creek, the Patuxent, and a few wells&mdash;is not going to work
+during prolonged dry periods. Total flow even in a drought year remains
+impressive, but dependable daily flow&mdash;which is what counts for
+supply&mdash;varies tremendously.</p>
+
+<p>Other centers of population in the Basin are up against water supply
+problems or are going to come up against them shortly. The towns and
+industries along the North Branch, around Cumberland and upstream, are
+strongly aware of a water need complicated by the deep-seated pollution
+of their stream system and the scenic and economic disruption of their
+watershed lands. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a handsome town in a
+prosperous farming district of the northern Great Valley, is approaching
+a critical point in the relationship between the water available to it
+and its demands. Far south in the Valley, Augusta County, Virginia,
+which contains the thriving towns of Staunton and Waynesboro, is
+experiencing an upward surge of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26b" id="Page_26b">[Pg 26b]</a></span>dustrial development that seems
+certain to continue and is going to call for a great deal more water
+than can be counted on from present sources. Public awareness of this is
+shown by the fact that county citizens voted in a referendum in November
+of 1966 in favor of construction of a Federal reservoir at Verona near
+Staunton on the Middle River, which had been strongly opposed when it
+was presented as a part of the Army 1963 plan.</p>
+
+<p>On the Monocacy in Maryland's Piedmont, the old agricultural center of
+Frederick has begun to come under the changeful, expansive influence of
+Megalopolis as a result of easier access from both Baltimore and
+Washington, and has been brought abruptly face to face with a looming
+water shortage. Recent studies by the Maryland Department of Water
+Resources indicate that the dependable flow of the Monocacy will not
+serve the town for more than another seven or eight years even if the
+flow needed to maintain adequate water quality is left out of account,
+and the summers of 1965 and 1966 made even those figures seem slightly
+optimistic. Both city and State have declared themselves in favor of an
+upstream major reservoir at Sixes Bridge, also a 1963 proposal. And
+elsewhere throughout the Basin, a good number of smaller places face
+similar dilemmas.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Possible Answers</h3>
+
+<p>Except for acid mine drainage, most of the Basin's main problems are
+found at metropolitan Washington. Because they are primarily people
+problems and more people live<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26c" id="Page_26c">[Pg 26c]</a></span> there than anywhere else, the problems
+tend to be bigger, including that of water supply. A conceivable
+shortage of several tens of millions of gallons of water per day within
+the near future is not a small shortage, and small measures are not
+going to cope with it.</p>
+
+<p>A number of possible measures have been considered and weighed. Some
+seem undesirable for one reason or another, even in terms of the distant
+future. Others are unusable now, but have promise for later, when more
+is known, or technological processes involved have been perfected, or
+cost have been brought within reason. Still others, undoubtedly, cannot
+even yet be discerned. And some will work now at prices that can be
+paid. Ultimately, it seems certain, the super-Metropolis of the future
+will depend on a mix of sources for its water, getting part of it by one
+means and part of it by another and so on, as technology makes new means
+possible, and as economy, safety, and other factors may dictate.
+Therefore, there is no single "right" answer for the long run, and an
+attempt to prescribe one inflexibly would compound confusion over the
+years and undoubtedly perpetrate an injustice on future citizens in ways
+already mentioned. We need to do them the favor of believing that they
+will be able to cope with their own immediate problems at least as well
+as we can do it for them, and probably in ways better suited to their
+tastes.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it is imperative that the city be given a margin of
+drought insurance for two decades or more, and for this margin some
+source definitely feasible in present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27a" id="Page_27a">[Pg 27a]</a></span> terms must be identified and
+guaranteed.</p>
+
+<p>Going outside the Basin for any significant part of the metropolitan
+water supply does not appear to be justified. Some water is presently
+being drawn from impoundments on the Patuxent just north of the city,
+but no more of it can be counted on. Diversion from the voluminous
+Susquehanna much farther north is feasible from an engineering
+standpoint. But the cost of it would be relatively high, and there are
+also certain strong objections in principle, based on the facts that the
+Potomac does have plenty of water and there is no inherent moral
+advantage in transferring the question of development elsewhere, that
+the Susquehanna Basin may well need its own water at some future time,
+and that the ecological effects of such diversion on the immensely
+valuable fisheries of Chesapeake Bay, which are dependent in large part
+on a shifting balance of salinities maintained by the tributary rivers,
+are unclear.</p>
+
+<p>"Planned scarcity" of water in a community, wherein administrators and
+public alike accept the certainty that during dry times lawns and parks
+and golf courses and sometimes human skins will have to do without the
+application of water for a spell, is a reality of life in some arid
+regions and is probably always going to be. Elsewhere it is, or should
+be, an element in the design planning of industries that use heavy
+quantities of water for cooling and such processes. All water supply
+planning must consider it, for to build against any conceivable shortage
+would be prohibitively expensive. Pricing of water so as to cut down on
+waste without curtailing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27b" id="Page_27b">[Pg 27b]</a></span> ample legitimate use may well be a longrun
+tool, as has been suggested. But in terms of general municipal and
+industrial water, any great degree of calculated shortage hardly seems
+appropriate for a humid-zone city which has a fine river at its doorstep
+and happens also to be the national capital, so that a scarcity would be
+of national concern in a number of ways. Federally established and
+maintained parks and open spaces, for instance, with their carefully
+tended vegetation, would be one of the first things to suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Desalting of sea water, another reality now in arid zones and one of
+immense importance, has a certain degree of planned scarcity built into
+it by way of its price, at least at present. Some people believe that in
+time this process will be refined to the point that it can furnish
+abundant cheap water to all the world's seacoast cities. Certainly as it
+develops it may well have a potential for marginal drought-proofing at
+Washington, an emergency source to be drawn upon if needed. But the day
+seems distant when it will be truly competitive in price with riverine
+sources in regions of adequate rainfall.</p>
+
+<p>Inland arid regions and perhaps other places as well are undoubtedly
+going to find one answer to water shortages in the recirculation of
+their treated waste waters through municipal systems. In one form or
+another such recirculation is already working at certain places in the
+United States on an emergency basis, and its full potential for
+industrial use has yet to be explored. However, the indications are that
+towns' and cities' reliance on it during anything but temporary
+emer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27c" id="Page_27c">[Pg 27c]</a></span>gency conditions is going to depend on expensive methods of
+refinement and "fail-safe" overdesign, plus dilution with new water,
+which means again that it will probably not be competitive in price with
+natural water where enough good natural water can be had. To this may be
+added the observation that the consuming public presently has a few
+definite lingering qualms about the idea involved, particularly if there
+is other water around.</p>
+
+<p>The underground rocks and sands of the Basin hold huge reserves of water
+with a fundamental relationship to the whole river system, whose basic
+dependable sources lie in these aquifers' outflow to the surface. Around
+the metropolis, some ground water is being taken from wells even now to
+supplement the overall supply and to satisfy the whole demand of any
+number of outlying communities. Though locally available quantities are
+limited and pumping costs rather high, such wells will undoubtedly be
+highly useful for future extensions of the metropolis, especially into
+the Coastal Plain.</p>
+
+<p>There is also much promise in studies of the Basin's aquifers being
+carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey to determine detailed patterns
+of their contribution of water to the stream system and to see if it can
+be regulated and made even more useful. Such a possibility has great
+implications in terms of augmenting river flows both for water quality
+control and water supply, and could mean much at Washington. So could
+certain techniques of deliberate drawdown of aquifers to induce recharge
+with excess surface wa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28a" id="Page_28a">[Pg 28a]</a></span>ters or sometimes treated sewage effluent, also
+presently under study. Ground water as a source has some unique
+advantages&mdash;among them a minimum of evaporation loss, less need for
+surface structures, and protection against catastrophic
+contamination&mdash;and it deserves full exploration, though it cannot at
+present be counted on as a significant part of the answer for the
+metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>Far out, though possibly not very far off in time, is the likelihood
+that future water planners will be able to count on some degree of
+control over a given region's rainfall and snow. Through
+experimentation, this subject is rapidly being excised from the mists of
+superstition that once surrounded it, and the Department of the Interior
+has an active program of research and study in the West, with tremendous
+implications. But, yet again, present planning cannot take it into
+account except in the sense that, along with some of the other
+technologies already mentioned and undoubtedly others that have not yet
+even emerged to view, it adds to the near certainty that future planners
+are going to have a much wider range of alternative methods at their
+disposal, to choose from and mix as may seem best. And this, in turn,
+reemphasizes the wisdom of flexibility in present planning and the need
+to keep big irreversible decisions to a minimum.</p>
+
+<p>The upper Potomac estuary from Little Falls down to the vicinity of
+Marshall Hall and Mount Vernon or below contains a great deal of fresh
+water, an accumulation made up of inflows from the river above the Fall
+Line, local storm runoff and tributary flows, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28b" id="Page_28b">[Pg 28b]</a></span> treated sewage
+returned to the tidal river. The volume of this water that would be
+available for use without salinity has been variously estimated. At low
+tide, there would be 9 billion gallons of fresh water in the upper
+estuary from Chain Bridge to the mouth of the Anacostia River; In the 10
+mile stretch from Chain Bridge to the District of Columbia's Blue Plains
+treatment plant, 15 billion gallons; and, from Chain Bridge to the
+saltwater front near Indian Head, Maryland, 100 billion gallons. Most of
+the time now it is afflicted with heavy pollution, as will be detailed
+in the next chapter of this report. But it does constitute a large
+natural reservoir of potentially usable municipal and industrial water,
+whose attractiveness for these purposes, as well as for all others, will
+grow steadily as the pollution is brought under better and better
+control. These facts have led some opponents of any and all major
+reservoirs in the Basin to conclude that the water in the upper estuary
+is a presently satisfactory reserve with which to face any foreseeable
+metropolitan shortage of supply from the upper Potomac.</p>
+
+<p>The assumption has strong appeal, but it appears to be too risky to
+serve as a basis for adequate present planning to meet looming demands.
+That even now the water in the estuary's uppermost reaches, above the
+main metropolitan treatment-plant outfalls, would be usable for short
+emergencies by the installation of relatively simple pumping equipment
+below the falls, cannot be doubted. That in the long run the major part
+of the freshwater tidal river at and below Washington is likely to be a
+valuable source of metro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28c" id="Page_28c">[Pg 28c]</a></span>politan water, maybe a principal source, is
+quite possible. Its use is and will be a strong consideration in
+longterm planning&mdash;another good reason, in fact, for flexibility. But
+the truth is that right now enough doubt and ignorance exist in regard
+to its exact potentiality that it should not be counted on to provide a
+safe margin of supply under all conceivable conditions during the next
+twenty years or so, for which planning provisions need to be more rigid
+and definite.</p>
+
+<p>The doubts and unknown factors have to do mainly with the quality of
+this water, which comes under discussion later. In abridged summary of
+relevant facts at this point, it may be observed that unless all sewage
+and sewage effluents were collected and diverted to points well beyond
+the limits of the upper estuary, use of its water for periods beyond a
+few days of emergency would become essentially a form of recirculation
+of waste waters&mdash;with, at this time, the main drawbacks that we noted in
+regard to that process and certain others besides. For, under the
+low-flow conditions that would bring about its use, the effluents in the
+river below the mouth of the Anacostia would penetrate upstream as water
+was pulled out below the falls and would reach the pumps in fairly short
+order, probably moving in a tongue up the main channel.</p>
+
+<p>With the radical improvement in the functioning of the metropolitan
+treatment plants that must be achieved, and other measures to relieve
+pollution in this part of the river, valid objections to such
+recirculation will of course weaken and ultimately disappear. But no
+one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29a" id="Page_29a">[Pg 29a]</a></span> can reasonably expect that these things are not going to take a
+certain amount of time&mdash;quite conceivably enough time to run the city up
+against an emergency it could not handle without other, more standard
+sources of auxiliary water. Besides the matter of consolidating and
+improving treatment of collectible wastes, there are certain other
+diffuse and stubborn sources of pollution, as will be seen, for which
+good counter measures simply do not yet exist&mdash;among them are surface
+runoff during local storms and overflow from combined sewer systems.</p>
+
+<p>If the collectible wastes were diverted out of the upper estuary and if
+it proved possible to cope quickly with other pollution or to ignore it,
+during prolonged use salt water penetration from downstream would take
+place as fresh water was withdrawn above and not replaced. Studies on a
+mathematical model of the estuary indicate that under conditions that
+could materialize, this would make the water at the intake too salty for
+use. A barrier dam across the entire estuary at one or another point in
+the freshwater section could prevent such penetration, but would be
+hugely expensive and undoubtedly more obtrusive on a much-used part of
+the riverscape than most upstream reservoirs could possibly be.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, even if all these doubts and areas of ignorance were to be
+easily resolved, insistence that the upper estuary is the only logical
+answer to metropolitan Washington's water problem ignores the fact that
+major water demands are building fast in certain already-mentioned areas
+of the upper Basin, and that, since the Basin is a hydrological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29b" id="Page_29b">[Pg 29b]</a></span> unit,
+measures to satisfy these demands can easily, economically, and quite
+logically be designed to furnish a good part of the metropolis'
+near-future safe margin of water supply as well.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img029.jpg"  width="339" height="400" alt="Sailing" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>A need for vigorous research specifically directed toward exploring all
+these alternative means of supply is evident. If it moves fast enough
+and the knowledge that comes out of it is made available to planners, it
+may very quickly make a great difference in the kinds of sources of
+water they can turn to for the solution of problems, just as studies
+since the early 1960's, when the Army work on the Potomac was completed,
+have altered prevalent ideas about pollution control through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29c" id="Page_29c">[Pg 29c]</a></span> flow
+augmentation, and have therefore greatly diminished the overall amount
+of water considered necessary to meet the Basin's demands.</p>
+
+<p>In the crucial meantime, the established certainty of storage in
+reservoirs is available. In river basins with reasonable annual amounts
+of precipitation but with human demands on streams that sometimes exceed
+the rate at which water flows down, such reservoirs are still usually
+the most dependable and efficient item in the present technology of
+water supply. And since they generally have other purposes to which
+proportionate shares of construction costs are assigned in individual
+cases&mdash;flood protection, water quality control, navigation,
+hydroelectric power, recreation, silt detention, etcetera&mdash;they tend
+often to be the most economic sources of big quantities of water. In one
+form or another they have been built from very ancient times, and they
+have been indispensable to the useful development of water resources in
+our expansive economy.</p>
+
+<p>In parts of the United States far from sea-coasts or large natural
+lakes, reservoirs built for water supply and other purposes have become
+the focus of enormously popular forms of recreation that would otherwise
+be impossible in those regions&mdash;sailing and motorboating and
+water-skiing and the sort of fishing possible only on big water, and
+such things. Properly designed and located, they can be beautiful bodies
+of water, as the vacation homes that grow up around many of them
+testify.</p>
+
+<p>Strong objections to them also frequently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30a" id="Page_30a">[Pg 30a]</a></span> are voiced. They are one of
+the most massive manifestations of man's technological ability to adapt
+natural processes to his use, and they sometimes have profound effects
+on fish and wildlife and the whole ecology of a stream system region, to
+the dismay of many conservationists. Often too they flood out large
+areas of riverbottom farmland and other private property, arousing the
+ire of some rural folk and small townsmen who feel that their interests
+have been sacrificed to the water or flood-protection demands of
+downstream city dwellers. Opponents of major dams sometimes assert that
+many of them have been built not to meet real hydrological needs but to
+foster economic development which may or may not materialize and may or
+may not be worth the loss of natural or scenic or agricultural resources
+disrupted by the reservoirs. Other thinkers, not necessarily against
+reservoirs in general, express a doubt that the potential effects of
+specific structures are always thought out sufficiently beforehand.
+Among these are the authors of a recent publication of the National
+Academy of Sciences&mdash;National Research Council, <i>Alternatives in Water
+Management</i>:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>We create great reservoirs that stop the migration of fish and then
+provide costly fishways, hatcheries, and other devices to maintain the
+fishery, and with no certainty of success. We impound water without
+knowing the effects of that impoundment on its quality. We build an
+irrigation project and then find salinity increasing dangerously in the
+river downstream. We eliminate high-flood peaks by reservoir storage,
+but downstream from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30b" id="Page_30b">[Pg 30b]</a></span> some reservoirs we see unpredicted erosion,
+sedimentation, bank-cutting, and other effects, even unto, as in
+California, the loss of beaches along the seacoast, starved of their
+supply of sand.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The list of objections could be extended&mdash;and often is by objectors&mdash;to
+a point of pettiness. Nevertheless, the main doubts are gaining much
+acceptance and are imperatively having to be taken into account more and
+more these days, as new elements of water technology and
+philosophy&mdash;some of them mentioned earlier in this chapter, others to
+emerge in subsequent discussions&mdash;come closer to full feasibility and
+become a part of general human knowledge. Delay in building reservoirs
+until it is certain they are needed is on the verge of becoming a
+respectable element in planning, and in the future dams may well become
+merely one of many ways to guarantee water and handle it. At least some
+water authorities, though certainly not all, have voiced the opinion
+that most present reservoirs will some day serve primarily for
+recreation, if emerging new principles of water supply, water quality
+improvement, flood protection, power generation, and such things attain
+general use.</p>
+
+<p>That day, however, has not yet dawned, nor is the interim before its
+arrival calculable. It is necessary to face present reality with present
+tools, and the reality at the Washington metropolis and elsewhere in the
+Basin is that a good deal of water is going to be needed rather soon,
+and that no reasonably economic alternatives with any clear esthetic and
+ecological advantage over reser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30c" id="Page_30c">[Pg 30c]</a></span>voirs are presently available to furnish
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, if planners and designers are aware of the whole set of problems,
+do reservoirs necessarily have to be weighty in their impact on the
+natural scene and the public interest. The quantities of stored water
+needed for the Basin's near future are relatively modest in comparison
+to potential supplies, and a multitude of good reservoir sites exist to
+be chosen from. There is no reason why, with present knowledge, a
+minimum of necessary reservoirs cannot be planned and designed for a
+maximum of beauty and pleasure. It is a notable fact that a very large
+number of Americans prefer boating and fishing and other aquatic sports
+on reservoirs to any other form of recreation, and another notable fact
+that in the upper Potomac Basin there are very few places where even
+small numbers of Americans can thus indulge themselves at present.</p>
+
+<p>In terms of metropolitan Washington's water supply, considered apart
+from other Basin water problems, the best reservoir site by far in the
+whole Potomac drainage would be the old River Bend site or the one
+proposed in 1963 at Seneca, both just upstream from the Falls above the
+metropolis. In one package, either of them would impound enough water to
+take care of any likely municipal and industrial demands of the
+metropolitan region for more than a half-century, besides trapping most
+silt from upstream to keep it out of the estuary, and providing a good
+measure of protection for flood-susceptible metropolitan shores.
+Furthermore, the proximity of such a reservoir to the city would ensure
+a great deal of aquatic recreation for people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31a" id="Page_31a">[Pg 31a]</a></span> there and would somewhat
+simplify water management problems.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, it is natural that Seneca, the latter proposal of the two, has
+found strong champions among metropolitan administrators, water
+engineers, and planners whose thinking has to be primarily in terms of
+sure and efficient water supply and flood protection. It has found
+equally strong opponents, however, enough of them to have stalled it to
+date. It is not yet dead, for it emerges in each new discussion of the
+city's water situation. It will not be dead until the metropolitan water
+problem, short-term and long-term both, has found a full satisfactory
+solution in other terms.</p>
+
+<p>Our feeling remains unchanged since the publication of our <i>Interim
+Report</i>: that when all factors are weighed and future uncertainties are
+taken into account, Seneca should not be built at this time. If the
+price in money would not be high in relation to immediate "market"
+advantages gained, the permanent price, in river and countryside and
+those other intangibles that are getting to have more and more weight in
+men's minds year by year, would be heavy.</p>
+
+<p>The full main stem Potomac, carrying the water from the combined North
+and South Branches and the Shenandoah and the other upper tributaries
+down through the Blue Ridge water gap and across the rolling Piedmont
+and the Fall Line, is at its most typical in the 39 miles from Harpers
+Ferry to Great Falls. Seneca as originally proposed would inundate 35
+miles of this stretch, together with islands and bottomlands, forests of
+big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31b" id="Page_31b">[Pg 31b]</a></span> hardwoods, meadows and productive fields, and that much-used
+segment of the publicly owned C. &amp; O. Canal, with the trail along its
+wooded towpath. Even reduced in size and designed as strictly a water
+supply structure, it would have many of the same effects. There is
+special and tranquil beauty in this piece of the river, which makes a
+fine float trip and is much fished, as well as a lot of historical
+significance dating back to the Senecas and the Piscataways and before.
+Here these things are not forgotten and removed from men's reach but are
+available to metropolitans who go to the trouble to seek them out, as
+many do. Nor is there anything else around to take their exact or even
+approximate place if they were gone.</p>
+
+<p>It has been pointed out that if the metropolis grows according to
+predictions, a major part of that growth is going to be upriver, and the
+main stem of the Potomac will have the same relationship to the
+metropolis of the future that Rock Creek has to the Washington of today.
+Thus the decision that is made about the main stem in our generation is
+similar to the decision that planners had to make about Rock Creek
+three-quarters of a century or more ago. Those planners decided
+magnificently well, bequeathing to the future an urban stream and park
+unique in this country and perhaps the world, a treasure that the public
+is presently defending against other, newer, subtler threats than mere
+damming or encroachment.</p>
+
+<p>A reservoir above Seneca clearly could not mean that sort of thing. It
+would be a useful lake, but devoid of the changeless tone of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31c" id="Page_31c">[Pg 31c]</a></span> the
+Potomac as it flows there now. The reservoir's proper functioning would
+require fluctuations in its level, with occasional ugliness at the
+shoreline, and if it would permit a great deal of happy water-skiing and
+flat-water fishing, the same opportunities are going to be available to
+Washingtonians in the nearby estuary when it is suitably cleaned up,
+even though the section immediately adjacent to the metropolis may take
+a good while to bring up to swimming standards.</p>
+
+<p>In terms of the overall good of the people of the metropolis and the
+Basin and the country, the water situation at Washington now and during
+the near future hardly bears a desperate enough aspect to warrant the
+sacrifice of much of the main flowing river to a reservoir which, like
+the freshwater estuary, could not be meshed with upstream needs but
+would serve only the urban areas at and below the Fall Line. Conceivably
+at some future time, if technology should renege on its promise to bring
+forth good new alternatives, and population pressures continue to grow,
+the city may badly need a reservoir there. It is a uniquely valuable
+site. For that reason, we repeat our Interim proposal that the reservoir
+site, minimally defined, be preserved against the mass encroachment with
+which it is imminently threatened, and be utilized principally as part
+of a major park complex protecting the river and its shores. To defer
+irreversible decisions and to leave them as much as possible to future
+generations whose conditions of life and desires we cannot predict with
+accuracy, can be a principal way of maintaining freedom of choice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32a" id="Page_32a">[Pg 32a]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the category of reservoirs, at the other end of the spectrum are the
+comparatively small headwater dams that the Soil Conservation Service
+has been designing and supervising for three decades in authorized
+watersheds throughout the country. These structures can serve several
+functions and can furnish for small watershed areas and small centers of
+population many of the benefits that the Corps of Engineers and Bureau
+of Reclamation dams furnish for large areas. On their own scale, they
+are vulnerable to some of the same objections that are aimed at large
+reservoirs. But the scale is smaller; they tend to be less imposing and
+pre-emptive of good land than big river dams, "catch the water where it
+falls" to hold it for local use and to alleviate local flooding, and are
+backed up by erosion control practices in a program that has proved to
+be one of the best available stimulants to good land use. For these
+reasons they have appeal for many rural people and conservationists.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>However, the conclusion which some of their supporters have reached is
+that if only enough of the small dams could be built throughout the
+headwater areas of a river basin, they would eliminate the need for most
+other forms of water management, leveling out flood and drought flows
+and holding a great aggregate amount of water on tap for use anywhere
+down the line. At times in the past, the controversy between supporters
+of big dams and supporters of little dams achieved the proportions of a
+bloodless war, but after a good many years of testing and ob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32b" id="Page_32b">[Pg 32b]</a></span>servation
+it is now generally agreed by hydrologists that both have their place
+and that the most appropriate focus for the small dams' functioning is
+local.</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, they are not an answer for Washington's problems. Even if
+enough of them were installed specifically to provide the storage volume
+needed for metropolitan use, the question of operation&mdash;ensuring and
+coordinating releases from a large number of places at varying long
+distance upstream from the point of intended use, in such a way as to
+make the required volumes of water arrive at the right time, without
+waste&mdash;would be very difficult even with much more sophisticated and
+expensive design than these structures customarily have. Without it the
+problem would be insuperable.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Thus, for metropolitan Washington's water in the near reaches of the
+future, some reservoir storage is indicated with fewer ecological,
+recreational, and scenic drawbacks than a Potomac main stem dam, and
+more efficiency for massive supply than the small headwater structures.
+Since the Potomac river system is a unit, with the metropolis at the
+downstream end of its non-tidal part, water stored anywhere in the upper
+Basin can be released for use there. This gives much freedom of choice
+in the selection of sites for reservoirs and in the combination of
+releases from various places to make up an adequate total supply, though
+obviously good management will be needed to coordinate the releases and
+avoid the waste of water.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32c" id="Page_32c">[Pg 32c]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It also means, if good principles of river-basin management are
+followed, that reservoirs to supply water at Washington can be located
+and designed so as to satisfy major upstream demands at the same time,
+and that they can be fitted in with regional and Basin needs for water
+quality improvement, flat water recreation, and in some places flood
+protection. In such conjunctive planning, based in the Basin's physical
+unity, commencing now and continuing on into the future as new needs and
+new ways of satisfying them come to view, lies the main hope of
+developing the Potomac water resource in such a way as to avoid waste of
+money, waste of water itself, and waste of the landscape and the general
+environment. Without it, nothing can result but a piecemeal haggling to
+bits of the river system as local demands grow acute and local pressures
+force the adoption of one-shot measures. With it, towns and areas and
+industries can be guided toward sensible and thrifty action that fits in
+with the wellbeing of the whole Potomac region&mdash;toward buying a share in
+the water of a rightly designed, rightly placed reservoir large or
+small, toward development of ground water resources where these are
+adequate, toward the use of new technology that may be feasible and
+suitable.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img033a.jpg"  width="400" height="264" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>The range of choices is certain to enlarge with time, and the ease with
+which right choices can be made. In this computer age, mathematical
+models of river systems, including the Potomac, are at work manipulating
+hydrological data and quickly indicating optimum coordinated solutions
+for given water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33a" id="Page_33a">[Pg 33a]</a></span> problems that formerly would have taken many weeks to
+solve, if indeed men could have arrived at such exact solutions at all.
+Computers are no better than the material that is fed them, however, and
+the need for new water data&mdash;for facts&mdash;is acute, if computers and the
+men who run them and the policy makers to whom they report are to pick
+the best ways of doing things. So is the need for means of giving
+"intangible" values their right weight in the whole process. But the
+computers are the keystone of the new tech<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33b" id="Page_33b">[Pg 33b]</a></span>nology and they are going to
+make right coordination simpler.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img033b.jpg"  width="400" height="291" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>With coordination also, as we shall see hereafter, there is the
+strongest possibility of getting the river system clean again and
+keeping it that way, and furthermore of vouchsafing some measure of
+protection to the landscape through which it flows. For the physical
+unity of a river basin has many implications, and not the least of them
+is that the people who live there can be guaranteed at least a physical
+chance to lead full and wholesome lives.</p>
+
+<p>Water supply for upstream areas of the Basin, then, is not a separate
+thing from water supply for the downstream metropolis and should not be
+treated as separate. They are all drinking from the same fountain. Where
+an upstream demand is great enough or is going to be great enough in a
+short span of years to warrant major storage, that storage must be keyed
+in with all other demands that it might meet or help to meet, including
+that at Washington. Where an area of lesser need is shut off by its
+location from sharing in such major storage, groundwater development or
+headwater reservoirs may well be the answer, but these measures too
+should be made to serve as many purposes as may be required for the
+protection of the area's whole range of interests and the good of the
+entire Basin. The need for such interweaving&mdash;for coordination, for
+planning and action that are unified&mdash;is primary, and will emerge again
+and again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33c" id="Page_33c">[Pg 33c]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>Flooding in the Basin</h3>
+
+<p>The subject of floods is fraught with more drama than that of water
+shortages, for a flood can be not only a hardship but a catastrophe. For
+this reason, accounts of floods tend sometimes toward exaggeration, and
+appeals and proposals for protection against flood threats often take on
+the highpitched tones of impending disaster. The subject badly needs
+sober public understanding, despite the fact that for decades a good
+many knowledgeable scientists and engineers and planners have been
+laying out their conclusions for general perusal.</p>
+
+<p>Rivers are supposed to run out of their banks occasionally.
+Topographically, stream flood plains&mdash;the expanses of flat bottomland
+that have been deposited over long periods of geological time by the
+streams they border&mdash;are similar to what legal terminology calls
+"attractive nuisances." Men have always known that they were dangerous
+and yet have always utilized them to some degree, because they contain
+the best farm land, are convenient to water, and are easier places in
+which to build houses and factories and roads than are the safer hills
+and uplands.</p>
+
+<p>In times before engineering technology was able to erect such effective
+control structures as today, populations who had lived along "flashy"
+watercourses long enough to learn their habits tended to build their
+more valuable structures back away from the parts of the flood plain
+that got wet most often, leaving those parts for cropland and timber, or
+sometimes for shacktown, promenades,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34a" id="Page_34a">[Pg 34a]</a></span> and parks. Thus long-settled
+countries and regions have often developed through trial and error a
+degree of what is now called "passive flood protection," which simply
+means recognizing that the flood plain is sometimes a rather perilous
+place, and treating it accordingly. It was valid in past ages, and it is
+still valid today.</p>
+
+<p>The Potomac Basin has been inhabited by civilized men since long before
+modern engineering evolved. Possibly early town-builders' wariness of
+floods contributed to the fact that the problem of flood damages here,
+though quite real, is somewhat less severe than in certain other
+sections of the nation. At specific points of concentrated flood plain
+development&mdash;Petersburg, W. Va., on the South Branch; Cumberland, Md.,
+and the areas upstream from it on the North Branch; and metropolitan
+Washington at the head of the estuary&mdash;figures show significant amounts
+of average annual destruction by rampaging stream waters. In headwater
+areas or small urban watersheds scattered throughout the Basin, there
+are a number of other places where some damage takes place, whether
+agricultural or structural. The total average annual damages for the
+Basin, as computed in the 1963 Army <i>Report</i>, amount to about $8.6
+million.</p>
+
+<p>Along small streams, whether urban or rural, the same principles apply
+as along large ones, and the proper protective measures are similar if
+smaller in scale. Leaving the worst parts of the flood plain in fields
+or parks is the usual and effective form of passive protection. Where
+existing development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34b" id="Page_34b">[Pg 34b]</a></span> demands structural measures, it has been common
+practice to cover streams over as sewers or to confine them to
+straightened concrete channels that sluice rainwater and mud away as
+fast as they will flow&mdash;though often this is not fast enough, as is
+shown by occasional messy and costly overflows of Four Mile Run between
+Arlington and Alexandria. And the loss of pleasant brooks and creeks
+through such practices is a heavy price to pay.</p>
+
+<p>More and more often lately in such cases, a combination of some passive
+protection with the small headwater dams that "catch the water where it
+falls" and soil conservation measures to protect the watershed lands
+above the reservoirs, has proved to be a better solution. This is what
+has been done in the Rock Creek watershed in the District of Columbia
+and Montgomery County, Md., and its value was shown during the heavy
+rains of September 1966. Here stream valley parks have given passive
+protection for a long tune, though the popularity and heavy use of the
+parks have caused a big investment in picnic areas, playgrounds, and
+other facilities, which themselves have often suffered expensive flood
+damages. As a result of long effort by a watershed association, two S.
+C. S. dams had been finished shortly before the September flood at the
+only useful sites on the creek's upper branches that rapidly spreading
+residential development had left available. They kept runoff from the
+big sudden rains entirely in hand in Maryland and reduced damage in the
+Federal park in the District to a point far below what it would have
+been without them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34c" id="Page_34c">[Pg 34c]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ideally, of course, such planning should be done before heavy
+development, and a pilot urban watershed program of this sort is being
+undertaken in the Pohick Creek basin on the metropolitan fringe in
+Fairfax County, Virginia. With freedom to locate necessary structures in
+the right places and to protect them against silt and ruinous runoff by
+requiring good land treatment and a sensible distribution of buildings,
+pavements, and wooded or grassy open space, planners there ought to get
+good flood protection while preserving a pretty valley and stream for
+the people who will be living in the neighborhood. From any number of
+standpoints, this is vastly preferable to the more usual traditional
+procedure of letting growth run wild and then trying to cope with
+trouble when it comes up.</p>
+
+<p>The headwater dams are equally effective in reducing flood damages in
+small rural watersheds where losses warrant their installation. But even
+on a massive scale of installation they have little influence on
+downstream flooding along the main rivers. In such places&mdash;at
+Cumberland, Petersburg, and the Washington metropolis, and at certain
+other river towns where less damage occurs&mdash;other measures are going to
+have to be selected and applied in each individual case according to
+costs and benefits, physical possibilities, and the best interests of
+the region.</p>
+
+<p>Cumberland and the lesser damage centers on the North Branch are
+scheduled for the classic engineering solution of big dams upstream. The
+existing Savage River reservoir, finished in 1950, has cut down flooding
+not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35a" id="Page_35a">[Pg 35a]</a></span>ably in that area, and a dam at Bloomington above Westernport,
+already authorized by Congress, will relieve it still more, as well as
+fitting into the complex clean-up task along the North Branch and
+furnishing water for local and Washington use.</p>
+
+<p>The 1963 plan proposed similar protection for metropolitan Washington
+and for Petersburg, West Virginia, in the form of major reservoirs at
+Seneca and Royal Glen. Physically and culturally, there is very little
+similarity between the two communities, but their flood situations and
+the potential effects of the proposed protective structures have a
+certain kinship.</p>
+
+<p>At both places there has been development of the flood plain, with the
+result that damages occur when the communities' respective rivers get
+out of their banks. In relation to its size&mdash;around 2000
+people&mdash;Petersburg is subject to much heavier trouble of this sort than
+the metropolis. It sits near the head of the lovely narrow farming
+valley through which the main downstream South Branch flows, a few miles
+below the point where two principal forks of the river join after
+rushing out of the mountains. In June of 1949, a flood there claimed
+five lives around Petersburg and three at Moorefield downriver, where
+still another main fork comes in, and wrought major destruction through
+the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>The 1963 Army <i>Report</i> calculated Petersburg's average annual flood
+damages at over $200,000, and advocated construction of a $30 million,
+multipurpose reservoir at Royal Glen just upstream from Petersburg, to
+do away with most of the damage and to permit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35b" id="Page_35b">[Pg 35b]</a></span> further industrial
+development of the flood plain, as well as to provide a great deal of
+water for downstream use and for regional recreation. People and groups
+in the area with interests standing to benefit from the reservoir were
+naturally in favor of it. Under present Federal policy&mdash;which will be
+mentioned again&mdash;its flood-protective function would cost them nothing,
+whereas levees or other locally effective approaches would demand a good
+deal of local effort and outlay, besides disrupting the town's aspect
+and its relationship to the river.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img035.jpg"  width="400" height="199" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Opposition developed also. The very name of Royal Glen suggests the
+scenic qualities of the country roundabout. As at Seneca, a dam here
+would flood out some country with unique scenic and recreational values,
+including the famous Smoke Hole Gorge down which the clean South Branch
+runs between steep mountains dotted with caves and flavored with the
+quiet simplicity of the life that isolated hill folk lived there up into
+modern times. It is a section much appreciated by whitewater canoeists
+and hikers and horsemen and others from that region and elsewhere, who
+care about rugged and unspoiled places. Despite its remoteness, the
+proposal that it be inundated aroused more vigorously hostile comment
+among conservationists and nature lovers in general than perhaps any
+other item in the Army program except Seneca. The State of West Virginia
+declared itself opposed to the project, and to date has maintained that
+position.</p>
+
+<p>Again like Seneca, the Royal Glen site does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36a" id="Page_36a">[Pg 36a]</a></span> have certain unique
+advantages for use as a reservoir. But, as at Seneca also, its
+functional virtues do not appear to be nearly so unique as those of the
+scenery and natural values whose obliteration would be a heavy part of
+the reservoir's price. In 1965, the immense scenic value of a large part
+of the country it would wipe out was recognized by its inclusion in the
+big Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. It is strongly to
+be hoped that that recognition is never withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>The issue of scenic destruction at both Royal Glen and Seneca tends to
+obscure another set of even more basically relevant considerations
+having to do with the whole question of flood plain occupancy and use,
+the extent to which those who benefit from it should share the cost of
+such protection as may be necessary, and possible ways of reversing a
+present trend toward inexorably larger national flood damages each year
+despite ever larger and more expensive structural protective measures at
+public expense.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img036.jpg"><img src="images/img036-tb.jpg" alt="THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE" title="" /></a></div>
+<h4>THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE</h4>
+
+<p>It is a complex subject that can only be summarized here. What it
+amounts to is that America has strayed too far from the ancient hard-won
+wisdom of treating flood plains with respect. It has been lulled by the
+achievements of engineering, encouraged by a general absence of
+inadequacy of State and local planning that takes such matters into
+account, and conditioned to a set of Federal laws and policies
+piece-built over a long period of time, with consequent inequities,
+imbalances, and loopholes that tend to emphasize structural protection
+at Federal expense for indiscriminate flood plain development. The
+re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36b" id="Page_36b">[Pg 36b]</a></span>sult has been a neglect of the possibilities of flood plain
+management, which undoubtedly in the long run&mdash;as in the long past&mdash;will
+prove to be the most valuable tool for reducing these damages, for it
+will bring about a restriction on ill-advised and uneconomic
+encroachment in these streamside areas.</p>
+
+<p>The reason most such encroachment is bad, with or without a dam
+upstream, with or without levees, is that it establishes the certainty
+of further and larger flood damages in the future, with the certainty of
+further and larger expenditures to combat them. It has been pointed out
+that no such thing really exists as flood <i>control</i>, but only a given
+degree of flood <i>protection</i>. Economics and technology dictate that
+reservoir capacities devoted to the storage of flood water, for example,
+be considerably smaller than the maximum runoff conceivably possible.
+This means that sooner or later there is going to be a great flood
+against which the reservoir or reservoirs will not suffice. If the
+reservoirs' presence, as is most often the case, has directly encouraged
+a lot of flood plain speculation and construction downstream, then the
+great flood is going to do more damage than was ever done before, and
+more reservoirs and other protective measures, most often Federally
+financed, are going to be demanded, at a price that rises sharply as
+less desirable sites and methods have to be employed, and with
+frequently catastrophic scenic effects. These considerations apply to
+small watersheds as well as large ones.</p>
+
+<p>This costly cycle, which frequently makes the general public pay both in
+tax money and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37a" id="Page_37a">[Pg 37a]</a></span> the sacrifice of amenities to protect the investment of a
+relatively few who profit from the wrong kind of flood plain use&mdash;in
+plain words, makes the public subsidize their ventures&mdash;has established
+itself widely. In some places, of course, certain kinds of development
+can take place only on the flood plain, and planning for its structural
+protection may be amply warranted, with equitable cost-sharing. But the
+difference between this sort of flood plain use and the much more
+common, thoughtless, quick-profit type needs to be more widely
+recognized and established in policies at all levels of government. The
+subject has been much studied. In August 1966 the findings of a
+distinguished Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy, which made
+detailed recommendations for injecting some sense into the situation,
+were submitted to the attention of Congress by President Johnson. At the
+same time, he issued Executive Order 11296 on the subject, directing all
+Federal executive agencies with influence in such matters to do
+everything possible to discourage uneconomic and unwarranted use of the
+nation's flood plains. This, of course, includes the present Potomac
+planning effort.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img037a.jpg"  width="270" height="400" alt="FLOOD PLAIN DELINEATION POTOMAC RIVER AT HANCOCK" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>FLOOD PLAIN DELINEATION POTOMAC RIVER AT HANCOCK, MD.</h4>
+
+<p>At Petersburg, there is little question that the wisest approach to
+present and future flooding problems would be one that would seek to
+give reasonable protection to the development already on the flood plain
+but at the same time deter further construction unless it is
+floodproofed or houses activities that find a flood plain location so
+advantageous as to be well worth the risk. In current<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37b" id="Page_37b">[Pg 37b]</a></span>ly available
+terms, this could be accomplished most feasibly and at the least net
+expenditure&mdash;though not, under present policy, as cheaply to the
+community itself as by the Royal Glen dam, and not without some notable
+changes in the town's landscape&mdash;by combining a levee system around
+present development with rigid zoning of the unoccupied part of the
+flood plain, or its acquisition as parkland.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img037b.jpg"  width="363" height="400" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Another approach that may shortly be possible was suggested by the
+President's Task Force and is the subject of legislation proposed to
+Congress by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Under this
+legislation, owners of existing flood plain residences and small
+businesses would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38a" id="Page_38a">[Pg 38a]</a></span> given a chance to buy Federally subsidized
+insurance against flood damages at reduced rates, while new construction
+in flood hazard areas would be subject to rates based on the full true
+risk involved. After 1970, under this proposed legislation, such
+insurance could be sold only in areas with enforceable codes and
+ordinances or other measures for sound flood plain management. Such a
+program could go a long way toward eliminating casual and expensive
+flood plain clutter, if it were backed up by adjustments in other phases
+of Federal flood control policy that would similarly place a share of
+any protective costs where they belong, and hence give an additional
+strong nudge to citizens and local and state governments to bring the
+situation into balance.</p>
+
+<p>At Washington, because a high proportion of the flood plain on both
+shores is in Federal ownership and the use it is put to is determined by
+Federal agencies, Executive Order 11296 has special relevance in
+forestalling future increases in the amount of flood damage. Existing
+damages in the whole urban area are estimated to average $1.4 million
+each year. The most damaging flood in the metropolis' history occurred
+in March of 1936, and if a flood of the same dimensions were to strike
+today, it would cause estimated damages of about $21 million.</p>
+
+<p>These are not small figures, though if they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38b" id="Page_38b">[Pg 38b]</a></span> are considered in the light
+of the area's population and extent and the total value of construction
+there, they seem less formidable. Obviously the threat of damages of
+this magnitude must be dealt with, but just as obviously as at
+Petersburg, the manner chosen for dealing with them should not be
+allowed to stimulate unwise flood plain construction that would lead to
+still greater longterm damages.</p>
+
+<p>The Seneca reservoir as proposed in 1963 provided floodwater storage
+calculated to reduce metropolitan damages by 46 percent. This is a
+significant though not startling amount of reduction, and it constitutes
+the most economical one-shot measure of protection that could be
+attained. However, if the construction of Seneca is precluded for the
+time being or for good, that measure is not available. Second-best, by
+Army calculations, would be a combination of several large multipurpose
+reservoirs on main tributaries farther upstream. But quite aside from
+other considerations of desirability, these could only be justified
+economically if a great part of their stored water were destined to
+furnish massive flow augmentation to ease pollution in the upper
+estuary. As will be noted in the following chapter, recent studies have
+raised doubt that such augmentation would be likely to help the estuary
+nearly as much as had been thought and it is no longer being considered
+a primary tool for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>This leaves passive devices and local protection works as the main
+available instruments for coping with floods at the metropolis. They
+will probably be most effective if applied in a carefully selected
+combination of means, with levees and other protective works installed
+where feasible and desirable, and backed up in other areas by zoning,
+flood warning systems, and good design including flood-proofing,
+elevated structures, and similar devices. Some of these principles of
+design are already being incorporated in new buildings and renewal
+projects, but the task of planning and locating such things as levees
+usefully on a flood plain containing a good part of "monumental
+Washington," the beauty of which is a national concern, is not going to
+be simple. A good program must be instituted soon, and the extent of the
+Federal interest in the lands involved should considerably ease the job
+of coordination.</p>
+
+<p>Interestingly, certain floods to which Washington is susceptible can be
+partially guarded against only by such approaches as the ones mentioned
+above, and not at all by upstream dams. One of them occurred in August
+of 1933, when a hurricane pushed the water in the estuary upstream and
+raised it to flood stage at the capital.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img039a.jpg"  width="242" height="350" alt="THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS" title="" /></div>
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img039c.jpg"  width="244" height="350" alt="THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS" title="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img039b.jpg"  width="400" height="240" alt="THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS" title="" /></div>
+
+
+
+<h2>III. THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS</h2>
+
+
+<p>Streams have always had to carry and digest wastes that enter them
+through drainage from the land. It is one of their functions in the
+scheme of things, and so well have they performed it through the
+millennia that human beings have been able to take it for granted.
+Within limits that might be considered normal, the ability of running
+water to handle loads of waste is phenomenal, and in earlier times those
+normal limits were seldom exceeded, for even in populated areas the
+general lack of sanitary sewer systems kept the loads from being
+concentrated.</p>
+
+<p>In civilized parts of the modern world, however, there are now so many
+people generating so many wastes of one kind and another, which often
+enter the streams at concentrated points, that the streams can no longer
+digest them without help. Too often, in the face of uncontrolled human
+increase and expansion, that help has either been denied them or has
+been weak and perfunctory. The result is plain enough now in the sorry
+mess of sick or dead or dying waters that we Americans have on our
+hands, the heritage of having kept on taking them for granted long after
+we had bred ourselves out of the right to do so.</p>
+
+<p>As civilized rivers go, the Potomac is rather lucky. It is polluted, but
+many parts of it are not nearly as dirty as people are sometimes led
+into believing by a look at the summertime estuary at Washington. The
+fabled and scenic German Rhine, for instance, is much more degraded in
+its main flowing reaches than is the Potomac, and so are a majority of
+the other rivers in the northeastern United States and many elsewhere in
+the country. Industrialization on the Potomac and its tributaries has
+been spotty so far, and there are no really big clusters of population
+in the upper parts of the Basin. Furthermore, pollution here has already
+been given quite a lot of dedicated and expert attention and some
+rectification. Thus anyone who travels up and down the river and its
+tributaries finds many miles of pleasant flowing streams capable of
+sustaining fish and the other things that are supposed to live in and
+around water, and fit to soothe frayed nerves.</p>
+
+<p>He will find a lot of grubby and unsoothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40a" id="Page_40a">[Pg 40a]</a></span> stretches too, extensive in
+places, and even in the pleasant streams troubles exist that are
+invisible to the eye. There is little to be complacent about, for
+threats are multiplying rather than fading, and some parts of the
+Potomac river system already need more than help; they need
+resurrection.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img040a.jpg"  width="500" height="233" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>The Basin has several standard sorts of pollution, often found in one
+combination or another. Chemical contamination occurs along the North
+Branch, in areas where pesticides and other economic poisons get into
+the stream system, and in spots and stretches where specific industrial
+wastes create local problems. There is much and widespread pollution
+through organic wastes&mdash;often sewage solids, but not always&mdash;whose
+breakdown by natural processes may demand so much oxygen that a stream
+has little or none left over to maintain aquatic life and "stay alive."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes associated with organic wastes and sometimes entering the
+river system otherwise are dangerous bacteria, and also the so-called
+"nutrients"&mdash;dissolved fertilizing agents that can stimulate excessive
+growth of algae or weeds in the water to the detriment of other forms of
+life, often to such a degree that these plants' death and decay sets off
+a whole new cycle of oxygen demand. And there is sediment washed off the
+land, which clouds the water and settles out into a smothering cloak on
+the bottom, building up in quiet stretches into ugly and damaging mud
+banks and shoals.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Troubles above the Fall Line</h3>
+
+<p>Pollution of the Potomac begins at or near its traditional source, the
+tiny Appalachian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40b" id="Page_40b">[Pg 40b]</a></span> spring at the head of the North Branch where in 1746
+Thomas Lord Fairfax's surveyors set an inscribed stone to mark the
+northwestern corner of that possessive nobleman's vast holdings.
+Abandoned strip coal mines lie within sight of the spot, and it is
+doubtful that the infant river trickles more than a few yards before
+receiving its first injection of the acidic mixture of substances that
+springs and seeps and runoff water extract from bared coal strata and
+the mines' spoil heaps and carry down to the streamlet they feed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img040b.jpg"  width="297" height="400" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Such additions are frequent for the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41a" id="Page_41a">[Pg 41a]</a></span> 45 miles or so downstream, as
+the North Branch in its narrow valley swells into a mountain river with
+the water of brooks and creeks flowing off ridges pocked with coal mines
+old and new. The river and such tributaries sustain no aquatic life at
+all among the discolored stones in their channels.</p>
+
+<p>This mine-derived pollution has been much studied but is still not well
+understood. Sulphuric acid is its most damaging component, but may be
+accompanied by iron salts and other substances also leached from
+materials in and around the vast coal beds of Appalachia. Some acid
+entered the streams there naturally, before men ever touched the coal,
+but it has increased to deadly proportions with widespread mining. It
+issues from both surface strip mines and the old-fashioned underground
+sort, though the latter furnish by far the most&mdash;an estimated 75 to 90
+percent. The overall magnitude of the problem is indicated by the fact
+that the more than 60,000 square miles of the Appalachian region
+underlain by coal, including the Potomac fraction, contributes five to
+ten million tons of sulphuric acid annually to streams and rivers, a
+rate of production that is expected to continue for at least a thousand
+years.</p>
+
+<p>At Westernport the North Branch enters more populated realms, and
+receives one of its latter big doses of acid from Georges Creek, which
+drains a devastated, economically depressed valley mined since very
+early days. This creek may be the single most unfortunate stream in the
+Potomac Basin, for the accumulation of raw wastes it brings down from
+the valley's communities is pickled rath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41b" id="Page_41b">[Pg 41b]</a></span>er than assimilated by its
+heavily acid water.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img041.jpg"  width="500" height="217" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>In the 40 or 50 miles below that point, the North Branch accumulates
+great quantities of more usual kinds of pollution as it runs down a
+broadening valley past towns and industries that have grown up because
+of the conjunction of coal, timber, water, and railways&mdash;and in the old
+days water transport, for flatboats used to shoot the river at high
+water, and later the C. &amp; O. Canal operated upriver as far as
+Cumberland. Treatment of wastes in this reach is spotty and mainly
+inadequate. Some industries and towns sluice them raw into the dark, sad
+water, and others give only perfunctory primary treatment; the city of
+Cumberland releases the equivalent of about 18,000 persons' body wastes
+each day as effluent, besides extra raw wastes whenever storm runoff
+overloads its combined storm and sanitary sewer system and causes it to
+overflow. Where major efforts have been made, as at the Upper Potomac
+River Commission's Westernport plant below the big Luke, Maryland, pulp
+and paper mill, the wastes are so voluminous and complex that some of
+them still have to be dumped, and the effluent from even highly
+efficient treatment further degrades the river.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, the North Branch, acid above, deprived of oxygen and
+overenriched and septic below, is not typical of the flowing parts of
+the Potomac river system, but it stands as a good grim example of what
+pollution can mean, and as a foretaste of what may be expected to happen
+elsewhere in the Basin if it is not stopped soon. Mine acid is not a
+significant problem in any streams outside of that region, but untreated
+or inadequately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42a" id="Page_42a">[Pg 42a]</a></span> treated wastes are badly blighting many streams and
+rivers or stretches of them. Some smaller watercourses, like historic
+Antietam Creek below Hagerstown, Maryland, have deteriorated under the
+influence of discharges from single or limited sources, while larger
+ones suffer from a cumulative waste buildup in areas of concentrated
+population or industry. Some twenty miles of both industrial and
+municipal pollution in the South River Branch of the Shenandoah's South
+Fork below Waynesboro, Virginia, have done much damage to that legended
+river for a good distance downstream, a situation that is worsening with
+the area's growth. On the North Fork of the Shenandoah similar effects
+have been wrought by heavy organic loads from poultry processing and
+other things. The list could be extended: aside from a few happy
+exceptions like the prized Cacapon, draining rugged, forested, thinly
+peopled hill country, nearly all the Basin's flowing streams of any size
+receive damaging loads of waste from towns and industries.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img042a.jpg"><img src="images/img042a-tb.jpg" alt="WATER TREATMENT STEPS" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<h4>WATER TREATMENT STEPS</h4>
+
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="WATER TREATMENT STEPS">
+<tr><td align='left'>(1) River water enters here</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(2) Water chlorinated</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(3) Water settles. Heavy particles sink</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(4) Water pumped to Pretreatment Building</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(5) Various chemicals (chlorine, alum, lime, carbon) added. Chemicals</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>and water stirred in rapid mixing basins</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(6) Slow mixing to form "floc" (see Alum below)</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(7) Water settles for 2&frac12; hours. "Floc" carries impurities to bottom</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(8) Water filtered through 94 rapid sand beds</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>(9) Final chemical treatment (chlorine, lime, fluoride, phosphate)</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h4>PURPOSE OF CHEMICALS</h4>
+
+
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="50%" cellspacing="0" summary="PURPOSE OF CHEMICALS">
+<tr><td align='left'>CHLORINE:</td><td align='left'>Destroys organic materials</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>PHOSPHATE:</td><td align='left'>Lessens pipe corrosion</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>FLUORIDE:</td><td align='left'>Lessens tooth decay</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CARBON:</td><td align='left'>Controls taste and odor</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>ALUM:</td><td align='left'>Forms "floc" (snowflakes) to trap impurities</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>LIME:</td><td align='left'>Helps "floc" formation; lessens pipe corrosion</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<p>The basic and usual damage comes from oxygen depletion. A stream has a
+natural capacity for hastening the decay of organic wastes, which is
+determined by such things as the volume of its flow, the pollution
+already in it, its velocity and depth, and its temperature. When that
+capacity is exceeded, as we have noted, too much of the stream's oxygen
+is used up by the process of decay and the stream, which is an
+intricately complex work of living things, begins to die. Under really
+bad conditions, the waste solids themselves cannot all be assimilated,
+and hence may build up in layers of stinking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42b" id="Page_42b">[Pg 42b]</a></span> sludge at the bottom of
+the stream and continue to seize available oxygen for a long time
+thereafter.</p>
+
+<p>Conventional waste treatment, in plants built by towns or by industries
+whose raw materials are animal or vegetable in origin, is aimed at
+removing the solids in the wastes and reducing the bio-chemical oxygen
+demand&mdash;called B.O.D. It is a speeded-up version of the same process of
+purification that goes on normally in any stream when loads are not too
+heavy. "Primary" treatment removes such solids as will readily settle
+out and passes the rest on back to the stream as part of the effluent.
+"Secondary" treatment plants, after settling out the gross solids, speed
+up decay by furnishing air to the bacteria that eat up dissolved and
+finely suspended materials; a good secondary plant, under much more
+skillful supervision than is usual, can get rid of 85 or 90 percent of
+the organic materials and the associated B.O.D. by the time it turns its
+effluent into a stream. How damaging that effluent will be depends on a
+number of things, chief among them being the size and condition of the
+receiving stream and the volume of organic materials that went into the
+treatment plant in the first place. A riverside town of 1000 with a
+secondary treatment plant operating at 75 percent efficiency is going to
+inflict on its river a daily load roughly equivalent to the raw sewage
+from 250 people.</p>
+
+<p>Over the years a lot of hard effort, notably on the part of the
+Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, has resulted in some
+degree of treatment for about 85 percent of all municipal wastes and 83
+percent of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43a" id="Page_43a">[Pg 43a]</a></span> produced by industry along the Basin's flowing
+streams. Put in another way, by INCOPOT calculations the total waste
+load imposed on the Potomac is only about three-quarters of what it was
+in 1956, despite a population increase of nearly a fifth.</p>
+
+<p>That it is still much too high in many parts of the upper Basin does not
+require elaborate instruments to detect, but only a nose and a pair of
+eyes. A very few industries and towns are still dumping raw wastes, and
+many of the others need better and bigger sewers and treatment plants or
+better operation of the plants they have. Sewage collection systems are
+sometimes of the old-fashioned combined type, like Cumberland's&mdash;and, as
+we shall see, like Washington's&mdash;which have to carry storm runoff as
+well as wastes, and overflow during rainy periods, releasing heavy
+pollution without treatment. But even separate sanitary sewers are often
+overloaded by having to serve greater populations than they were
+designed for, which means that their escape valves may leak raw sewage
+more or less continuously into surface watercourses and that the quality
+of treatment given the sewage that does reach the treatment plant
+signifies less than it ought to.</p>
+
+<p>Antiquated or overloaded treatment plants cause much trouble. Old
+primary plants too small for present populations often remove only about
+a third or less of the organic material, but by their very existence
+they tend to lull communities into a false conviction that they are
+doing their part toward clean rivers. Tiny plants of the sort authorized
+locally for new leapfrog subdivisions and vacation col<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43b" id="Page_43b">[Pg 43b]</a></span>onies are usually
+doomed to restricted efficiency by their very size. These often are
+underdesigned even for initial loads, let alone for the growth that
+comes later, and most of them are poorly run.</p>
+
+<p>This question of operation is crucial. A new, well-designed, expensive
+plant in slovenly or inexpert hands&mdash;a frequent paradox&mdash;can put out a
+much greater waste load than a well-operated old one. The plant at
+Romney, West Virginia, on the lower South Branch, the best example of
+responsible operation in the Basin, is old, but because it is well run
+it usually achieves about 92 percent elimination of B.O.D. in comparison
+with the 75 percent or even less that some newer and more imposing
+plants can claim.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for poor operation are various. One is a shortage of
+qualified operators, based on a need for better salaries, more training
+programs, and rigid mandatory State certification of operators'
+abilities. Another reason can be a pinchpenny attitude on the part of
+municipal authorities toward sewage treatment. It is one sizable
+expenditure whose results cannot easily be pointed out with pride to
+local taxpayers at election time, for its main effect is usually
+downstream from the municipality itself. Thus the big encompassing
+reason for bad plant operation&mdash;cutting corners, refusing to spend what
+needs to be spent, failing to supervise&mdash;has to be called philosophical.
+It comes from a failure on the part of local operators and authorities
+and much of the public to comprehend the immorality of deliberate
+avoidable pollution, and it may mean that municipal operation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43c" id="Page_43c">[Pg 43c]</a></span>
+treatment plants is itself often a major source of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>A clear example of this philosophical deficiency is one large Basin
+treatment plant that was reported to have "handled"&mdash;i.e., properly
+disposed of&mdash;a third less sewage sludge in 1965 than it had in 1960,
+despite a large increase in the population it serves. The unhandled
+sludge, of course, went straight into the local river for reasons of
+convenience, economy, and callous indifference.</p>
+
+<p>For the most part, large private industry demonstrates more
+responsibility in this respect than the Basin's municipalities or
+Federal installations. There are some miserable exceptions where
+individual industries dominate a locality's economy and take casual
+advantage of that fact. But responsible industry is concerned with
+public relations, and knows that a fish kill or a gray-blue stretch of
+blighted water downstream from its outfalls is the poorest kind of
+public relations to be had.</p>
+
+<p>To be able to say precisely how much bad plant operation is adding to
+pollution in the Potomac will require exhaustive and continuous sampling
+and analysis of a kind that may be expected now that the Water Quality
+Act of 1965 is about to make itself felt through application of new
+State water quality standards. But experienced observers in INCOPOT and
+elsewhere feel strongly that bad operation does much more damage than do
+over-aged or outgrown facilities, though these play a big part too.</p>
+
+<p>Bacterial pollution&mdash;the category of most interest from a public health
+standpoint&mdash;fluctuates a great deal in the Basin's flowing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44a" id="Page_44a">[Pg 44a]</a></span> streams, but
+is heavy in most of them by current standards during times of normal
+flow. It may come from raw waste discharges, from treatment plants that
+skimp on chlorination of their effluent, or from storm runoff and
+natural drainage off the land and urban pavements. But before anyone can
+confidently say how dangerous it is to swimmers and others who make
+intimate use of rivers and creeks, water scientists are going to have to
+learn more about its measurement and classification than they presently
+know.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img044.jpg"  width="300" height="237" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>No easily applied method of testing can effectively establish the
+guaranteed absence of human disease germs. The traditional "Coliform
+Count" plays safe, as it must. It measures the concentration of certain
+easily spotted "indicator" organisms that do not themselves make people
+sick but are always voluminously present in the fecal discharges that
+can carry harmful germs, and it gauges the danger by the concentration
+of these indicators.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44b" id="Page_44b">[Pg 44b]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>However, concentrations of coliform bacteria, originating in animal
+manure or elsewhere, may invade a stream through runoff from rural lands
+without having any meaningful relationship to human disease germs.
+Counting them under such circumstances is a little like measuring the
+depth of the proverbial well by the length of the pump handle.
+Furthermore, no one really knows how easy or how hard it may be to catch
+given diseases by swimming. In this country, outbreaks of leptospirosis,
+an illness common to man and certain animals, have been traced to
+swimming holes, and other links are obvious. On the other hand, some
+careful British investigations turned up a good many quite healthy
+people who habitually splashed about in sea water teeming with
+pathogenic organisms of one sort or another. Sea water and fresh water
+have vastly different qualities, but the subject is presently full of
+confusion, and it needs much research.</p>
+
+<p>Land runoff in general furnishes a large amount of pollution of all
+classes, and in all parts of the upper Basin except the least-used
+forest sections. Besides bacteria, heavy loads of organic material may
+be washed into streams in regions with high densities of livestock or
+poultry, and some pollution of this sort is found practically
+everywhere. The wild and domestic animal population of the Basin above
+Washington has been estimated to produce wastes equivalent to those of
+about 3.5 million people. Much of this is dealt with by the "living
+filter" of the soil, but much also reaches the streams, associated with
+sediment from erosion producing rains. And the sources,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44c" id="Page_44c">[Pg 44c]</a></span> particularly in
+areas such as those along the Shenandoah and the Monocacy and other
+streams with wide rich valleys, are numerous and diffuse.</p>
+
+<p>Nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, which foster weeds and slime in quiet
+stream stretches and contribute to the problems of the estuary
+downstream, are found in undesirable concentrations in most of the
+Basin's waters above the Fall Line. Not only are the growths encouraged
+by these fertilizing agents ugly, but they also upset the ecological
+balance of streams by favoring certain types of aquatic life over
+others, and they can cause tastes, odors, and clogging in water supply
+systems and sometimes, by rotting, a secondary sort of oxygen
+deficiency. Nitrogen and phosphorus occur in the effluent from waste
+treatment plants, for they are present in human wastes and in
+detergents, and in dissolved form are little affected by standard
+treatment processes. And in the upper Basin a large part of the nutrient
+load in streams appears to be associated with sediment from the same
+diffused land runoff mentioned above, for they occur abundantly in
+manure, in synthetic fertilizers, in certain natural soils, and in
+decaying organic substances of many kinds. The health and growth of
+living things is dependent on these elements, of course; it is their
+excessive release into waters that causes trouble.</p>
+
+<p>From the same farming regions and even more from lawns and gardens and
+parks in more populated areas, pesticides and other economic poisons
+accompany sediment into the stream system or are blown into it as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45a" id="Page_45a">[Pg 45a]</a></span>
+sprays and dusts. They seem not to be as great a problem in the Potomac
+as in some other rivers, but they are present in probably significant
+amounts; indicator tests hover near Public Health Service drinking-water
+limits in the river. Their use, here as elsewhere, increases year by
+year, for they are tremendously effective against many of man's ancient
+enemies. Being easily available, they are often used in uninformed and
+careless ways despite government efforts to determine and publicize safe
+levels of application. Knowledge about their side effects, both
+immediate and long-term, is still full of gaps. Badly misused, they are
+obviously dangerous. But information about the precise results of their
+ordinary use and their buildup in nature accumulates very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>The persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons&mdash;DDT and its relatives&mdash;last for
+a long time after being released into the environment, concentrating at
+various points in the natural food chain and often in man himself. It is
+said that an average adult Californian's tissues today contain more DDT
+than is allowed in beef for interstate shipment. But no one is yet
+certain what this means in relation to that average Californian's
+physical wellbeing, and in terms of fish and wildlife, though the link
+between these materials and certain destructive changes can be seen,
+evidence in other cases&mdash;the declining fertility and numbers of bald
+eagles, for instance, which some investigators believe to derive from
+pesticide residues&mdash;only points toward such a link. Until all the facts
+are in and the impact of such poisons has been clearly restricted to the
+pest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45b" id="Page_45b">[Pg 45b]</a></span> species at which they are aimed, they are going to continue to be
+a heavy concern for conservationists and others alarmed about
+environmental pollution, along the Potomac and elsewhere.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img045a.jpg"  width="392" height="400" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>One of the principal Potomac pollutants,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45c" id="Page_45c">[Pg 45c]</a></span> silt, not only comes from the
+land but is the land, most often good topsoil, washing away toward the
+sea. Even under pristine conditions streams are likely to run somewhat
+muddy after storms; it is a natural phenomenon, a by-effect of the way
+climate carves landscapes. On the evidence, however, the Potomac
+landscape since its colonization by white men has been undergoing a much
+more rapid carving than anyone could consider to be natural. Most of its
+streams, particularly in their lower reaches, are thickly opaque for
+long periods after rain, and gross erosion in the Basin&mdash;the amount of
+soil washed away from where it usefully belongs to somewhere
+else&mdash;averages about 50 million tons per year, a major depletion of the
+soil resource and a degrading influence on the landscape through
+erosion. The part of this silt that gets into streams cuts down on the
+usefulness of the water, creates ugly turbidity, chokes quiet pools and
+reservoirs, suffocates bottom-dwelling creatures and plants on which the
+streams' wholeness may depend, and rides down the current to add heavily
+to the problems of the estuary, into which some 2.5 million tons of it
+are annually discharged.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img045b.jpg"  width="400" height="224" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Sediment is dislodged from the land by the pounding action of raindrops
+and the flow of runoff, and sometimes is washed from streambanks during
+high flows&mdash;which may themselves be higher and more frequent because of
+silt-clogged channels. The bulk of it can be blamed on unsound land use.
+This may be rural, based in the old use-her-up-and-move-along pioneer
+outlook that has never died out among us despite wide understanding of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46a" id="Page_46a">[Pg 46a]</a></span>
+better ways of doing things. People in places still overgraze pastures
+and clean-cut timber so that rain can get at the soil and eat it away,
+and they still farm land too steep to stay in place without its
+vegetative cover, or they plow even suitable rolling land in straight
+rows up and down hill so that water and soil sluice away together down
+the furrows when it rains. Despite a sharply effective three decades of
+work and public education by the Soil Conservation Service and other
+agencies, these old practices continue in some places and cause much
+erosion.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img046.jpg"  width="300" height="237" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Also, increasingly, bad land use involves the ways in which great
+machines adapt the landscape to hundreds of sophisticated purposes. The
+massive eatings of powered blades and scoops to get at coal and other
+minerals on the steep slopes of the North Branch watershed and
+elsewhere, add heavily to sedimentation. So do broad rights-of-way
+gashed out of the countryside and left bare under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46b" id="Page_46b">[Pg 46b]</a></span> storms in the months
+before highway construction is done, and secondary roads that even when
+finished may be left for years or forever with denuded clay shoulders
+and ditches and banks that wash with every rain. And so, most
+particularly, do the great polygons of rolling land around the Basin's
+town and cities that are stripped naked by bulldozers and left sitting
+in that condition for long periods, while they await the erection of
+buildings and blocks of homes. This is occurring throughout the Basin,
+but most notably around Washington, where the highest erosion rates of
+all are found. We will take a look at its details and the reasons for it
+a little further along in this chapter when we examine the estuary's
+situation.</p>
+
+<p>Except for the acid parts of the North Branch, the upper Basin's waters
+in most places, most of the time, can still serve the "practical"
+purposes to which they are put&mdash;irrigation, industrial uses, municipal
+supply after purification, and even the absorption and digestion of
+effluents from adequate, well-run treatment plants. Most of the streams
+are usually good to look at, especially in conjunction with the superb
+rural landscapes against backgrounds of wooded mountains that are
+characteristic. They furnish much pleasure to fishermen, hunters,
+boatmen, swimmers, picnickers, and other folk, though in some places it
+is an open question, as we have seen, whether or not contact with the
+water is prudent. And almost everywhere, aging locals can recall a time
+when their stream was a happier amenity than now&mdash;when it held more
+fish, ran clearer over stones<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46c" id="Page_46c">[Pg 46c]</a></span> and gravel not coated with weeds and
+green slime, did not have the smell it presently emanates, was colder
+and more copious....</p>
+
+<p>Their nostalgia probably does not play them false, even though
+conditions in many places are better now than in the intermediate past,
+after modern times had settled in, but before INCOPOT and the Soil
+Conservation Service and such influences had begun to push for reform of
+the casual, anciently human ways of doing things in which present human
+populations can no longer afford to indulge themselves. Some of the
+gains that have been made are being cancelled out by growth and new
+types of pollution, however, and in general the flowing Potomac river
+system is teetering at the brink of bad trouble. It needs help.</p>
+
+<p>If the flowing upper Potomac had any lingering oxygen deficiency in its
+lower stretches&mdash;though it seems usually not to&mdash;it would tend to
+rectify the lack in its turbulent eighteen-miles descent across the Fall
+Line, a superb natural "treatment plant." Normally it arrives at
+Washington charged with oxygen, but does bring down with it the part of
+its nutrient load that has not fertilized upstream weeds and algae,
+periodic waves of bacterial concentration, and a great deal of debris
+and silt in season.</p>
+
+<p>In the broadening, slowing upper estuary, its sluggish currents confused
+by the twice-daily surge and ebb of tides, these materials from above
+are stirred in with an array of specifically metropolitan
+pollutants&mdash;with more silt off of the outraged urban watershed, with
+junk and debris of a thousand sorts, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47a" id="Page_47a">[Pg 47a]</a></span> decaying substances and
+bacteria from many sources, and with vast new quantities of nitrogen and
+phosphorus. The consequence is a weighty and sometimes spectacular
+pollution problem directly adjacent to the proud national capital. It is
+at its vivid and aromatic worst in summer, when the most Americans come
+there fondly to view the city and the Potomac, and when locals who want
+to boat and fish and swim and do the other things one does on water
+would make most use of the river&mdash;indeed, do make use of it in spite of
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>Like the meek, the upper estuary inherits the earth, or at least that
+part of the Basin's earth that is washed downriver as silt. There are
+enough fine suspended sediment particles in the water of the
+metropolitan river to make it drably opaque most of the time, even
+during relatively dry spells, when heavy sand and gravel dredging helps
+to keep it stirred up. As the current loses force and washes back and
+forth with the tides, the particles settle out slowly into smothering,
+continually renewed blankets on the bottom, and over two centuries have
+accreted into great mudbanks and shoals. Channel dredging to maintain
+navigation has been going on since the early 19th century, about 180,000
+cubic yards being presently removed each year. The dumping of the
+dredged materials on the marshes and long low shores has built up wide,
+flat, new flood plain areas around the city over the years, including
+the sites of Washington National Airport, Anacostia and Bolling Air
+Fields, and East and West Potomac Parks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47b" id="Page_47b">[Pg 47b]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such channel dredging has little effect on the gradual shoaling of this
+whole part of the river in general. Miles of formerly navigable water
+downstream from Memorial Bridge are now only one to four feet deep and
+useless for either pleasure or commercial craft. It has been estimated
+that present rates of deposition will within fifty years fill in the
+upper estuary completely to a mile or so below Alexandria, except for a
+river channel. The same process is at work in the tributary creek-bays
+that give onto the estuary, some of which have silted so heavily since
+Colonial Days that formerly thriving ports&mdash;among them Bladensburg,
+Dumfries, and Port Tobacco&mdash;are now distant from the water.</p>
+
+<p>The bulk of estuarial silt comes down the main river from the upper
+Basin. But a heavy increment is added in the metropolitan area. Modern
+mechanized development of the city's hilly environs on a huge scale,
+continuing year by year with few thoughtful rules to guide it
+heretofore, has brought about erosion that on individual patches of
+bared land may reach a temporary rate of 50,000 tons per square mile per
+year, and even average rates in this area are far in excess of anything
+else in the Basin.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img047b.jpg"  width="400" height="255" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>We had to examine the reasons for this rather closely last year in a
+study of Rock Creek's ailments, whose findings we published in a report
+called <i>The Creek and the City</i>. This much-admired metropolitan stream
+has been relatively well protected, with the parks along its wooded
+valley and an upper watershed that until quite recently remained
+essentially rural. But as development has pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47c" id="Page_47c">[Pg 47c]</a></span>ceeded in standard and
+careless ways&mdash;the wholesale stripping and scarification of big tracts
+of rolling, fine-textured land, the long naked wait for development&mdash;the
+creek has come to be muddy and ugly almost all the time and has been
+spewing an estimated 100,000 tons of sediment a year into the estuary,
+with frequent floods.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img047a.jpg"  width="400" height="195" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>To help save the creek and its parks and to stimulate a better kind of
+development of the rest of its basin, citizens formed a watershed
+association under Soil Conservation Service auspices and brought about
+the construction of two small upstream reservoirs to control
+flooding&mdash;with results noted in the preceding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48a" id="Page_48a">[Pg 48a]</a></span> chapter&mdash;and to collect
+silt. They sought to promote better land use as well, for the
+reservoirs' effectiveness is obviously dependent on their not filling up
+quickly with an excess of sediment. Better land use around a city
+depends on zoning and other legal devices to regulate the density and
+distribution of construction, and on controls over the way land is
+shaped, and a sharp conflict developed between the watershed's defenders
+and the Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, in office at that time,
+whose rezonings in favor of standard massive suburbanization and whose
+failure to enact sediment-control ordinances threatened the whole
+effort. Rock Creek has many friends, and their subsequent fight for its
+salvation has had good effect, though much remains to be done.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img048.jpg"  width="300" height="239" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>However, Rock Creek is only one of many metropolitan streams that need
+protection, both for their own sake and for that of the estuary. Some
+are getting it&mdash;in the preced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48b" id="Page_48b">[Pg 48b]</a></span>ing chapter we noted the happy example of
+Pohick Creek in Virginia, where whole watershed planning is being
+accomplished almost from scratch, before development. But many more are
+being ruined by the steady advance of standard urban sprawl.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the main cause of urban silt is faulty or nonexistent or powerless
+land planning, and the problem merges with the whole question of
+landscape preservation. The ecological principles involved in good
+practical land planning&mdash;the distribution of uses based on what land and
+water can take without being degraded and causing silt, flooding, and
+downstream pollution&mdash;are the same basic principles that lead to scenic
+beauty and a decent human environment. This is a subject we will explore
+in more detail when we arrive at considering the landscape as a whole,
+but for now it may be worthwhile to note that insofar as urban erosion
+and silt stem from decisions of political agencies inclined to subjugate
+well-known good land use principles to speculative pressures,
+expediency, and other things, their origin is political and economic.</p>
+
+<p>Organic materials are pervasive enough in the upper estuary that during
+periods of even normal flow their decay pulls oxygen levels down. Under
+usual conditions this B.O.D. grows worse and worse downstream and
+reaches a peak in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon, though its effects
+continue to be felt below. Fish kills among the rugged resident species
+that predominate in these reaches of the river are not uncommon, the
+shoreline windrows of deceased carp and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48c" id="Page_48c">[Pg 48c]</a></span> perch periodically adding their
+essence to what metropolitans have come to accept as the Potomac's
+normal summer smell. And along with the organic materials are heavy
+concentrations of bacteria.</p>
+
+<p>The organic and bacterial load enters the estuary from many sources,
+most of them local, for only a little of this material comes down from
+the upper river. A significant amount of it issues from the network of
+small urban watercourses like Rock Creek. Many of these were covered
+over as storm sewers or troughed in concrete long ago, but they continue
+to serve their age-old function of draining the lands they traverse,
+even if through cast-iron gratings.</p>
+
+<p>A good bit of the organic load in these tributaries consists of raw
+human waste, incongruous and particularly obnoxious around a modern
+city. The bulk of it is released in periodic surges when local
+rainstorms overload the old-fashioned combined sewer systems of the
+District of Columbia and Alexandria. In dry weather these systems send
+both collected sanitary wastes and street drainage down to the cities'
+respective treatment plants, but during storms when street drainage is
+heavy the sewers' capacity is exceeded and overflow gates gush mixed
+stormwater and sewage out into the streams, which carry it to the
+estuary.</p>
+
+<p>In the suburbs, more modern separate storm and sanitary sewers are the
+rule, but they too have some problems of a kind we noted in relation to
+the upper river. Investigations on Rock Creek revealed steady dribbles
+of raw sewage entering the creek or its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49a" id="Page_49a">[Pg 49a]</a></span> tributaries from a large number
+of storm-sewer outfalls and other places. Partly these flow from
+malfunctioning individual septic systems in outlying areas,
+surreptitious connections of house sanitary sewers to the storm system,
+breaks and leaks in sanitary sewers, and such things. Partly too they
+seem to come from the fact that some sanitary sewers are having to carry
+more sewage than they were designed to handle, so that their overflow
+valves leak more or less constantly into the storm sewer system. The
+capacity of sewage collection systems is related to planning. If a pipe
+is laid down to a fringe area where county zoning maps indicate only
+limited development is going to be permitted, its size is gauged to that
+kind of development. But if the zoning is changed later and three times
+as many houses are hooked up to the line as were originally envisioned,
+trouble results. Rock Creek is heavily affected by such sewage, and the
+chances are that the situation is much worse on many other urban
+drainways, for their longstanding degradation or sheer disappearance
+from view has lost them the alert defenders who watch over Rock Creek in
+its pleasant valley.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the storm sewers whether combined or separate, off of the roads
+and streambanks and hillsides, down the urban tributaries or directly
+overland into the estuary, comes still another big jolt of organic and
+bacterial pollution every time there is a heavy rain. This is surface
+runoff, the washings of the street and parks and sidewalks and rooftops.
+Besides debris, it contains vast hordes of bacteria and many kinds of
+organic oxygen-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49b" id="Page_49b">[Pg 49b]</a></span>demanding substances, of which animal droppings are only
+one easily definable example. Around a city the size of the Washington
+metropolis, this runoff would constitute a worrisome pollution problem
+even if the matter of sanitary wastes were thoroughly in control.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img049.jpg"  width="500" height="228" alt="Ships" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Ships and large boats in the estuary, in accordance with an
+unfortunately persistent nautical tradition, generally discharge toilet
+wastes and garbage directly into the water on which they float. Some of
+these are coastal or transoceanic vessels, both commercial and naval.
+Many more belong to the fleet of pleasure boats which have been
+increasing at Washington despite the water's unpleasant state to which
+they add their bit, degrading the element that is supposed to provide
+the enjoyment for which the boats were built. It is not a problem
+limited to the Potomac estuary, but widespread these days and the focus
+of much concern among public health and pollution control authorities,
+conservationists, and the boat and marina industries themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Around the various marinas to be found along metropolitan
+shores&mdash;several of them Federally owned&mdash;sanitary facilities are
+generally skimpy, and no regulations govern the discharge of wastes from
+boats. Since individual marinas may berth as many as 600 or 700 craft, a
+great many of them in daily use during the recreation season and some
+inhabited as dwellings the year round, summer conditions that frequently
+prevail around these places are not to be described in polite terms.</p>
+
+<p>Less visible at the point of origin though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50a" id="Page_50a">[Pg 50a]</a></span> not in its ultimate effects
+is the huge organic load that comes to the estuary in the effluent of
+local sewage treatment plants, estimated at possibly 300 to 350 million
+gallons per day. There are many smaller plants strung out down both
+shores of the upper estuary, but four larger ones handle the bulk of
+metropolitan sewage. Of these, three&mdash;the main plant at Blue Plains in
+the District, the Alexandria plant, and the Fairfax County Westgate
+plant&mdash;furnish secondary treatment, and the fourth, the Arlington County
+plant on Four Mile Run, is on the verge of putting new secondary
+facilities into operation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the same problem of plant operation that exists in the upper Basin
+also rears its head here. A casual boat ride down the shoreline with a
+few excursions up tributary creek-mouths demonstrates that many of the
+smaller plants, including a number of Federal ones, are emitting a very
+low quality of effluent, and this is borne out by sanitary surveys. The
+proliferation of such small plants around cities and elsewhere is a
+headache to sanitary authorities, for their very size and numbers create
+a probability of trouble. Much effort is going into eliminating them and
+channeling the wastes they receive into the larger plants.</p>
+
+<p>But the large plants themselves at this point are a much bigger part of
+the problem; on the basis of sheer volume, their contribution to
+estuarial pollution dwarfs all others. The Blue Plains plant is by far
+the largest of the four, handling wastes from about 1.4 million people
+in Washington and outlying areas on both sides of the river. By the
+terms of a conference convened in 1957 by the Public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50b" id="Page_50b">[Pg 50b]</a></span> Health Service to
+investigate the sanitary state of the Potomac at Washington, the
+District committed itself to maintain 80% efficiency of treatment at
+this plant, which was then brand new. Last year, ten years afterward,
+the most generous recent calculation of the efficiency there was 62%,
+and some qualified observers expressed a conviction that Blue Plains had
+never consistently functioned at much over 50%&mdash;in other words, it had
+been returning to the estuary unassimilated organic materials equivalent
+to the raw discharges of a population of roughly 500,000 to 700,000
+people each day. Nor do these figures include a great deal of sludge
+that has been flushed on into the river when digesters have failed to
+function properly, or the plant's frequently inadequate use of
+chlorination against bacterial pollution and odors. Since the same 1957
+conference required of the other metropolitan jurisdictions only that
+they do equally as well as the main plant in quality of treatment, they
+have clearly not been obligated to superhuman effort.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img050.jpg"  width="500" height="204" alt="Filtration bed" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Criticism of Blue Plains is in part criticism of ourselves. Because of
+the distinctive relationship between the District and the Federal
+Government, the District's treatment plant is in a sense a Federal
+installation, funded through Congress and with more direct links to
+Federal water quality agencies than any other big municipal plant in the
+country. The number of people the plant serves has, of course, increased
+greatly in the past ten years. It may have been, as has been claimed,
+somewhat underdesigned to begin with, and it undoubtedly needs expansion
+now. Yet a rather substantial improvement in the quality of treatment
+there in quite recent months, mainly under the stimulus of this planning
+effort and the present surge of interest in the Potomac, indicates that
+had emphasis on low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51a" id="Page_51a">[Pg 51a]</a></span> operating costs been subjugated to pride in
+results, the present plant could long ago have been made to function
+reasonably well and the estuary would have had to cope with a much
+lighter load of wastes.</p>
+
+<p>The truly spectacular manifestation of pollution in the metropolitan
+Potomac is the periodic growth of algae there in summertime. When
+conditions are right&mdash;when sun, summer temperatures, low inflows from
+the river above, and a heavy concentration of nitrate and phosphate
+nutrients all combine to make of the upper estuary one vast inspired
+pool of fertility&mdash;the whole surface of the river may be covered with a
+thick bright emerald mat, and boats that pass at speed leave wakes of
+green instead of white. The infestation may extend downstream for thirty
+or forty miles, in various degrees of concentration, and even if the
+water were bacterially safe this "bloom," as it is called, would
+prohibit its recreational use by anyone without a strong stomach. It
+further disrupts aquatic life balances, and periodically dies and decays
+aromatically, setting off whole new cycles of oxygen depletion, fish
+kills, stink, and fertilization.</p>
+
+<p>The problem is one of fertility, of course, and stems from the huge
+quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus perennially present in the water.
+Some of this comes down from the upper river&mdash;where, as we noted, much
+of it derives from land runoff&mdash;but by far the greatest part of it
+originates at the metropolis and enters the river through the effluent
+of waste treatment plants. Efficiency of operation has hardly anything
+to do with it, for even the best standard treatment has little effect on
+nutrients.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51b" id="Page_51b">[Pg 51b]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Eutrophication is the scientific name of this kind of overenrichment. It
+is occurring in many places, Lake Erie being the best-known single
+example in this country. Though its causes are mainly known, the process
+itself is still not fully understood, particularly in regard to the
+function of nitrogen and the way it works. But the other key element,
+phosphorus, has been more amenable to study and to possible action. It
+occurs in body wastes, in artificial fertilizers, as a by-product of
+natural decay, and very notably in detergents. Some eight tons of it are
+released into the estuary each day from the treatment plants in addition
+to the undetermined but much smaller amounts arriving from upriver, and
+the usual overall accumulation is enough to make the river's phosphorus
+content exceed that considered desirable all the way from Theodore
+Roosevelt Island to Quantico, Virginia, and below, which represents the
+general extent of the summertime "blooms."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img051b.jpg"  width="300" height="183" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Dilapidation begets disrespect, and the abused and often repellent
+waters of the upper estuary are undoubtedly subjected to much additional
+miscellaneous pollution by people who believe perhaps that a little more
+cannot possibly matter. Again, Federal or Federally connected
+institutions have not been setting the best possible example, and there
+are many of them around the capital city. Unwarranted waste discharges
+of one kind or another have been traced to most of the military
+installations fronting the river, to military hospitals, to government
+heating plants, to the National Zoo, to National Parks, and to similar
+Federal sources including the marinas already men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51c" id="Page_51c">[Pg 51c]</a></span>tioned. In most cases,
+measures are now being taken to eliminate these discharges, but it is a
+commentary on the complexity and difficulty of the whole task of dealing
+with pollution that at the level of government where real concern with
+the problem has been acute for a decade or more, and furthermore at and
+around the very seat of that government, such practices should have
+persisted this long.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img051a.jpg"  width="300" height="189" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Junk and debris of all descriptions infest the metropolitan river,
+floating about, washing onto the shores, poking up stolidly here and
+there out of mudflats. Most items in a dreary inventory that might be
+compiled would turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52a" id="Page_52a">[Pg 52a]</a></span> out to be something that was discarded somewhere it
+didn't belong by someone who did not want to go to the trouble to put it
+where it did belong. Therefore, the main source is undoubtedly simple
+disregard for the sensibilities and rights of others, multiplied and
+complicated by the immense number of people in the metropolis and the
+wide territory they occupy. In our study of Rock Creek last year, some
+powerful subsidiary reasons for the prevalence of debris turned up also,
+ranging to streetcleaning methods and the inconvenient hours kept by
+some public dumps where citizens have to carry their larger trash.
+Metropolitan problems are seldom simple, and many of them in one way or
+another manage to inflict a part of their complexity on the river at the
+national capital, which is sad but possibly appropriate in a time like
+the present.</p>
+
+
+<h3>The lower estuary</h3>
+
+<p>Downriver from the main effects of the metropolitan complexities, the
+widening brackish and salt portions of the Potomac estuary form a
+generally healthy body of water, though changes loom as the metropolis
+moves inexorably outward from its center and as hitherto remote
+Tidewater areas are brought more and more under the influence of modern
+ways of being. Localized problems of pollution point to general dangers
+that will certainly materialize unless safeguards are set up in time,
+for estuaries are delicate, immensely productive, and still somewhat
+mysterious aquatic environments that have been and still are too much
+taken for granted.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img052a.jpg"  width="300" height="189" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Rapid human intrusion on estuaries during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52b" id="Page_52b">[Pg 52b]</a></span> the past twenty years has
+been making apparent their phenomenal value in a natural condition.
+Vulnerable, attractive to diverse interests that work their beds for
+sand and gravel and fill in their marshes for development and casually
+pollute them, they have recently been called America's most endangered
+natural habitat. They are almost unbelievably fertile places, with
+involved biological cycles that can convert the fertility into usable
+food at rates per acre far exceeding those of the finest farm land; in
+terms of money, one recent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52c" id="Page_52c">[Pg 52c]</a></span> set of experiments indicates the possibility
+of attaining an annual shellfish production on tended beds worth over
+$26,000 an acre.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img052b.jpg"  width="300" height="218" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Furthermore, aside from the direct harvest of this wealth from estuaries
+each year by commercial and sport fishermen, these in-between waters
+make an indispensable contribution to the entire Atlantic coastal
+fishery, an industry worth a billion dollars a year. The reason for this
+is that at least 70 percent of coastal fishes spend some essential part
+of their life cycle within an estuary&mdash;spawning there, or passing
+through on their way to spawn in running fresh streams, or moving in as
+fry from the rivers or the open sea to find a "nursery" in one of the
+varied estuarine habitats&mdash;bays, marshes, sandy shorelines, mudflats,
+tidal creeks, or weed beds.</p>
+
+<p>The oysters from the famous beds in the Saint Mary's River off of the
+lower Potomac are mainly condemned as unfit for consumption because of
+local sewage pollution, and these beds are not the only unfit ones, for
+towns and resorts in the region have been growing and sanitary
+facilities have not been keeping pace. Already some arms of the superb
+natural harbors formed by the tributary creeks are noxious with
+discharges from boats at big marinas, and gravel dredging is stirring up
+silt to smother bottom life, including shellfish. As Tidewater
+agriculture revives and modernizes, pesticides and artificial
+fertilizers are coming to be as much a part of the scene there as in
+other farming regions, and may be expected to influence the estuary&mdash;in
+fact, they undoubtedly already are doing so in subtle ways with effects
+not yet apparent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53a" id="Page_53a">[Pg 53a]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet most of this part of the river is still beautiful and continues to
+yield good harvests of seafood. The Potomac River Fisheries Commission
+has been alert to obvious dangers and has moved against them where its
+powers have permitted, and natives of the area are increasingly alert in
+protecting the estuary. Many of them depend on it for a living, most are
+oriented toward it for their pleasures, and until lately a good many of
+them counted on it for transportation. In a number of different ways, it
+matters in their lives. And that fact offers some hope for the future,
+especially if it is fostered and strengthened by overall protective
+measures.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Techniques for cleaning up</h3>
+
+<p>Two main general approaches to water quality improvement exist:
+treatment of pollution at its source or occasionally after it has
+entered a stream, and augmentation of the stream's flow to help it
+assimilate loads of waste beyond its natural capacity. A third
+possibility in certain situations is the diversion of wastes out of a
+stream's drainage entirely. In practice, these methods can be varied and
+combined in any number of ways to fit a need.</p>
+
+<p>To take the last one first, diversion of whole wastes as received from
+their sources is a total and dramatic means of coping with a pollution
+problem stemming from collectable wastes, but it often has
+disadvantages. One of these, of course, is the possibility that the
+pollution problem may be simply transplanted elsewhere&mdash;that the water
+in which the wastes eventually end up will suffer. Another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53b" id="Page_53b">[Pg 53b]</a></span> is loss of
+water from the stream system. If, as is usual, a town gets its water out
+of the local river or a tributary and does not give it back after
+use&mdash;preferably well cleaned up&mdash;other users downstream are not going to
+have as much water available to them, and the essential processes and
+ecology of the river itself may suffer.</p>
+
+<p>The only place such wholesale diversion of wastes has been seriously
+considered in the Potomac Basin is at metropolitan Washington, whose
+sewage could feasibly be piped across Chesapeake Bay and the Delmarva
+peninsula and well out into the Atlantic&mdash;possibly, as has been
+suggested, in combination with sewage from Baltimore. It would be a
+permanent means of disposal, but very expensive in terms of both
+investment and operating costs. Furthermore, though in the estuary no
+downstream users would suffer a loss of water supply, the water content
+in metropolitan sewage has at times risen as high as 80 percent of the
+flow of the river above the upstream intakes. The effects of such a
+subtraction of fresh water on the estuary itself&mdash;changes in flow, and
+in the penetration of salt water upriver, with an inevitable alteration
+in valuable fisheries and the whole balance of aquatic life established
+through millennia&mdash;could easily turn out to be disastrous.</p>
+
+<p>Standard treatment of pollution at its source consists of the primary
+and secondary processes we have glanced at, sometimes adjusted to
+specific industrial wastes. It has to be brought up to peak efficiency
+along the Potomac, for this is a "known factor" of great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53c" id="Page_53c">[Pg 53c]</a></span> significance.
+Plants can and must be improved physically where necessary, and
+qualified operators provided for them. Collection systems have to be
+improved or enlarged in many places. Diminutive plants, doomed to
+inefficiency by their size and the financial impossibility of hiring
+expert workers for them, need to be eliminated in favor of regional
+waste collection and treatment facilities, which are quite feasible,
+particularly in the watershed units of the upper Basin.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, it has emerged clearly to view in this Potomac study that
+standard treatment alone is no longer an answer in areas of concentrated
+or continuous population and industry, where the leftover wastes and the
+nutrients in the effluent from even well-run standard plants can often
+add up to a killing load for water.</p>
+
+<p>Total diversion of treatment plant effluents is sometimes possible, but
+is subject to the same objections that apply to total diversion of
+untreated sewage&mdash;possible pollution of the receiving water (such as
+Chesapeake Bay or the lower Potomac estuary, both of which have been
+suggested and considered for Washington's effluent) and the alteration
+of hydrological and ecological conditions. Modified forms of effluent
+diversion, however, may offer more promise.</p>
+
+<p>Effluents from maximum standard treatment processes, for instance, can
+be injected into underground strata as recharge water for aquifers&mdash;a
+process mentioned earlier as one alternative in the emerging package of
+water supply techniques&mdash;or may be spread over the surface of large
+areas of rural land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54a" id="Page_54a">[Pg 54a]</a></span> where they serve as irrigation water and fertilizer
+combined, as well as soaking down into underlying aquifers. For large
+scale, sustained use, both of these practices still offer some technical
+difficulties&mdash;algae buildups that interfere with percolation, odor
+problems, limited aquifer capacities, the large amounts of land required
+for spreading, the effect of rain and freezing weather, and such things.
+And where the aquifers in question do not feed the original source
+stream system, a big subtraction is again involved. But for certain
+conditions in certain places these problems are undoubtedly going to be
+worked out.</p>
+
+<p>A more modest but highly useful modification of effluent diversion is
+the spacing of treatment plant outfalls at intervals for a long distance
+downstream from a treatment plant. If nutrient and organic loads are not
+tremendously heavy in relation to the size of the receiving stream, this
+procedure can help to assure that no one stretch gets too strong a dose
+of them. It is likely to find good use in the Potomac and elsewhere,
+though only as an adjunct to the best available treatment.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Advanced treatment" and "tertiary treatment" are becoming common terms
+nowadays. They refer to any of a considerable array of additional or
+intensified processes aimed at attaining levels of purification that
+would have cost an impossible price a few years ago. Most of them are
+still experimental and often still expensive, and they involve
+everything from filtration through powdered coal to flash distillation,
+with still others in prospect. Some bypass conventional treat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54b" id="Page_54b">[Pg 54b]</a></span>ment and
+deal with whole raw wastes. More build on conventional treatment and are
+designed to remove nutrients and residual organic material from its
+effluents. Of these latter approaches, at least one, involving lime
+precipitation and other processes to remove nearly all phosphorus and
+most remaining organic material, is nearing a stage of development and
+economy that may warrant important use. It will be applied first at the
+new Piscataway treatment plant of the Washington Suburban Sanitary
+Commission in Prince Georges County, Maryland, which will also
+incorporate research and demonstration projects in nitrogen stripping
+and other things.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img054.jpg"  width="363" height="400" alt="Water Treatment" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>In the long run such advances offer the main hope of clean water for a
+superpopu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54c" id="Page_54c">[Pg 54c]</a></span>lated future America, where volumes of wastes are going to be
+enormous and first-rate off-stream treatment is going to have to be the
+main way of handling them. Even where wastes can be collected easily for
+treatment, however, as in industry or in sewered populated areas, it may
+take a good many years to work out varied forms of advanced treatment
+adaptable to different sets of circumstances, at prices that communities
+can afford to pay&mdash;and a willingness to pay what can be paid is going to
+have to be a part of the long clean-up job ahead. Undoubtedly continuing
+research will work out such forms of treatment, but the research itself
+may be quite costly and no one can predict its pace.</p>
+
+<p>Where waste sources are too diffuse to be channeled into collection
+systems&mdash;as along many agricultural streams heavily polluted through
+land runoff and drainage, and also in some urban situation&mdash;present
+tools are extremely limited. Soil conservation practices aimed at
+cutting down erosion&mdash;to be discussed within a few pages&mdash;tend to keep
+not only silt but nutrients and other substances on the land to some
+extent. Concentrated sources of animal manure such as dairies, poultry
+operations, and feed lots can be brought under some control by fencing
+stock off from streams and by techniques of lagooning and later field
+spreading, which need much wider use in the Potomac Basin. But even if
+these approaches were applied fully throughout the region within a
+shorter time than appears likely or even possible, land runoff would
+still be a heavy source of water degradation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55a" id="Page_55a">[Pg 55a]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hence it is probable that flow augmentation&mdash;sometimes called "flow
+dilution" or included in the broader term "flow regulation"&mdash;through the
+release of stored water, will be an important auxiliary tool in water
+quality management for a good while to come. This is not a form of
+flushing wastes downstream from their source and out of sight, as some
+opponents continue to insist, but a means of helping streams to
+oxygenate and decompose excess wastes by the same processes they have
+always used on natural and normal loads. On the other hand, neither is
+flow augmentation the end-all cure for pollution that enthusiasts of a
+few years ago claimed it to be. Its effect on slow masses of water is
+uncertain and probably minimal, and too much dependence on it even for
+flowing streams would obviously encourage neglect of the practical and
+moral need to keep filth and troublesome substances from getting into
+the streams in the first place. Furthermore, such dependence would lead
+rapidly to a point of diminishing returns, like the flood-plain
+development and protection cycle examined in the preceding chapter.
+Increases in populations and pollution would lead to a necessity to
+provide more and more augmentation of flows, with storage space in
+reservoirs becoming more and more expensive precisely as flood
+protection does. Flow augmentation is no substitute for good treatment,
+but a valuable adjunct.</p>
+
+<p>In the record drought summer of 1966 the South Fork of the Shenandoah,
+heavily polluted with municipal and industrial wastes near Waynesboro,
+and with fertilizer, ma<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55b" id="Page_55b">[Pg 55b]</a></span>nure, and other substances in drainage from the
+rich and intensively utilized farm country through which it flows, ran
+very low for months. In many places it was slimy and unpleasant, and
+aquatic life suffered to some extent, but the picture was not nearly so
+dismal as it would have been if the river had not been helped out more
+or less by accident. The source of this help was some 2000 gallons of
+water per minute that the Merck plant at Elkton and the Dupont plant
+near Waynesboro were releasing after having pumped it out of deep
+aquifers and used it for cooling. If all sources of pollution had been
+receiving adequate treatment, this minimal dilution might not have been
+so badly needed to avoid the fish kills and algal stagnation and other
+results that would have ensured without it. But "all sources" include
+the problematic agricultural drainage, and for that matter the
+definition of "adequate treatment" is going to have to go up and up in
+our expansive future.</p>
+
+<p>The sad situation of the smaller and much less industrialized Monocacy
+in the same summer underscores the point. The Monocacy flows through
+similar farming country and passes by a few towns. The largest of these
+is Frederick, Maryland, for whose approximately 40,000 people the little
+river furnishes water and a conduit to carry away the effluent from
+their average-to-good secondary plant. At times during that dry summer
+practically the entire flow of the river below Frederick consisted of
+effluent, with effects on stream life, esthetics, and the general
+surroundings that are not hard to imagine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55c" id="Page_55c">[Pg 55c]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another good example of a place where, under present conditions,
+augmentation could sometimes be used beneficially is at Great Falls and
+in the Potomac gorge below. Heavy public expenditure has protected the
+shore in much of this neighborhood and provided pleasant recreation
+areas whose main scenic focus is the violent magnificence of the river
+in its plunge. But the magnificence becomes a rather drab joke in dry
+summers when metropolitan withdrawals of water above that point shrink
+the river to a semblance of normal flow.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img055.jpg"  width="486" height="550" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<h4>Low Flow Augmentation</h4>
+
+<p>The North Branch and some smaller Basin streams also need this same kind
+of help and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56a" id="Page_56a">[Pg 56a]</a></span> most will continue to need it even when the best
+economically feasible treatment of all collectable wastes entering them
+is ensured. It can be provided out of reservoirs, large or small, whose
+need for other purposes as well will keep the cost of dilution within
+reason. A future possibility, if research presently going on in the
+Basin verifies it and shows ways of putting it to use, is to employ
+ground water in the same way. There can be no doubt that if the flowing
+waters of the Basin are to be put back in good condition and kept that
+way under population pressures that are in prospect, flow augmentation
+in some places is going to be an important tool.</p>
+
+<p>In the upper estuary, however, its usefulness appears to be far more
+limited. The plan proposed in the <i>Army Report</i> of 1963, in line with a
+Public Health Service approach emphasized in the 1961 Water Pollution
+Control Act, was designed to provide an eventual minimum flow into the
+upper estuary of 3100 cubic feet per second, or around two billion
+gallons per day, for the purpose of dealing with treatment-plant
+effluents and miscellaneous pollution. But more recent investigations
+have raised strong doubt as to whether such augmentation could do the
+job in the estuary with its huge volume of water, and its slow,
+tide-baffled currents that greatly lessen its assimilative capacity.</p>
+
+<p>In terms of dissolved oxygen, dilution of such a body of water for
+quality improvement appears to decrease in unit effectiveness as the
+volume of dilution is stepped up, which means that past a certain
+minimal point of improvement it gets expensive and requires<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56b" id="Page_56b">[Pg 56b]</a></span>
+unreasonable amounts of storage. In terms of nutrients, one authority
+has calculated that about 20,000 cubic feet per second would be required
+to reduce the nutrient level in the upper estuary to a point where it
+would be only twice that of a normal and healthily "rich" section of the
+upper Chesapeake Bay. Some augmentation below the point of diminishing
+returns will undoubtedly be needed, not only for the estuary but to keep
+the river alive in its gorge above Washington during periods of low
+flow. But as a main tool for the metropolitan river, it will not
+substitute for achievement of the best possible standard treatment
+followed by advanced treatment and other techniques.</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, just as in water supply, an ultimate cure for water quality
+ills is going to consist of a "mix" of solutions, different techniques
+being applied to the situations they are best suited to deal with, and
+combinations of them being worked out where combinations are what is
+indicated. Already the same kind of sophisticated mathematical models of
+given bodies of water&mdash;including the Potomac&mdash;that are being used to
+study solutions for water supply problems are being put to use on water
+quality as well, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of various
+combinations of means. And, just as in water supply, ultimate "hard"
+technology is undoubtedly going to make better solutions possible, while
+a strong and meaningful start is possible with the technology that is on
+hand.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Silt is a truly Basinwide problem. The individual tiny grains of soil
+that mass to sully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56c" id="Page_56c">[Pg 56c]</a></span> and choke the estuary may have originated anywhere
+in the thousands of square miles of drainage above. They constitute an
+economic loss at their points of origin as well as a trouble all along
+their downstream course of migration.</p>
+
+<p>The basic-physical ways of preventing silt are twofold and easily
+defined: first, the maintenance of proper land cover&mdash;vegetation or
+humus or mulch which blankets and anchors the soil particles and
+prevents falling or flowing water from dislodging them&mdash;and second,
+structural approaches that control the flow of water and can also serve
+to trap eroded material. These latter can be anything from good contour
+plowing practices to a major reservoir with a certain silt capacity
+built into it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img056.jpg"  width="350" height="244" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Such techniques are the basis of existing programs of the Soil
+Conservation Service and the Forest Service that have proved their
+effectiveness over many years of rural application. Watershed planning
+with small reservoirs, check dams, and terraces backed up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57a" id="Page_57a">[Pg 57a]</a></span> by good land
+treatment and use, soil surveys, wise forestry practices, and such
+things are stimulated and bolstered in these programs by technical and
+financial assistance given to private landowners, States, and local
+organizations. They have already had important local effects in the
+Potomac States as throughout the country, but for maximum value in
+relieving sedimentation they are going to need much wider and more
+intensive application.</p>
+
+<p>In modified form, they can be effective against newer and more
+concentrated sources of silt, while sometimes accomplishing other
+purposes as well. As we noted in discussing metropolitan pollution,
+urban land undergoing development can enormously benefit from good
+watershed planning. Preservation of critically erosive and flood-prone
+land in grass and forest, insistence on prompt re-vegetation of bared
+land and the use of such things as sediment detention basins by
+developers, the construction of small headwater reservoirs when they are
+needed to trap silt and reduce flooding&mdash;all these elements of watershed
+planning are effective not only against silt but against standard urban
+and suburban ugliness. The translation of rural techniques to city use
+cannot be literal, for both urban hydrology and urban land use are
+distinctive, and a good deal remains to be learned about making the
+techniques work better there. But their basic principles are obviously a
+main hope.</p>
+
+<p>Other modifications of them, if put into wide practice, can cut down on
+the heavy production of silt by strip mines in the upper Basin; these
+involve both the reclamation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57b" id="Page_57b">[Pg 57b]</a></span> abandoned mines and the use of more
+care in scraping new ones. And application of the same
+principles&mdash;protective cover and detention of runoff&mdash;to new highway and
+road construction, as well as to the reclamation of banks and shoulders
+on old secondary roads, has to be achieved.</p>
+
+<p>The silt already in the upper estuary, and likely to continue to be
+deposited there even after the best available controls may have been put
+into operation above, will need radical treatment. The tens of millions
+of tons already choking the metropolitan river, the stockpile of
+centuries, will have to be dredged out if the river is going to be as
+pleasant and useful at the capital as it ought to be, and so will the
+yearly additions that can inevitably be expected. This can be done if
+the money is available, though a considerable unsolved problem, under
+research at present, is where to put the silt after it has been taken
+out of the river, for appropriate fill sites are growing scarce.</p>
+
+<p>Turbidity in the sluggish upper estuary will continue to be a problem
+too, for the fine particles of silt that cause it are the least affected
+by standard land treatment and sediment control measures.
+Polyelectrolytes&mdash;chemicals which when applied in quite small amounts
+can coagulate such suspended silt and settle it out&mdash;offer some promise
+as tools against turbidity and are being tried out experimentally above
+one of the reservoirs on upper Rock Creek, with good results thus far.
+Very possibly they may prove to be useful for clearing up the estuary
+after it has been roiled by storm runoff, and for achieving some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57c" id="Page_57c">[Pg 57c]</a></span>
+control of murky waters around sand and gravel dredging operations.
+However, ironically, it has also been pointed out that until the excess
+of nutrients in the upper estuary is eliminated, such clearing of the
+water could very possibly cause a great increase in the already
+disastrous algae blooms, by allowing sunlight to penetrate to greater
+depths and foster more production of this undelightful greenery. Cleanup
+of pollution as complex as that evolved in the 20th century has to be
+across the board.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img057.jpg"  width="350" height="239" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Barring a general philosophical revolution on the part of the American
+people, the problem of junk and debris in our waters is likely to
+continue and even to increase as people and their consumption of the
+products of the economy maintain their geometric growth. Clean rivers in
+themselves might deter a good many people from cluttering them thus, and
+so might public education, stiff fines, and the provision of better
+municipal pickup and dumping facilities. But mainly getting rid of such
+detritus is probably going to be a matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58a" id="Page_58a">[Pg 58a]</a></span> of fairly continuous
+gathering and disposal. On navigable waters like those of the upper
+Potomac estuary, ingenious collection craft under the command of Army
+Engineers are in prospect; elsewhere the job is likely to be more
+old-fashioned and laborious.</p>
+
+<p>For certain remaining pollution problems, no definite full technological
+answers exist at present and the main hope must be to alleviate them as
+much as possible while pressing a search for long-run answers. Some are
+relatively restricted in their effects in the Potomac Basin so far,
+though they have some drastic local effects and some long-run
+implications. Certain industrial wastes not amenable to any presently
+known form of treatment, such as tannery discharges at Petersburg, West
+Virginia, and Williamsport, Maryland, are one example. So are the
+noxious exudations of raw sewage and garbage from ships and pleasure
+craft. Marinas themselves and the boats docked there can and must be
+connected to waste collection systems. Laws can and should prohibit
+discharges from watercraft in harbors and rivers. But until better means
+of on-board waste treatment or retention than exist at present are
+evolved and made mandatory, the multitudes of boats with standard toilet
+facilities are going to keep on causing trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Other sources of trouble without clear-cut present solutions are big
+ones. Surface runoff from both cities and rural areas, as we have seen,
+causes much pollution. In the country, soil conservation measures can
+slow it somewhat and strain out some pollutants, and augmentation of
+streams' flow can en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58b" id="Page_58b">[Pg 58b]</a></span>hance their capacity to oxidize the wastes. But
+neither of these seem likely to do much to ease the longrun buildup and
+diffusion of persistent pollutants like pesticides, or to avert the
+possibility of disastrous spills. Public education and wiser restrictive
+legislation may help, but the only real hope in terms of these poisons
+appears to be that more selective and less indestructible substitutes
+will be found, and all promising means of biological pest control
+explored. Continuing programs are focused on the problem, but it
+continues to be serious.</p>
+
+<p>Pollutive runoff from urban areas merges with the whole question of
+urban sewer systems, for most of it gets to the river through storm
+sewers. We have seen that the old-style combined sewers of the District
+of Columbia and Alexandria cause gross pollution when storms force open
+their overflow gates, and we have seen too why the approach to this
+problem that formerly prevailed&mdash;the arduous, hugely expensive digging
+up of sewers and their replacement with dual pipes to carry storm runoff
+and sewage separately&mdash;is no longer considered satisfactory. For the
+more modern dual systems also contribute much trouble through the filthy
+rainwater that pours out into streams from the storm system and through
+the accidental or illegal channeling of sanitary wastes into storm
+sewers.</p>
+
+<p>A wholly satisfactory answer would allow runoff water as well as all
+sanitary wastes to be held for full treatment at a standard plant. But
+when we consider that at the Washington metropolis the dirty local
+runoff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58c" id="Page_58c">[Pg 58c]</a></span> from a single storm may amount to billions of gallons, the
+question of where to hold it grows a bit complex, and is leading toward
+experimentation with such ideas as vast subterranean networks of tunnels
+for storage. Partial answers might come from subjecting storm and mixed
+flows to different and lesser kinds of treatment by micro-screens at
+sewer outfalls, detention and settling tanks, and filtration beds. These
+possibilities and others need much investigation and testing.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the multitude of nasty mysterious dribbles that help to
+degrade Rock Creek and can undoubtedly be found in even more profusion
+along every other metropolitan watercourse. Such of them as issue from
+storm sewers will be eliminated when a solution turns up for the problem
+of runoff water. The others, and they are numerous, will not. Even if
+the bureaucratic and political tangles that help to perpetuate
+them&mdash;which will be mentioned again&mdash;are dealt with, the sheer
+mathematics of possibility in a great city, plus the frequent difficulty
+of fixing responsibility, make the overall problem of these
+miscellaneous leaks and dribbles a very tough one, not likely to be
+resolved with the wave of anyone's hand. Except in visible and
+well-defended watercourses like Rock Creek, they will probably persist
+for a long while, even though in reduced quantities, together with some
+storm runoff and some periodic discharge from combined sewers, not a
+major component in estuarial pollution but a stubborn one.</p>
+
+<p>A final great contaminant against which weapons are meager is acid mine
+drainage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59a" id="Page_59a">[Pg 59a]</a></span> Its sources along the North Branch are numerous, as we have
+seen. They have been and are being minutely studied, but present
+technology does not furnish any clear and effective means of dealing
+with each source individually and returning the upper river and its
+branches to health, and such source rectification would be the only
+really adequate answer.</p>
+
+<p>Surface strip mines are deservedly notorious for the destruction of the
+rugged green landscapes that are one of Appalachia's greatest resources.
+Because of the public disgust they arouse, they have had a lot of
+attention, and methods for conducting this sort of mining less brutally
+and for reclaiming old minesites have been worked out. These methods
+have notable effect on silt and acid production. Because State laws to
+regulate strip mining have been generally scarce and weak, however, and
+because the reclamation of old mines is very expensive, such action is
+mainly more honored in the breach than in the observance.</p>
+
+<p>However, strip mines produce only a tenth to a quarter of acid mine
+pollution, and if they were all under control the problem would still be
+huge. The active or abandoned underground mines that give out the great
+bulk of the acid and other pollutive substances have so far almost
+totally resisted satisfactory management, despite tremendous efforts.
+Among techniques that have been tried are neutralization with limestone
+and other materials, air sealing to cut down on the oxidation that helps
+form the acid, sealing of mine openings to prevent outflow, mining
+methods designed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59b" id="Page_59b">[Pg 59b]</a></span> to prevent exposure of sulfuritic materials, and
+chemical inhibition of acid generation. Regardless of the hope that some
+have aroused, none has worked well and economically, and the search is
+hindered by a continuing lack of data and scientific knowledge
+concerning the complex physical and chemical processes by which the
+pollutants are formed.</p>
+
+<p>A number of agencies are researching this whole problem, among them the
+Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, the Geological Survey,
+the Bureau of Mines, the Soil Conservation Service, INCOPOT, and some
+State government bodies. Sooner or later an answer or a set of answers
+must come out of these efforts. But nothing presently conduces to a
+belief that the acid problem on the North Branch or anywhere else is
+going to find quick and dramatic alleviation at its sources.</p>
+
+<p>Dilution of this acid pollution helps to minimize its effects, not
+actually neutralizing them but reducing their severity in periods of low
+river flow. It can be accomplished by impounding mine drainage for
+release only during periods of high flow, though where sources are many
+as on the North Branch this would be difficult. Or fresh water can be
+held in bulk storage for release during low flow. In helping acid
+conditions along the lower North Branch, therefore, the authorized
+Bloomington reservoir may play a part, though it will do nothing for the
+upper reaches of the river and the reservoir water itself will be acidic
+if nothing is done to neutralize it. Under INCOPOT auspices, a promising
+inquiry is being conducted into the possibility of instream acid removal
+above the reservoir,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59c" id="Page_59c">[Pg 59c]</a></span> using an energy process possibly powered by
+electricity generated at the dam. If it works out as well as seems
+probable, the benefits can be huge.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img059.jpg"  width="350" height="283" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>There is little point, of course, in getting the acid out of the lower
+North Branch unless the other pollution in that area is dealt with too.
+This compounded trouble, involving a considerable number of towns and
+industries with insufficient waste treatment or none at all, is made to
+order for a pilot application of the regional or sub-basin type of waste
+management authority mentioned earlier in this chapter. Not only is the
+problem on the North Branch bad enough to warrant special overall
+measures, but the area's topography is well suited to collection of
+wastes and their conveyance to first-rate centralized treatment plants.
+This approach too is being studied out by INCOPOT, not only for the
+North Branch but for other well-adapted problem watersheds such as
+Antietam Creek. Like similar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60a" id="Page_60a">[Pg 60a]</a></span> systems in Germany that have long been
+admired, it would pool the resources of all sub-basin waste producers,
+get appropriate government funding, and subject all the pollution of a
+given drainage area to intensive and comprehensive correction.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Machinery</h3>
+
+<p>Though its spread-out economic benefits are almost incalculably great,
+good waste management unfortunately is seldom a money-making affair for
+those who sponsor it. Therefore, it is not usually so much the concern
+of private enterprise as of citizens in general and the various levels
+of government that look after the citizens' desires and wellbeing. It
+depends on laws to back it up, and on institutions and programs
+established by law. These are the only machinery by which it can be
+adequately stimulated, unless we assume that all waste producers are
+altruistic to a point of self-sacrifice, an assumption which history
+does not encourage.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to thoroughly justified public anxiety over the state of American
+waters, there is presently on hand the best assortment of such legal
+machinery that has ever existed, much of it so new as to be mainly
+untested. The Key Federal item is the Water Quality Act of 1965, which
+established the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and set
+into motion a national program to clean up interstate and tidal waters.
+In the program the States were allotted primary responsibility for
+setting standards of cleanliness and were given until June 30, 1967, to
+work them out and submit them to the Federal Water Pollution Control
+Administration for review.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60b" id="Page_60b">[Pg 60b]</a></span> Later came the Clean Waters Restoration Act
+of 1966, which authorized funds for F.W.P.C.A. construction grants to
+help communities build waste treatment facilities. Programs under other
+government agencies are also aimed at helping towns and cities deal with
+wastes.</p>
+
+<p>In May of 1966 the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was
+transferred from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the
+Department of the Interior, with a good many changes in personnel. A
+valuable move toward the longrun unity of Federal environmental study
+and action, this change has meant that the agency's shakedown period in
+its new surroundings has come during the latter part of our Potomac
+work, and that some large questions of policy and procedure are only now
+being answered. Furthermore, the fact that our study has coincided with
+the inevitably lengthy shaping of the State standards, and with their
+review and their coordination on specific interstate streams like the
+Potomac and its main tributaries, has somewhat blurred our view of this
+most significant legal machinery of all. For it is through these
+standards and their enforcement that the fundamental action toward a
+clean Potomac will be taken. The emphasis in formulating them and
+reviewing them has been on vast improvement, not on a rationalization of
+existing conditions, and behind them there is going to be legal muscle
+for enforcement.</p>
+
+<p>Erosion and sedimentation, particularly from urban and industrial
+sources, will be of concern in these State programs, and in fact some
+Basin States already have powers for use against them that have never
+been brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60c" id="Page_60c">[Pg 60c]</a></span> fully to bear, but undoubtedly will be with the new
+impetus. At the Federal level, going programs of the Department of
+Agriculture&mdash;primarily under the Soil Conservation Service but also
+involving the Forest Service&mdash;are the best machinery we have. Their
+techniques of soil protection and runoff detention have been described
+earlier, and are often applied in a coordinated way to whole small
+watersheds. Mainly they are put into practice through the voluntary
+cooperation of landowners, watershed associations, and local or State
+governments, stimulated by Federal technical assistance and
+cost-sharing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was noted earlier that these techniques can also be effective against
+careless urban land shaping and other new concentrated sources of silt
+such as strip mines. But in terms of legal machinery, these areas
+present problems, chief among which is the matter of incentive on the
+part of those who must cooperate if the programs are to work. In an
+agricultural watershed, the effect of soil conservation practices and
+flood control measures on the health and productivity of the land is
+sharply evident to rural landowners and others in the neighborhood, who
+all benefit from it and usually are eager to cooperate. But strip mine
+operators and urban developers and road contractors and such folk seldom
+have to live personally with the erosion and mud and trouble that may
+result from the way they move earth and change the landscape. To them,
+sediment control and respect for the way watersheds work, even with
+cost-sharing, is likely to loom as simply an extra expense.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances, only stiff con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61a" id="Page_61a">[Pg 61a]</a></span>trols are going to make
+watershed programs and other devices work right. Local sediment
+ordinances are acutely needed, but are generally lacking or inadequate
+or poorly enforced, perhaps mainly because silt, in common with other
+pollutants, has some of its worst effects at points far removed from
+where it originates and local governments prefer not to stir up local
+developers and mine operators. It is a facet of what we called earlier
+the philosophical source of pollution.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img061.jpg"><img src="images/img061-tb.jpg" alt="Small Watershed Projects Boost Economy of Communities" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<h4>Small Watershed Projects Boost Economy of Communities</h4>
+
+<p>This being so, the good of the Basin and the Potomac as a whole is going
+to require the exercise of State and interstate and Federal power
+against silt as well as against other pollution, especially around
+populated areas, until such time as the populated areas have developed
+the political maturity to take firm hold of their responsibilities in
+such matters. Laws and ordinances of themselves solve nothing. For
+example, many of the pollutive dribbles along Rock Creek and other
+metropolitan watercourses are based in clearly illegal practices and
+hence slovenly inspection and enforcement of existing regulations.
+Others occur because of defects in the sewer system that could and
+should be found and repaired. A shortage of manpower is one reason for
+such trouble, but poor philosophy is a bigger one.</p>
+
+<p>States, interstate bodies, and municipalities, however, can exert no
+control over an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61b" id="Page_61b">[Pg 61b]</a></span>other and rather shameful set of pollution sources noted
+earlier in this chapter. These are the delinquent Federal installations
+in the Basin, generally but not always in the neighborhood of the
+capital, that are contributing to the river's problem. Recent publicity,
+much of it deriving from aspects of this present study, has been
+bringing about some improvement, as has President Johnson's Executive
+Order 11288, which directed that Federal facilities set the best example
+in the matter of pollution control. But the order has obviously not been
+obeyed with uniform enthusiasm in all quarters, defective philosophy and
+short waste-disposal budgets being no exclusive property of local
+governments. Sometimes this is because limited funds force agencies to
+put waste treatment far down on their list for spending, and little is
+left over for it. Whatever the reason in individual cases, a
+continuation of persuasion and enforcement by the F.W.P.C.A. within the
+Federal establishment is going to be essential, and Federal
+installations ought to be required at least to equal or excel the
+quality of treatment provided by other waste producers on the same
+streams or bodies of water. Furthermore, all the diverse pollutive
+activities dependent on Federal aid and cost-sharing&mdash;such as road
+construction, for instance&mdash;ought to be brought under similar controls.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Certain major changes in public policy are needed if different
+techniques of water quality improvement are to be combined in such a way
+as to give the most economical, appropriate, and effective protection to
+specific streams or river systems. The most important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62a" id="Page_62a">[Pg 62a]</a></span> of these needed
+changes concerns the role of flow augmentation as a tool, for inclusion
+of water quality storage capacity in Federal reservoirs is a fairly new
+and uncertain practice, and some rather deep pitfalls are becoming
+evident.</p>
+
+<p>One pitfall has to do with Federal Cost-sharing and the way it affects
+the freedom of choice of the States and localities on which the primary
+responsibility for eliminating pollution must rest. In building
+treatment plants to lessen the load of wastes discharged to streams,
+they can presently obtain Federal grants of up to 55% of the facilities'
+total cost. But if storage capacity for water quality&mdash;i.e., for flow
+augmentation&mdash;is provided in a Federal reservoir upstream, prevailing
+Federal policy based in a 1961 amendment to the Federal Water Pollution
+Control Act has been requiring them to pay nothing at all for it, though
+before such storage is authorized they must certify that an adequate
+standard of conventional treatment will be maintained downstream.
+Obviously, if this continues to be so, when the inevitable choice comes
+between improving on that adequate standard by investing in better
+treatment, either at the beginning or later, and seeking river dilution
+from a reservoir, they will be forced by sheer economics toward the
+latter, whether or not it is the right thing to do or in an overall
+sense the cheapest.</p>
+
+<p>Like other aspects of flow augmentation already discussed, this
+situation is analogous to that of flood control, where communities have
+to pay a good part of the cost of local protection works or of
+controlling flood plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62b" id="Page_62b">[Pg 62b]</a></span> development, but can get reservoir protection
+free. In both cases, local authorities are stimulated toward choices
+that are not necessarily the right ones, taxpayers in general are forced
+to bear the weight of essentially local responsibilities, and the public
+may forever lose scenic or recreational amenities of great worth. The
+Department of the Interior, with a central interest in the problem, is
+taking the lead in an attempt to arrive at a better flow-augmentation
+policy that will permit right choices, put costs where they belong, and
+make certain that at the local level where pollution takes place there
+is sharp incentive to do something about it.</p>
+
+<p>The other main difficulty has to do with the fact that river water has
+many uses, which augmentation may enhance or even stimulate. Water
+released from above during dry periods to increase and steady the
+river's flow and to help it handle wastes may also help navigation and
+hydroelectric power generation downstream, though neither of these is
+any longer a main factor in the flowing Potomac. Augmentation of flow
+can make the river prettier and more useful for recreation, and it can
+have stout beneficial effects on fish and wildlife. And under present
+conditions it constitutes a large increase in water of improved quality
+for free use by irrigators and industries and municipalities, which may
+so burgeon as a result that increased water consumption and waste
+production will cancel out the water quality effects of the reservoir
+releases in short order.</p>
+
+<p>The need here, of course, is for some agency that can solidly guarantee
+that water re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62c" id="Page_62c">[Pg 62c]</a></span>leased for quality control will be allowed to achieve that
+purpose and not be diverted to other uses that conflict with it. Where a
+river runs within a single State, and the State's constitution permits,
+the State may be able to adjust its powers of control and provide the
+guarantee. But where more than one State is involved, as on all the main
+rivers of the Potomac Basin, a good forceful river basin agency is
+clearly needed to coordinate water supply with water demand, and to
+ensure that benefits and cost responsibilities of any necessary
+reservoirs are meted out where they belong.</p>
+
+<p>In terms of legal and institutional machinery, in fact, such a river
+basin agency is the most basic and urgent unfulfilled need along the
+Potomac, for the coordination and continuing supervision of water
+management in all its phases&mdash;assurance of supply, flood protection,
+quality improvement, recreation&mdash;in the vast physical unit of land
+drained by the river. And because land's condition is so often
+influential on the quality and utility of water, the agency's concern
+and authority must encompass some fundamental matters of land use as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>No clearer illustration of the potential of such a body could be found
+than the achievements of the present Interstate Committee on the Potomac
+River Basin&mdash;INCOPOT&mdash;during the quarter century of its existence.
+Minimally financed and staffed, granted only advisory powers, toward the
+cure of a vast and growing sickness, it has managed in many ways to hold
+the line and even to improve things on the Potomac in a time when
+condi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>tions on many American rivers were growing drastically worse and
+worse. Much credit accrues to some of the Basin States as well, but
+without the continuing focus and hard work of the INCOPOT people,
+dedicated to Basin thinking, it is doubtful that State efforts would
+have added up to much help for the Potomac as a whole. Our present
+strong hope of being able to clean up the river and its tributaries and
+to make them what they ought to be is perhaps mainly due to this
+organization's efforts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img063.jpg"  width="500" height="496" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>The scope of the job to be done is becoming clear. A far-reaching and
+well-financed Federal pollution control program is getting under way,
+even if some elements of policy and procedure need refinement and a
+great deal of research toward the best answers to certain technical
+problems remains to be done. The four Potomac Basin States and the
+District of Columbia are poised for action at the level where it will
+count the most, with new water quality standards to guide them and
+Federal money and technical assistance for fuel. At the local level,
+incentive to do things right has never been stronger than at present,
+and it ought to grow still stronger as the sticks and carrots of the
+Federal and State programs come into use and pressure from citizens
+disgusted with dirty water builds up.</p>
+
+<p>Things are moving. The chances are that they will move quite fast during
+the next few years, as new technology and new understandings ease the
+way toward solution of stubborn pollution problems. They are going to
+have to move fast, for threats are proliferating fast as well. And if
+things are going to move not only fast but right in the Potomac Basin,
+they are going to need the guidance of a continuing and authoritative
+body that concerns itself with them specifically like INCOPOT, focused
+on Basin matters and dedicated to their study, but with a wider realm of
+interest and stronger powers of coordination and enforcement to make
+certain that the things that are done are the right things, in the right
+order and the right places for the whole good of the Basin and the
+river.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img065.jpg"  width="392" height="281" alt="Chapter header" title="" /></div>
+
+<h2><a name="IV_A_GOOD_PLACE_TO_BE" id="IV_A_GOOD_PLACE_TO_BE"></a>IV. A GOOD PLACE TO BE</h2>
+
+<p>Stream water comes from the surface of the land or out of its porous
+underlayers, then flows seaward through its creases and folds, affecting
+the land and the land's creatures along the way and being affected by
+them. Thus, as we have already noted in more than one way, the
+management of land and the management of water are closely intertwined,
+from the way human use of a flood plain may demand structural
+interference with a river's old habits, to the way erosive farming in
+some West Virginia valley may help to make it harder to navigate Swedish
+newsprint into Alexandria by ship.</p>
+
+<p>In a like way, "practical" and "esthetic" considerations as to how both
+land and water are treated are not easily disentangled from each other.
+How much of the rising tide of public concern over American rivers and
+lakes, for instance, comes from an awareness of what dirtied water costs
+the economy, and how much is rooted in simple disgust over a monstrous
+ugliness that should not be? Gullied and abandoned land grown up to
+scrub and weeds is not only useless as it stands but also a sadness on
+the landscape, a reminder of how far from the naive, often sentimental,
+but lastingly powerful 18th century ideal of oneness with nature men
+have wandered in their progress. A belching factory in the wrong place
+can perform such multiple functions as blighting a countryside,
+polluting a stream, lowering subdivision property values, and increasing
+the local rate of emphysema.</p>
+
+<p>Only lately has it begun to grow clear that in the traditional concern
+with market exploitation of resources, moderns have not even evolved a
+language or a scale to evaluate the loss to them inherent in a wrecked
+landscape, a spoiled stream, and such things, or the positive worth of
+an unspoiled section of countryside. But it is becoming obvious enough
+that objections to environmental destruction are not necessarily
+sentimental,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66a" id="Page_66a">[Pg 66a]</a></span> naive, or impractical. A bit late, realization is growing
+that the world has a certain longstanding wholeness with which people
+interfere massively at their own peril. Landscape in the widest
+sense&mdash;the sense of the integrity of a place to look at, to be in, to
+use and to know and to know about&mdash;matters to human beings, and the
+terms in which it matters involve incentive, fulfillment, and sanity.
+And while human beings are soaking in this fact, the American landscape
+is being rapidly gutted by human activity.</p>
+
+<p>A stately avenue rots to slums before everyone's eyes. A pastoral valley
+fills with houses gable on gable in six months' time; its stream runs
+red with mud, floods wildly out of banks with every heavy shower,
+shrinks to a foul dribble in time of drought, and finally is concreted
+over into a storm sewer to subdue it and get it out of sight. The stone
+cottage that a town's founder built with his own hands two hundred years
+ago gets in the path of a new highway and is pushed down, and its rubble
+used for fill beneath an exit ramp. What was once, when someone was
+fifteen, a secret clearing in the woods beyond a city's edge, may hold a
+hamburger stand or several dozen stacked car bodies when he comes back
+to seek it out at the age of twenty. A secluded section of estuarial
+shoreline, where eagles nest and Colonial patriarchs once brooded over
+the rights of man and a few families now make a living from oysters and
+crabs, is sold off to a development corporation headquartered in Chicago
+or Houston or somewhere, which, in accordance with certain current
+rights of man, divides it into 25-foot vacation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66b" id="Page_66b">[Pg 66b]</a></span> lots with 250-gallon
+septic tanks, and within four years anyone who wades out of his boat
+there stirs up blue clouds of mellow sludge, and where did the oysters
+and the eagles go? We Americans are inevitably progress-minded,
+practically all of us, but we are beginning to wonder if progress needs
+to cost so much.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img066.jpg"  width="500" height="267" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>The Potomac landscape matters particularly, for certain reasons. One is
+that we hope to make a model of it, commencing here processes of
+preservation and restoration to show the rest of the country that modern
+ways of being need not eat up everything whole and green and old and
+meaningful and right. Another&mdash;not really separate, for it justifies
+that model status&mdash;is that the Basin's landscape, not only around the
+capital but far down the estuary and up along the flowing main river and
+its tributaries, is both physically and spiritually a national
+landscape, filled with national memories and meanings.</p>
+
+<p>In the diverse kinds of country it holds and the ways of life they have
+fostered&mdash;Tidewater, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Great Valley, and rugged
+Appalachia&mdash;it sums up much of the old Eastern, pre-Revolutionary
+America that people left behind when they shoved off toward the Ohio and
+the cotton South and the plains and the Rockies and the Pacific. A
+reasonably conscious Oregonian or Iowan or Texan seeing it for the first
+time knows that a part of what he is was sculptured there. Its map is
+textured with a richness of names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67a" id="Page_67a">[Pg 67a]</a></span> that call up remembrance of what
+Americans used to be like and what they did, and how all of that led
+toward their becoming what they are today. Names of Indian
+tribes&mdash;Seneca, Piscataway, Dogue, Tuscarora, Anacostia&mdash;and Indian
+objects and activities by the hundreds. Names tied to men and events
+that carved history&mdash;old Saint Mary's where Calvert's Catholics came,
+Stratford of the Lees, Wakefield and Mount Vernon of the Washingtons,
+Braddock Heights, the Shenandoah, Harpers Ferry where John Brown lit a
+fuse, Manassas and Antietam and Gettysburg, and a multitude of others.</p>
+
+<p>As time goes in the United States, the Potomac Basin has been populated
+by our restless people for a long while, and very little of it has not
+been affected as a result&mdash;the deep exhaustion of the Tidewater when the
+tobacco bonanza ran out, the lumbering off of the mountains, the grubby
+continuing reign of coal along the North Branch, and now the explosive
+growth of the Washington metropolis and the other centers of industry
+and people. But still the Basin in general is not like Long Island,
+swarmed upon by daily and weekly waves of millions, hard put to save
+even traces of the natural magnificence it once had. It is not like much
+of Southern California, packaged and delivered over whole to automobiles
+instead of to human beings. It is nine million acres or so of still
+mainly rural and agricultural, Eastern, temperate, humid North America
+with a resident population of only about 3.5 million people, some
+two-thirds of whom live in a relatively few square miles around
+Washington. It has had and still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67b" id="Page_67b">[Pg 67b]</a></span> has many ardent protectors, ranging
+from small-town ladies' garden clubs to Presidents.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of these grateful facts, it has been able to recover from
+most of the damage done in the past, and much of what it has always been
+and always possessed still exists. There is enough natural harmony
+combined with diversity, enough forward human movement combined with a
+sense of what has gone before, to make the Basin's residents and those
+who visit glad to be alive in such a world, insofar as the times, their
+temperaments, their bank accounts, and their view of the human dilemma
+may permit. In general it is still a beautiful and satisfying piece of
+country, a good place to be.</p>
+
+<p>But not all parts of it, and not for everyone, and most certainly not
+with any guarantee that it is going to stay a good place to be of its
+own accord, without any help. It is no privileged wonderland removed
+from the dissonance and change of a crowded technological age.</p>
+
+
+<h3>The Basin's amenities</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img067a.jpg"  width="350" height="227" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>Of all the region's pleasant features, none exceeds the river system
+itself, for it ties the others together and shares and adds to their
+meanings. We have glanced at some of its "practical" aspects in
+preceding chapters, though even there intangibles came into
+consideration. It is the river's power to evoke human response and its
+relationship to the wholeness of the Basin landscape that most
+powerfully make it worth cleaning up, and also impose on planners a duty
+to make certain that their proposals for making it serve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67c" id="Page_67c">[Pg 67c]</a></span> human ends are
+apt and needful ones.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img067b.jpg"  width="350" height="226" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>A river system draining the basin it has carved out over geological eons
+of time is one of the more meaningful units in nature, but within it
+there may be great variety. The Potomac starts as a multitude of diverse
+trickles and oozes in the high green places of Appalachia, where spruce
+forests and berry meadows and bogs know the tread of bear and deer,
+beaver and bobcat, hunter and hiker and logger. The clear cold
+streamlets formed there join together in their downward rush and form
+strong whitewater creeks and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68a" id="Page_68a">[Pg 68a]</a></span> rivers slicing down through canyons and
+out into the troughs of the strikingly corrugated Ridge and Valley
+Province, growing ever larger by the process of union and addition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img068.jpg"  width="400" height="293" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>The two main rivers formed thus are the North Branch, which collects a
+plenitude of troubles in its progress as we have seen, and the South
+Branch, which is treated more gently by the farmers and small townsmen
+who live along it, has no developed coal resources, and is a delightful
+fishing stream in a fine rural valley. Coming together at Old Town where
+Thomas Cresap took over a Shawnee site and set up a fortified
+headquarters in the upper Basin's legendary days, these two form the
+main stem of the river, which works across the Ridge and Valley
+washboard by intricate slicings and loopings that shape great bends
+among the forested hills. Deer and turkey outnumber people in most
+places there, and always alongside the river or not far away lie the
+towpath and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68b" id="Page_68b">[Pg 68b]</a></span> dry channel and the occasional stone locks and
+aqueducts of the old C. &amp; O. Canal. Despite railroad competition and
+floods and all the other troubles, its barge traffic in coal and flour
+and whiskey and iron and limestone and other things was the focus of a
+whole roistering way of life from Washington to Cumberland in the 19th
+and early 20th centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Collecting the water of pristine mountain tributaries like the Cacapon
+and growing as it goes, cleansing itself of the North Branch's load of
+trouble, the river finds its way at last out of the washboard and
+meanders among silver maples and great sycamores across the productive
+populated expanse of the Great Valley that runs athwart the whole Basin
+from north to south. The Potomac is in thickly historic country now as
+it flows under the contemplative eyes of fishermen and past old villages
+and the relics of generations of human activity going back before
+written records, for here and there the funnel shapes of stone Indian
+fishing weirs can still be seen at shallow places and the durable
+fragments of their way of life can be scratched up along high shores. Of
+many Civil War clashes in the valley, Antietam was the most crucial; the
+Potomac shaped Lee's strategy there, and still ripples across fords by
+which his troops came to that violent place and afterward escaped it.</p>
+
+<p>At Harpers Ferry on the Valley's eastern edge, the river is reinforced
+by the waters of its greatest tributary, the Shenandoah, rolling north
+out of the limestone country that fed the gray armies till Sheridan put
+a stop to that. Then it rams through the high wall of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68c" id="Page_68c">[Pg 68c]</a></span> the Blue Ridge
+and out of the Valley into the Piedmont, and still gathering strength
+from tributaries like the Monocacy, dotted with big islands and
+frequented by waterfowl and good fish, moves powerfully downcountry past
+further mists and layers of history to Great Falls and the rushing,
+crashing descent through the gorge to tidewater at the capital.</p>
+
+<p>From there down it is, as we have seen, a different thing, an arm of the
+sea and a sluggish extension of the river, shading from fresh to salt,
+called a river still but neither river nor sea in its ways, affected
+rhythmically and obscurely by both of them and subject to its own
+complex laws as well. In Indian and Colonial times this estuary was the
+part of the river that counted most for men, because of the bounty that
+came from its waters, the fitness of its shores for farming, and its
+navigability for boats and ships in a region where land travel was
+laborious and whose colonists depended on commerce with a European
+homeland. Its shores and those of the big tributary embayments&mdash;"drowned
+rivers," they have been called&mdash;are thickly sprinkled with traces and
+remembrances of three and a half centuries' people and events. Mount
+Vernon, old Fort Washington, Gunston Hall on Mason Neck where quiet
+George Mason lived and thought ... Aquia Creek where George Brent took
+his Piscataway bride to live apart from the Marylanders, Potomac Creek
+where John Smith found the river's namesakes living and another wily
+captain later tricked Pocahontas into captivity, Port Tobacco and
+Nanjemoy with memories of brokenlegged Booth, Chotank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69a" id="Page_69a">[Pg 69a]</a></span> that gave its
+name to a whole forgotten way of life, Nomini of the Carters, the
+Machodocs and the Wicomico and the Saint Mary's and the historic
+rest.... Some of the big creeks are silted in now with mud washed down
+off the land in the old days, but in the flatter country toward the Bay
+most of the larger ones are still pretty and useful harbors for pleasure
+boats and for the fleets of varied commercial craft that go out to
+gather the estuary's crabs, oysters, clams, perch, striped bass, shad,
+and other edible creatures, including even eels for the European market.
+From hillsides, mellow mansions look down on the water that used to be
+their highway to the outside world, some crumbling, others proudly
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p>Aquatic life in the upper freshwater stretches has been somewhat
+diminished and changed by pollution and silt, by dredging and filling,
+and by other activity. Runs of spawning shad and herring and perch still
+arrive there in spring, fortunately a season when heavy river flow keeps
+oxygen levels high. Along the whole estuary there is an abundance of
+air-breathing creatures, most noticeably birds, that reflect the wealth
+in its waters. They are strikingly numerous in the marshes that occur
+here and there next to the open river but more commonly up the
+tributaries, perhaps the richest biological areas in the whole river.
+Herons and egrets, ducks and geese, coots and grebes, hawks and ospreys
+and even a few bald eagles&mdash;a stirring sight so near to Megalopolis&mdash;are
+among the larger birds that congregate to live directly or indirectly
+off the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69b" id="Page_69b">[Pg 69b]</a></span> life in the water, dependent on it.</p>
+
+<p>Productive, healthy in its lower reaches even if under the shadow of
+change, its fishery intelligently and effectively regulated after the
+destructive and bitter "oyster wars" that persisted up into the 1950's,
+the Potomac estuary offers over 230,000 acres of water and some 750
+miles of shoreline for human use and enjoyment and for the sustenance of
+a complex and valuable segment of the natural world. It is a fitting
+culmination of the river system that feeds down into it.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Basin's remaining scenic and natural and historic wealth, nearly
+all of it associated to some degree with a part of the river system,
+much has stayed intact or has come back to good condition, accidentally
+or by someone's forethought. Well over a million acres are in public
+ownership of some kind, about a fifth of this being dedicated primarily
+to scenic preservation and public enjoyment as parks and recreation
+areas. These range from the great recently authorized Spruce Knob-Seneca
+Rocks National Recreation Area in the Basin's western highlands and the
+spectacular narrow Shenandoah National Park along the Blue Ridge, to
+local and county parks of smaller size and special function. In and
+around metropolitan Washington, good sense and good will on the part of
+many people in years past has resulted in a fine assortment of parks in
+an area where they are most needed and used, though with urban expansion
+more are needed all the time.</p>
+
+<p>They are also harder to come by all the time. A recent and instructive
+example of this growing difficulty in creating public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69c" id="Page_69c">[Pg 69c]</a></span> areas occurred at
+Mason Neck, a richly scenic and natural bootshaped peninsula projecting
+into the estuary not far below Mount Vernon, where George Mason's old
+home and a part of his estate are immaculately preserved by the National
+Society of the Colonial Dames of America and the Commonwealth of
+Virginia. The Neck has twelve miles of riverfront and 6500 acres of
+undeveloped land only eighteen miles from the center of Washington, and
+though the river here is part of the eutrophic upper estuary, often
+thick with algae in summer, the place is a wildlife paradise, with
+forests of mature and stately trees and a Great Marsh of around 1000
+acres. Incredibly, bald eagles still roost and even nest there, a fact
+which provided the initial spark for heavy public opposition to recent
+proposals for residential development of the Neck.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img069.jpg"  width="400" height="321" alt="Egret" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Supported by the Potomac Task Force whenever possible, the defenders of
+the penin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70a" id="Page_70a">[Pg 70a]</a></span>sula organized as the Conservation Committee for Mason Neck
+and fought its cause almost inch by inch, with many setbacks and much
+expense of time and energy and money, through referendum elections and
+political hanky-panky and high levels of government. They won;
+development was forestalled and the nearly certain prospect is for a
+large composite public holding for park and wildlife refuge use, made up
+of Federal, state, and regional acquisitions.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img070.jpg"  width="400" height="370" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>In many parts of the Basin, old human excesses that in their time were
+not at all beneficial or protective have contributed paradoxically to
+the present good condition of the landscape. After boom had lifted her
+skirts and moved on elsewhere from the weary Tidewater, for instance,
+the region's long subsequent drowse on the fringes of action and history
+meant that it escaped many modern troubles, at least until recently. Not
+very long ago, many parts of it were more easily reached by slow boat
+than by car or train.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70b" id="Page_70b">[Pg 70b]</a></span> Partly as a result, big tracts of military land
+there acquired mainly when acreage was cheap&mdash;57,000 acres around the
+Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, are one example&mdash;form a
+valuable public asset for potential future use. And throughout Tidewater
+here and there, old estates in private hands guard their woods and
+fields and shores against increasing development, though more and more
+each year crumple before pressure and the temptation of speculators' and
+developers' cash.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly, after the mountains of the upper parts of the Basin were
+logged bare and in many places burned off in the late 19th and early
+20th centuries&mdash;"Cut out and get out" was the slogan&mdash;their stripped and
+eroded state and their effect on the streams made it possible, and
+essential, for the Federal and state governments to buy up wide areas
+there as public forest land in the 1930's and to nurse them back to
+beauty and usefulness. The Shenandoah National Park dates from that same
+time, as do some state parks in the mountain regions. Some private
+owners of forest land in that area, though not enough, have taken their
+cue from the government agencies and seek a safe sustained yield of
+timber and pulpwood rather than a quick cash-in.</p>
+
+<p>In many rural reaches of the Basin, for that matter, the kind of use
+private ownership gives the land is still an enhancement of the
+landscape rather than a smear on it. The beauty of farm land and
+pastures and old structures is as much a part of this country's heritage
+as is wilderness, for in its traditional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70c" id="Page_70c">[Pg 70c]</a></span> forms farming has shaped a
+kind of wholeness and beauty all its own, blending with nature and
+working with it. The limestone soils in the huge trough of the
+Shenandoah Valley, for example, have been tilled and grazed during about
+two and a half centuries' occupation by white men. But for the most part
+agriculture there has been devoted to continuing productivity rather
+than to exploitation, and the rolling terrain, intersected by stream
+valleys and wooded ridges, has prevented much application of the massive
+techniques of fence-to-fence cultivation that prevail on the "factory
+farms" of the Midwest and West nowadays. The miles on miles of varied,
+carefully managed fields and pastures, with fat herds and handsome old
+stone houses and barns, nearly always against a backdrop of dark
+mountains and with a pleasant river or creek running at hand, among
+trees, have a potent storybook appeal that sticks in the memory of
+anyone who ever saw them.</p>
+
+<p>The long narrow valley down which the South Branch flows is similar on
+its scale, as are many other arable strips and patches of the upper
+Basin that remember Shawnee days and Civil War guerillas. Near
+Washington, farms are waging a losing rearguard action against
+speculation and sprawl, but in the Piedmont to the north and west of the
+city lie some of the most pleasant rural landscapes in the United
+States. Up the drainages of the Catoctin and the Monocacy north of the
+Potomac, these are still functional landscapes, used mainly for dairy
+farming. In Virginia they tend to be less so, for this is the hunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71a" id="Page_71a">[Pg 71a]</a></span>
+country, where cosmopolitan gentry raise purebred stock on curried
+pastures, ride to hounds in red coats on frosty mornings and by great
+expenditure of money not garnered from crops or cattle have tastefully
+restored and maintained whole neighborhoods of venerable estates, as
+well as some superb old towns like Waterford, in traditional dignified
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>As these people have grasped&mdash;and others like them scattered throughout
+the Basin&mdash;most of the pull of farming landscapes and old houses and
+towns is nostalgic, rooted in a sense of the past and of the way the
+look and feel of a stone fence or a portico or a boxwood hedge can fill
+out understanding of people who were there long long before. This is
+what has been called "the scenery of association," and it is more deeply
+ingrained in the Potomac country than in newer parts of the nation,
+where "scenery" is most likely to denote the aspect of wild and natural
+places. With a history going back deep into the 1600's and long
+occupation by Indians before that, the Basin in many places has
+archaeological layers of such meaning. It tugs powerfully at the
+imagination of anyone with a sense of human continuity, and is woven in
+with the natural framework of things, as for instance the grove of
+chestnut oaks in the Bloody Angle at Gettysburg is inextricable from an
+awareness of the mighty rebellion that reached that far and no farther.</p>
+
+<p>Most major historic sites and shrines in the Basin have received
+protection of one sort or another. The core portions of the great Civil
+War battlegrounds are owned and main<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71b" id="Page_71b">[Pg 71b]</a></span>tained by the National Park
+Service, as are Wakefield and Harpers Ferry and the C. &amp; O. Canal and
+other such places. States, municipalities, organizations, and
+individuals have saved many others from destruction and decay and
+sometimes have built them back to what they were&mdash;Mount Vernon,
+Stratford, Gunston Hall, Fort Frederick and one or two of the smaller
+bastions that George Washington helped to set up against the Indians in
+the western Basin, and scores of other mansions and cabins and patches
+of historic soil.</p>
+
+<p>There is still a wide sense of the past's weight among a population of
+whom many were born where they live and intend to die, and whose
+ancestors did so too. This sense is shared by many other people who move
+to the region, and in a few spots&mdash;mainly again in Virginia&mdash;it has led
+to a degree of protection for the appearance of whole towns or historic
+districts, as in Loudoun County with its admirable scenic regulations.
+Under the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, states are conducting
+surveys of such assets and studying means of encouraging their
+preservation. But funds are still short even for the Federal part of the
+program, and thus only individuals or accidents are still partially
+guarding some fine old places&mdash;Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for
+instance, or in Maryland the towns of Sharpsburg, Middletown, and
+Burkittsville&mdash;against adornment with chrome and neon and fake-stone
+veneer. Even in these places, some changes for the worse are taking
+place.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Troubles and threats</h3>
+
+<p>All these things, then, are a part of what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71c" id="Page_71c">[Pg 71c]</a></span> the Potomac Basin has to
+offer in the way of environmental blessings. They form an endowment of
+national value and importance, and a detailed examination of them would
+take up more space than we can give them here, though some will come in
+for more discussion later in this report and others are examined in the
+corollary report of the Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them are in trouble now, and nearly all are faced with trouble
+as bad or worse if the forces of change are allowed to move as blindly
+and hoggishly forward as they have been moving during the decades behind
+us, ever faster and on ever wider fronts. The role of Jeremiah is not an
+agreeable one in a traditionally optimistic and forward-thrusting
+society, but those of us who care about the health of the world around
+us seem to be forced into it often in these times. Therefore let us look
+at somber matters.</p>
+
+<p>We have catalogued the pollution of the river system and the ways in
+which it diminishes this most fundamental and valuable resource. We have
+seen how it varies through the Basin's streams according to the
+concentrations of people and the kinds of activities they engage in, and
+have noted that it is truly bad&mdash;deep-rooted, past a point of easy
+return&mdash;on the North Branch where coal and industry prevail, and in the
+upper estuary where the population is heaviest, with localized serious
+conditions on the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, and a number of smaller
+streams. And because land and water depend on each other and reflect
+each other's condi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72a" id="Page_72a">[Pg 72a]</a></span>tion, these tend to be the places where the general
+environment is having the most trouble too.</p>
+
+
+<h3>The metropolis</h3>
+
+<p>Washington and its environs have always been a cynosure for American
+eyes, a place people have wanted to be proud of and have fought to keep
+"right." Many of its defenders have been powers in the land, and for a
+long time in the past the battle was generally a winning one. Even aside
+from the city's planned monumental Federal center with its government
+buildings, memorials, formal parks, malls and avenues&mdash;largely traceable
+to the ideas of Pierre L'Enfant and the sporadic respect paid them by
+the founding fathers&mdash;it has amenities undreamed of in and around most
+American cities: things like the Potomac Great Falls and gorge with the
+C. &amp; O. Canal alongside, Arlington Cemetery, Mount Vernon, the
+Georgetown neighborhood where private taste and determination have
+brought a near-slum back to 18th-century grace and function, Roosevelt
+Island, several fine local and regional parks, the George Washington
+Memorial Parkway along the Potomac, and incredible Rock Creek winding
+down its natural valley through the Maryland suburbs and the District to
+the river.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img072.jpg"  width="500" height="263" alt="Unitiled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Yet the rampaging growth to which the metropolis, in common with other
+American centers of population, has been subject dur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72b" id="Page_72b">[Pg 72b]</a></span>ing the past two or
+three decades means not only that these pleasant places are being
+pressed upon by many more people than anyone thought they would ever
+have to serve, but also that some of them are in danger of destruction
+or irreparable damage, and the tone of the city as a whole has been
+changing for the worse. The once magnificent upper estuary, as we have
+seen, is afflicted with complex and ugly pollution that shuts it off
+from the pleasant use it might otherwise sustain, and makes it a
+detraction from the Federal splendor along its northern shore rather
+than the enhancement it used to be. In places like the Alexandria and
+Georgetown waterfronts, industrial dilapidation on the shorelines more
+appropriately matches that pollution in mood, and on the Virginia side
+here and there undistinguished, often jerrybuilt highrise clutter has
+taken the place of the calm and wooded hills toward which the capital
+city once could look.</p>
+
+<p>Parks and open areas within the metropolis and out from it are often
+crowded, trampled, and belittered during most times when people can get
+away from making a living to visit them, and thus can furnish only a
+little of the quiet and elbow room that might be their main contribution
+to urban peace of mind. They are also subject to pressure and often
+damage from outside, stemming from the economics, the politics, the
+governing mood of restless growth. The blowtorch roar and black oily
+exhaust of jet airliners coming and going at National Airport, for
+instance, diminish and cheapen all the green space and monumental beauty
+so purposefully arranged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73a" id="Page_73a">[Pg 73a]</a></span> along the Potomac shore. And only the
+bitterest kind of fight can occasionally save a park or a stream valley
+or the river itself from a projected addition to the spaghetti network
+of freeways and beltways and bridges and other high-use traffic channels
+along which flow swirling, never-ending currents of cars. Or from
+standard suburban development.</p>
+
+<p>Rock Creek is a complex example of how the city threatens its own
+amenities. We have glanced at it already&mdash;polluted by casual spurts and
+dribbles of waste from hundreds of thousands of people, its basic
+hydrology and therefore its very existence as a stream dependent on the
+proper use of the rural upper third of its watershed. For it has already
+suffered the loss of many tributary runs and branches in the lower
+two-thirds during the process of solid development.</p>
+
+<p>In 1966, the critical upper third of the Rock Creek basin was very
+nearly turned over to suburban developers as a playground for bulldozers
+by a lame-duck Montgomery County Council on a rezoning spree. When
+protests against these actions, as well as against the general
+degradation of the stream, culminated in the issuance of our report The
+Creek and the City and then in a public meeting under INCOPOT auspices,
+people who had long been fighting the Creek's battle became the nucleus
+of a revived public effort. It now appears that under a new Council the
+upper watershed may be developed in some accordance with the
+Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's protective plan
+for the area, so as to keep much of its surface covered with the grasses
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73b" id="Page_73b">[Pg 73b]</a></span> humus through which rainwater percolates underground into aquifers
+that feed the creek through dry periods, and with some safeguards
+against the customary terrific siltation that careless development
+produces. And pressure has been generated to deal with the creek's other
+pollution, which is certain to be a long and laborious job.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img073.jpg"  width="500" height="256" alt="Motorway system" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Suburbanization itself is based in social forces, and this is not a
+sociological report. The knotted, often bitter, sometimes violent tone
+of contemporary American cities does not come within our province, but
+some consideration of it is inevitable. Not only must any planning for a
+decent environment&mdash;like planning for water use&mdash;take into account the
+needs and interest of the majority of the Basin's citizens who live in
+and around Washington, but it needs to be based in some understanding of
+the way they are. For in part the way they are is what determines the
+pattern of urban growth and much of the restless shifting and wandering
+that makes the city's people a strong influence to the limits of the
+Basin and beyond. In part also, however, the pattern of urban growth
+makes the people the way they are&mdash;it has been observed, for instance,
+that if suburban Americans were better satisfied with their manner of
+life, they probably would not spend so much of their time in automobiles
+getting away from it.</p>
+
+
+<p>Within Washington itself, children may be born to erstwhile rural
+parents and may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75a" id="Page_75a">[Pg 75a]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> come to adult years with only a scant sense of the
+peace and beauty that can be found a few miles away, and often with
+little sense of anything else but the crumbling, teeming, stifling,
+noisy, sooty slums where they live&mdash;the other side of the monumental
+splendor along the Federal riverfront. Not all urban frustration is an
+outgrowth of the physical environment by any means, but much is. And
+this frustration, plus the pattern of exodus for some and sour jammed
+imprisonment for the rest, has within the past few years been killing
+off one by one all the special satisfactions and delights that cities
+from time immemorial have furnished their inhabitants.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img074.jpg"><img src="images/img074-tb.jpg" alt="Fig. 2" title="Fig. 2" /></a></div>
+
+
+<blockquote><h4>This 26 square-mile section of the Rock Creek watershed, just above the
+District line in Maryland, was rural in 1913, with many small
+tributaries fed by springs and seeps. Ensuing development based on
+little knowledge of natural processes covered most of the old aquifer
+recharge areas with pavements and rooftops, so that more precipitation
+ran rapidly off the land instead of soaking in and flowing out gradually
+into streams. Flooding during storms and loss of flow at other times
+caused most of the tributaries to be covered over as storm sewers, so
+that out of 64 miles of natural flowing stream channels that existed in
+1913 in this section, only 27 miles can be found above ground today.</h4></blockquote>
+
+<p>Fleeing the dissonant center&mdash;or avoiding it from the start when they
+move to the metropolis from elsewhere&mdash;citizens who can afford it move
+into suburbs carved in the outlying countryside by gargantuan machinery,
+sometimes in compliance with a plan that preserves some trees and airy
+open space and a sense of the things that were, but more usually not.
+Here the fugitives place themselves one against the other in the
+hugeness of their numbers so that very quickly in many places the
+countryside hardly exists except in leapfrogged forlorn patches or
+farther out, where its ownership in speculatively held blocks&mdash;the old
+farm houses gone to pot, their fields in weeds or casually tilled or
+grazed to merit agricultural taxation&mdash;avouches the certainty of
+continuing sprawl. It is a much-documented process with two decades of
+history behind it now. It is cancerlike in its effect on the region, and
+disillusioning in its effect on many of those who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75b" id="Page_75b">[Pg 75b]</a></span> participate, for
+often it forces them into the position of being mass destroyers of the
+very things they seek&mdash;air and wild greenery, quietness and the elbow
+room to be themselves.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img075b.jpg"  width="400" height="407" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>A growing body of knowledge as to what kind of terrain can stand dense
+development, and what kind cannot, and how streams and woods and
+wildlife and even farms can be physically retained among urban
+populations, and why they ought to be, is becoming available. Its
+principles are more or less ecological, which simply means that they
+seek to maintain right uses of different elements of the landscape under
+urban conditions, in order that these elements may function with a
+reasonable degree of naturalness, remain compatible with one another and
+with human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76a" id="Page_76a">[Pg 76a]</a></span> purposes, and be available for people's enjoyment. Flood
+plains make good hay fields or parks, for instance, but poor sites for
+homes or shopping centers. Porous areas that recharge aquifers ought to
+be kept as much as possible under vegetation rather than pavements or
+buildings, if people are to have streams later and not capricious drains
+that are better off covered over. Steep slopes, if carved severely,
+usually exact a later revenge. House clusters and townhouses and
+apartments rightly spaced and located can let the country function even
+while settling on it numbers of people equivalent to those who would be
+there if it were hacked into a solid expanse of tiny lots. And so on.</p>
+
+<p>Much remains to be learned if the application of these principles is to
+be ideal. For example, urban hydrology&mdash;precisely what happens to the
+water cycle during various kinds of development, and how it might be
+adjusted&mdash;is a relatively new branch of study and still needs much
+research. But even with present knowledge, great improvement over
+present patterns is possible. In the hands of a few emerging experts,
+planning which pays attention to soils and topography and climate and
+special landscape features and values can be a subtle art, prescribing
+villages and farms and factories in the right places, making the most of
+native vegetation and views and places where George Washington slept and
+the breezes of July. Its form on a map tends toward curved lines rather
+than the orderly straight ones abhorred by nature.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in one simple form, this kind of land use planning has been
+practiced for many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76b" id="Page_76b">[Pg 76b]</a></span> years in rural America by millions of farmers, who
+have cooperated with one another to their own mutual benefit in soil
+conservation programs to reduce erosion and to slow down the wasteful
+and destructive runoff of precipitation. We noted earlier a pilot urban
+adaptation of such programs on Pohick Creek on the metropolitan fringe
+in Virginia, where an effort is being made to develop a whole stream
+basin in accord with soil conservation principles, not only to avoid
+future flood damages and sedimentation and pollution but to retain
+natural areas, living streams, and many of the other features the land
+had before the city engulfed it. Even with the gaps in present knowledge
+and the probability that developers and builders are not going to
+cooperate as fully and eagerly as farmers, it offers much hope. For it
+may well betide a time when urban planners in general will have the
+vision and authority, together with the reinforced knowledge, to subject
+all new development to its basic guiding precept&mdash;a respect for the way
+the landscape works. It is getting to be far more possible now than it
+was in the past to say, in relation to a given place: "This is how
+development ought to proceed."</p>
+
+<p>In the ring of counties nearest Washington, all of them much lacerated
+by sprawl that has been gobbling up some 24,000 acres of peripheral
+countryside each year, respect for the way the vanishing landscape works
+has been growing by leaps and bounds. The authority to translate it into
+good practices, however, is much hampered by the complexities of
+metropolitan reality. Officially en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76c" id="Page_76c">[Pg 76c]</a></span>dorsed plans exist for these
+counties, or for parts of them, which show quite a lot of regard for
+soils and topography and their appropriate use. But frequently these
+plans are of necessity a mass of compromises. They have had to be
+adjusted drastically to fit in with existing development, road networks,
+sewage lines, and such things, which seldom are located in accordance
+with an ecological ideal. They are encrusted with concepts from older
+plans not based in landscape principles. Differing views or interests on
+opposite sides of municipal or county boundary lines may gut them. Money
+to buy needed open space&mdash;the only way to ensure its protection&mdash;is
+usually short. And legal institutions that ought to be on the side of
+good planning sometimes get in its way.</p>
+
+<p>Zoning, for example, is an indispensable tool for implementing planning,
+but too weak for some metropolitan situations and often too inflexible
+to meet certain needs. If essential open space has been protected only
+by zoning, astronomical increases in its speculative value may generate
+enough pressure on zoning boards to change the category, as happened
+last year on upper Rock Creek. This is particularly true in view of
+metropolitan plans' inevitably hodgepodge nature, which makes them
+somewhat arbitrary and vulnerable to attack. Bribery and
+personal-interest scandals often are rooted in zoning matters.
+Furthermore, residential zoning of the standard minimum-lot-size sort,
+not adapted to cluster housing and such sophistications, may actually
+encourage sprawl and rectilinear violation of the landscape by
+restricting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77a" id="Page_77a">[Pg 77a]</a></span> the density of people in a place where the density of
+buildings and pavements is what really matters.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a href="images/img077.jpg"><img src="images/img077-tb.jpg" alt="THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<h4>THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE</h4>
+
+<p>Tax systems can be troublesome in various ways&mdash;discouraging public
+purchase of needed parks or conservation areas because officials don't
+want the land to go off the tax rolls, preventing renewal of blighted
+areas by penalizing improvements, running farms out of business by
+taxing their fields as subdivision land, promoting leapfrogging and
+sprawl (in the case of Federal capital gains taxation) by rewarding
+speculative retention of tracts. And other government programs and
+policies at various levels work against good planning or have done so in
+the past, either by failing to encourage good types of land use or by
+actively promoting bad types. Traditional Federal mortgage insurance and
+home loan practices oriented toward standard suburban development are an
+example, and so are many highways and roads subsidized and routed by
+experts in higher realms of government.</p>
+
+<p>With so much economic and legal muscle arrayed on the side of chaos and
+a whole army of enterprising folk dedicated to its perpetuation&mdash;some
+holding seats on planning and zoning bodies&mdash;the wonder is that the
+metropolitan counties have been making any headway at all with improving
+their planning process. And they have been, especially since they have
+begun to work together in such organizations as the Metropolitan
+Washington Council of Government. But, as elsewhere throughout America,
+the progress is somewhat dwarfed by the population pressures and
+untrammeled expansionism planning must deal with. Radical measures may
+be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77b" id="Page_77b">[Pg 77b]</a></span> needed; there has been sober talk of counties' issuing bonds,
+condemning all vacant land within a wide radius of the city, and buying
+it up for gradual resale and development in an orderly and sensible way,
+thus eliminating at one stroke the speculative pressures and torsions
+that are the root cause of much of the trouble.</p>
+
+<p>For under metropolitan conditions fee ownership, either of land or of
+its development rights, seems to give the only certainty of control over
+land's use. Obviously its potential employment by government is limited
+in a free economy, and such things as zoning and subdivision
+controls&mdash;strengthened and made rational&mdash;are going to have to continue
+as main tools, together with devices like scenic easements, which
+usually, however, again involve a form of purchase.</p>
+
+<p>Fee ownership is the kind of control that is being exercised&mdash;by private
+interests rather than by government&mdash;in the promising "new towns," where
+certain individuals and groups are attempting to use industrial-type,
+long-term financing in the purchase and development of large tracts on
+which strong and careful planning, involving everything from industry to
+fish ponds, can be enforced from scratch. Perhaps the most famous single
+example of this kind of thing is Reston, Virginia, which is being built
+on over 7000 acres of pleasant Piedmont countryside in northwestern
+Fairfax County. It has aroused hope across the nation in people
+concerned with such things, for if private capital can go to work in
+this enlightened fashion and still come out with a profit, the
+implications for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78a" id="Page_78a">[Pg 78a]</a></span> the future are enormous. Like any pioneering venture,
+it has run into some troubles, and it lately suffered a shift in
+management. But it is still being steered toward the same goal of
+environmental grace and decency and seems likely to arrive there.</p>
+
+<p>The attractiveness of such places to people disillusioned with standard
+sprawl is attested by the fact that other developers, having
+incorporated some of the Reston techniques&mdash;some recreational water,
+some clustering of dwellings with communal open space between, some
+amenities like underground wiring&mdash;are tending to call their latest
+subdivisions "new towns" too. Many of them want to do things right, and
+if it can be proved that doing things right will pay off as well as
+doing them wrong, a certain amount of automatic improvement in the
+quality of suburbanization can be expected. However, it must be noted
+that the scale on which most developers can afford to operate, and the
+market scarcity of suitable large tracts of land even when major capital
+is available and the aims are noble ones, do not often give them control
+of adequate natural units of territory in which whole planning can mean
+what it should. Most such planning is going to have to continue to come
+from governmental bodies, and the main hope must be that it will keep
+improving, find stronger tools, and be reinforced and stimulated by laws
+and programs from higher up.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Sprawl as a problem farther out</h3>
+
+<p>Throughout the Basin where centers of population and industry are on the
+jump, sprawl is also gnawing away at the country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78b" id="Page_78b">[Pg 78b]</a></span>side. Given our present
+pace of change, many Basin towns will soon become Basin cities, and
+around each, if they are left to grow in the rudimentary traditional
+patterns, the devastation that has taken place around Washington will
+reproduce itself. In many places it already has a good start.</p>
+
+<p>Some rural counties and small towns have developed a satellitic
+relationship to the larger centers of population, and even around others
+that are distant from urban uproar, sprawl is beginning to find a
+congenial form for itself in vacation colonies of "second homes" in
+scenic places whose remoteness, together with a smaller and more settled
+population of Americans, used to be their staunch protection. Under the
+stimulus of State and Federal encouragement, mainly quite recent and to
+some extent tied in with this Potomac effort, most counties in the Basin
+have arrived at some awareness of the need for land-use planning. In
+many farming communities, the seeds of this awareness were planted long
+since by the Soil Conservation Service. But rural folk often lack a
+sense of the urgency of the need, an understanding of dangers and aims
+under urban or semi-urban conditions, money with which to operate, and
+the detachment that is requisite for making right decisions.</p>
+
+<p>Planning in most such places ought to be relatively simple and
+acceptable, for in the long run most people would be better off for it,
+economically and in terms of the surroundings. But it is still hard to
+sell to average rural and small-town populations, who have always been
+able to take trees, views, clean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78c" id="Page_78c">[Pg 78c]</a></span> water, and elbow room for granted, and
+hence can maintain the staunchly individualistic view that anyone ought
+to be able to do whatever he likes with his land, that growth is good,
+and that anything that interferes with any manifestation of it is bad.
+Therefore, too often the planning, if any, that goes into effect before
+the bulldozers move in like hungry behemoths from another planet is
+likely to be meager and heavily weighted in favor of the easy, standard,
+massive sort of development that local governments close to the centers
+of trouble are beginning to comprehend and, in the face of immensely
+greater odds, to take measure against.</p>
+
+<p>Though the ugliness and dreary crowded sameness with which standard
+sprawl replaces decent landscapes are reason enough for opposing it,
+other good reasons exist as well, perhaps especially in rural counties.
+It has been customary for local promoters of such development to
+celebrate the additional tax revenues that new inhabitants are going to
+pour into the community's coffers. But community services in such
+areas&mdash;things like sewage collection and disposal, water supply, trash
+collection, roads and streets, schools, libraries&mdash;are seldom extensive
+or elaborate, because they do not need to be in a rural stage of things.
+If a subdivider erects, however, some 1500 new homes on a patch of
+countryside, providing them with an inadequate supply of well water and
+with individual septic tanks, and then shoves along to other fields
+before things start breaking down and the protests start rising from the
+1500 families who came there for lyrical but con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79a" id="Page_79a">[Pg 79a]</a></span>venient country living,
+the ensuing results for the county's finances can be catastrophic.</p>
+
+<p>In some parts of America already, around $17,000 worth of community
+services are said to be needed for every new family that moves in, a sum
+which from one viewpoint amounts to a subsidy furnished by taxpayers to
+land speculators and developers. Even assuming that those services
+provided by the developer are adequate, and that some aid in providing
+the rest can be obtained by the community through State and Federal
+programs&mdash;thereby passing on a part of the cost to other taxpayers&mdash;a
+rural county proud of its traditionally low tax valuations and of the
+Jeffersonian simplicity of its local government, as most are, flatly
+cannot dig up the remainder without a big revision of its old way of
+being.</p>
+
+<p>In bad cases, the alternatives to digging it up may be water pollution,
+health hazards, siltation and perhaps floods, sour public discontent
+among new elements unsympathetic to Jeffersonian simplicity, and the
+rapid deterioration of the new suburbs into rural slums&mdash;a combination
+of factors that in itself may bring about drastic change in the
+community. Thus in one way or another contemporary rural individualism
+tends to bury itself, but often too late for the salvation of the woods
+and pastures and clear waters and human dignity it took for granted and
+placed so little value on.</p>
+
+<p>Vacation colonies are a rather distinct consideration, for they are
+independent of ordinary and predictable population growth and they tend
+to spring up in places of special natural beauty and value. There is no
+reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79b" id="Page_79b">[Pg 79b]</a></span> why they should not be pleasant additions to a community or to a
+landscape, and a good many are&mdash;well planned in terms of both practical
+details and esthetic values, unobtrusive, and pretty. Unfortunately,
+though, this kind is not the rule, for in many spots in the Basin such
+colonies are a sort of haphazard mushroom growth with miserable side
+effects.</p>
+
+<p>Local forms of this phenomenon have always been around, but have seldom
+been extensive enough to seem anything but picturesque. A farmer sells
+off a few riverside lots, for example, because he can't plow that part
+of his land anyhow, and is happy enough to make a little money and at
+the same time oblige some county-seat acquaintances who want a place to
+loaf and fish on weekends. So a few tarpaper shacks go up with privies
+for sanitation, and perhaps someone hauls in an old school bus and props
+it on concrete blocks for his own vacation home. Here a jolly time is
+had by all with full knowledge&mdash;since they are locals, aware of how
+things around them work&mdash;that sooner or later the river is going on a
+rampage and will carry away the whole little community, with small loss
+to anyone.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img079a.jpg"  width="350" height="226" alt="Unsanitary clutter" title="" /></div>
+
+
+
+<p>Exploitation changes the picture, however, as exploitation is wont to
+do. If a whole neighborhood of farmers seeks such profits, or if real
+estate men get into the act, or big development corporations that may be
+operating from almost anywhere in the country, the scale enlarges and
+purple prose may appear in the metropolitan newspapers to lure nostalgic
+suburbans out to examine an assort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79c" id="Page_79c">[Pg 79c]</a></span>ment of lots sliced fine for maximum
+yield and priced most often according to their proximity to water. Water
+is usually involved, for it is the fundamental outdoor attraction,
+whether it is a mountain creek or a river or a made pond or a deep bay
+off the lower estuary. Its ultimate pollution is often involved as well,
+for sanitary arrangements tend to be rudimentary and inadequate for
+concentrations of people, especially when the "second homes" start
+turning into permanent homes with the retirement of their owners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80a" id="Page_80a">[Pg 80a]</a></span> or
+their sale to younger locals. This latter process, too, sometimes leads
+to a future demand for schools and other services whose need was not
+foreseen by local governments when they permitted the development.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img079b.jpg"  width="350" height="225" alt="Unsanitary clutter" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>In some places along the estuary and the Potomac main stem and the
+Shenandoah, the creation of such communities has already led to
+wholesale, ugly, unsanitary clutter along considerable stretches of once
+beautiful shoreline. It is beginning to shape up even on remoter
+waterways like the Cacapon and the South Branch, and in some parts of
+the mountains. As new interstate highways and other avenue of access are
+opened from Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Richmond, and many other
+cities, the process may be expected to blight most shorelines throughout
+the Basin unless something is done to control it. And not only the
+county councils and boards of supervisors but the rest of us as well are
+going to inherit the problems associated with it, for these waters and
+shores are of more than local concern, in terms of the loss of amenity,
+in terms of pollution, and in terms of the quite frequent certainty of
+future flood damages, a demand for protection at general public expense,
+and possibly the loss of further amenities and resources at the site of
+a protective reservoir upstream.</p>
+
+<p>From an abstract point far outside the boundaries of these rural
+counties, it is easy enough to condemn the frame of mind that lets such
+things take place. But the fact is that people in rural local
+governments and those who elect them often have even more respect and
+love for the landscape around<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80b" id="Page_80b">[Pg 80b]</a></span> them than the most esthetic of
+metropolitans. They may take it too much for granted, but they have
+grown up close to it and they can feel the loss acutely when it
+deteriorates. Some of the usual obstacles to their doing anything to
+prevent the deterioration were mentioned earlier&mdash;money is short, and so
+is planning know-how. Probably the greatest obstacle, however, is the
+matter of personal relationships. Not in terms of outright corruption,
+which is far more likely in the anonymous atmosphere of great cities,
+but in terms of the need of people in small communities to get along
+with one another, combined with traditional profit motives.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose a local planning or zoning board is taking action to determine
+whether or not a big corporation from elsewhere can buy and subdivide
+some flood-plain land belonging to a well-liked fellow townsman, a
+hardware dealer whom all of them have known from childhood and with whom
+they will be doing business the rest of their lives. Despite the
+inappropriateness of the land for human occupation and the mess that is
+going to be established along their pretty river, is it to be reasonably
+expected that a voting majority of them are going to decree that a
+friend be deprived of a half-million dollars' profit? The dilemma is a
+serious one, perhaps the weakest point in the land-use control at this
+local level, and it may mean that higher levels of government will have
+to take over some of the responsibility and get local governments off
+the hook.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Industry in the landscape</h3>
+
+<p>Another matter about which small com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80c" id="Page_80c">[Pg 80c]</a></span>munities can seldom feel impartial
+is the prospect of attracting industry. With the growth of the great
+cities here and there, perhaps a majority of small towns are faced now
+with flagging agricultural prosperity, a lack of jobs, and the resultant
+departure&mdash;often reluctant&mdash;of most of their energetic young people for
+the new centers of action. The mere rumor that an industry is
+considering setting up a plant in such a place is likely to set off
+shock waves of delight and establish a general mood in which almost any
+concession will be offered to tempt the corporation&mdash;to the point that
+authorities, in some places, have issued bonds and built the requisite
+factory themselves.</p>
+
+<p>In a good many cases, this particular cure for the community's ills has
+proved to be worse than the sickness, leading to total community
+dependence on a fallible and perhaps capricious enterprise, pollution of
+air and water, noise and flood-plain clutter, and frequently the
+destruction of the local riverside where industries tend to locate
+unless directed elsewhere. Little of this is necessary now, as a number
+of examples of responsible industry in the Basin demonstrate. But it
+continues, and will continue as long as communities keep looking on
+industry as a source of payrolls only, free of sin: "It smells like
+money," some residents of one Shenandoah town say of their factory's
+miasmal odor, though other natives phrase their description
+differently....</p>
+
+<p>The full legacy of an older time when industry neither knew how to avoid
+pollution and other troubles nor saw any reason to try, and no community
+leaders saw any reason to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81a" id="Page_81a">[Pg 81a]</a></span> bring the subject up, is found in prime
+fettle along the North Branch, whose pollution is a sympathetic
+reflection of the general state of that region's environment. Though
+certain industries there&mdash;most notably the huge but aging pulp and paper
+mill at Luke, Maryland&mdash;have managed at considerable expense to cut down
+on the wastes they discharge to the river, the prevalent philosophy
+elsewhere in the neighborhood would seem to be that both land and water
+are already so afflicted that no single community's or industrial
+plant's attempt at betterment could do much good.</p>
+
+<p>This impression is illusory; people along the North Branch, as
+elsewhere, are aware of what has been lost. But restoration is going to
+be hard. In some of the deep valleys layered, stinging smog prevails
+through most of the year. Most of the waters are acid from far up toward
+their source, as we have seen, and downriver this acid is enriched with
+other things, a situation that has existed for so long that hardly
+anyone recalls when the streams were much different. Most of the
+villages along them have a gray and weary look, with a good deal of
+unemployment among the hardy people, and empty stores and houses that
+remember a less ramshackles time when the area's coal mines needed many
+workers and the air was alive with action, including old-fashioned
+vigorous labor strife.</p>
+
+<p>High up above the towns and the dark streams, the strip-mine bulldozers
+and power shovels that have replaced most of the workers chew away at
+the green flanks of mountains named for Indian chiefs and pioneers and
+things that happened long ago. Where they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81b" id="Page_81b">[Pg 81b]</a></span> have scraped out all they
+economically can and have moved on, huge gray scars and spoil heaps
+remain behind and ooze more acid to the streams below, as do hundreds of
+the old deep mines. It is a pitted and hard-used landscape, where
+occasional more or less ordinary farming valleys, and mountains and
+streams that have escaped change, stand out as strikingly beautiful in
+contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Concentratedly typical of this landscape in general, perhaps, is the
+Georges Creek valley, a hundred square miles of drainage extending
+between two long scarred ridges from the neighborhood of Frostburg down
+to Westernport. Here coal has a venerable and even romantic history, for
+it has been mined in the valley since 1808, and the laid-out Scottish
+orderliness of depopulated old "Company towns"&mdash;Lonaconing is said to
+have been the first such in the nation&mdash;clashes with the grimy reality
+of what has happened in modern times.</p>
+
+<p>This natal section of the river system cannot be walled away from the
+rest of the Basin, written off to coal and industry, and disregarded. It
+is integral with the rest; its troubles are Basin troubles. And if the
+ingrained landscape sickness compounded there by the old consumptive way
+of doing things, blight begetting blight, cannot be healed, scant hope
+glimmers through of healing the same sickness in other parts of the
+nation where it is even worse.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Other Basin landscape problems</h3>
+
+<p>New roads and highways, regardless of what traffic they carry and where
+they carry it, are too often planned and constructed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81c" id="Page_81c">[Pg 81c]</a></span> as gashes of
+destruction across the landscape and across the "scenery of
+association," and frequently fertilize subsidiary ugliness in the form
+of billboards and commercial clutter. Attempts to mitigate the worst
+aspects of this have had some effect, but have not been widespread or
+strong enough to keep up with the growing numbers of cars and the
+growing demand for facilities on which to operate them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img081.jpg"  width="400" height="273" alt="Subsidiary ugliness" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Much could be done at the local level to erase roadside
+ugliness&mdash;Loudoun County, Virginia, is again a shining and rare example
+of a place where the right thing has been done. But more of the trouble
+comes from higher up, for it involves the routing and design of the
+super-roads, and stubborn considerations of strict engineering
+efficiency have usually tended to prevail over esthetics and such
+things, despite growing objections. Regardless of their beauty as roads,
+the sheer quantity of strip concrete Americans require nowadays is a
+basic problem. It has been said that an extraplanetary observer at first
+glance might well conclude that this continent was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82a" id="Page_82a">[Pg 82a]</a></span> populated primarily
+by large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains. Certainly in many
+places nowadays the earth is beginning to look as if it were arranged
+for the bugs rather than for the brains, if that is what we humans are.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img082.jpg"  width="400" height="275" alt="Subsidiary ugliness" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>When the bugs die they go to junkyards. These many-colored necropolises
+occupy wide acres of land near every center of population in the region,
+occurring quite commonly along the main entrance highways to neat and
+historic towns. Their stark and extensive ugliness has made them the
+subject of much high-level investigation, most of which has sought to
+make their conversion into usable scrap metal a profitable process.
+Undoubtedly this will be achieved sooner or later, but in the meantime
+the old cars, together with a wealth of other discarded items in
+roadside fields and along fencelines and stream channels throughout the
+Basin, form a scabby legacy from the recent past, and a less esthetic
+"scenery of association."</p>
+
+<p>Major electric powerlines and other utilities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82b" id="Page_82b">[Pg 82b]</a></span> routed arrogantly with
+only straight-line distances in mind, up hill and down dale and with
+their cleared rights-of-way kept brownly dead with herbicides, can
+intrude starkly on the beauty and mood of historic or pleasantly natural
+landscapes. In the name of public service, private utility companies in
+all the Basin States have wide powers of condemnation as emerged to view
+recently when the Potomac Edison Company proposed to hack out a strip
+for a new line along a route that included country associated with the
+campaigning around Antietam Battlefield in the Civil War, without an
+adequate attempt to find alternative routes.</p>
+
+<p>In this instance, public protest shaped up a fight against the line, in
+which the Interior Department has become involved because of the
+Federally owned battlefield and the nearby C. &amp; O. Canal. But often
+elsewhere, the great skeletal towers linked by thick transmission cables
+march where they please, indifferent to local objections. What is
+certain is that modern America needs the electricity transported thus,
+and the gases and liquids that run through great pipelines. Hope for the
+long run is offered by research that may open the possibility of putting
+high-voltage transmission lines underground, but in the meantime what is
+needed is an awareness on the part of utilities planners that scenic and
+historic values have to be given full weight in their computations.</p>
+
+<p>The kind of agriculture that has so much to do with the Basin's scenic
+appeal is not entirely healthy these days. We have mentioned the
+difficulty created near Washington&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82c" id="Page_82c">[Pg 82c]</a></span> around other Basin centers of
+population and in many places where vacation colonies are burgeoning&mdash;by
+skyrocketing speculation and a general absence of strongly based and
+well-defended plans of preservation. As the development value of land
+rises in such places, local systems of taxation based on that value
+rather than on actual use may drive farmers out of business whether they
+want to stay in or not. Since 1945 in Fairfax County, Virginia, for
+instance, the number of commercial farms has dropped from 1788 to about
+200, and it is still going down.</p>
+
+<p>Even where the tax trouble has been recognized, as in Maryland, and
+taxation adjusted to reality for people who want to go on farming, few
+tillers of the soil are devoted enough to their acres to hold onto them
+in the face of the kind of cash that is often dangled before their eyes,
+for the flat and fertile tracts that make the best farms are also the
+easiest to subdivide and build on in standard fashion. For that matter,
+the usual form of tax relief on agricultural land can be used as a tax
+loophole by speculators. Thus, whenever tract values rise and
+development impends, good productive land, which the country may well
+miss later as populations grow and food supplies for them thin out, goes
+permanently under pavements and construction. Even though it is just in
+such places that protected, scenic, connotative rural landscapes might
+have the most meaning for the most people in the long run, their
+preservation presents some tough questions. Patterns of growth that
+would spare them could easily be worked out and would fit in well with
+watershed pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83a" id="Page_83a">[Pg 83a]</a></span>tection and open space needs, but the economics of
+compensating farm owners for the loss of the big money they might have
+received for them is another thing.</p>
+
+<p>In some other parts of the Basin, the implications of a modern unified
+economy are a threat to traditional farms and farming methods. Labor
+costs, the need for expensive machinery, superior methods of storage of
+foodstuffs and easy transport over long distances have put Potomac
+farmers into competition with other regions, even other countries, where
+the same products they supply can be raised on an industrial scale of
+investment and profit. Thus the worth of a field of tomatoes in the
+Northern Neck of Virginia is affected by massive irrigated production in
+the Central Valley of California, and thus a Shenandoah farmer may
+barely break even or suffer a loss on a rather good crop of wheat in the
+old "bread basket of the Confederacy."</p>
+
+<p>Such influences, even though dulled a bit by protective State and
+Federal farm programs, are putting a premium on specialization, ever
+larger farms, and an "agribusiness" approach, with high capital and
+operating expenses. Their effect on many family farms in the Basin's
+mountain regions, places with limited acreage of marginally productive
+land, is severe. These may have supported the clans that own them
+reasonably well for a century or more, but they cannot compete with
+Ohio. Unless their owners are willing to keep on farming while holding
+down a job in town for supplementary cash, they often move away and the
+places go out of cultivation. Some are consolidated into grazing or
+forestry units or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83b" id="Page_83b">[Pg 83b]</a></span> bigger farms, some stand abandoned, some go on the
+market as vacation retreats and "hobby farms" for wide-ranging
+metropolitans.</p>
+
+<p>Richer regions share the troubles. In the classic valley of the
+Monocacy, some of whose dairy farmers have to import feed now from the
+Midwest because they cannot raise it cheaply enough themselves, the size
+of the optimum farm, one that can compete effectively in today's market,
+has swelled in the past few years from about 150 acres to about 600,
+according to a study by the State of Maryland. The problem is compounded
+by rising land prices influenced not by productive value but by the
+presence of Megalopolis just over toward the Bay. Sprawl throws a long
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Eyeing this array of difficulties, many farmers' sons are prone to seek
+another livelihood, and the average age of the men who do the farming
+grows higher all the time. Tiring, many sell out, and thus the family
+farms that make up the greater part of the Potomac's much-loved rural
+landscape dwindle in number and change in use. It is not necessary to be
+mawkish to see this as a loss. In part it is inevitable, but in part too
+it may be rooted in policies that can be altered and adjusted to keep
+the farms productive.</p>
+
+<p>Wildlife, along the Potomac as elsewhere, is dependent on whatever
+habitat it occupies&mdash;that is to say on the state of the landscape. If
+the rivers are cleaned up and kept flowing even during times of drought
+and heavy use of water, they will support better populations of fish and
+a greater variety of species. If the subtle interrelationships and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83c" id="Page_83c">[Pg 83c]</a></span> the
+immense value of the estuary's varied nooks and crannies are recognized,
+studied out to full understanding, and protected&mdash;and in time&mdash;not only
+fish and shellfish but ducks and eagles and herons and all the other
+wild users of the shores and wetlands will benefit. Government refuges
+and other devices are badly needed for these purposes in that region,
+now that it is no longer remote and the kind of protection many private
+owners have traditionally furnished wildlife is diminishing.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img083.jpg"  width="400" height="272" alt="Flock of birds" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Upland populations of deer, turkey, grouse, quail, raccoon, fox, and
+other sporting and non-sporting species thrive in parts of the Basin
+suited to their habits and still in good condition, and shrink
+elsewhere. Many stretches of private forest land could support much
+higher densities of game and other wildlife, if they were put in better
+shape by practices that are available and feasible. Of the more than
+three million acres of such land scattered throughout the Basin in small
+holdings, much is in poor condition. It is therefore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84a" id="Page_84a">[Pg 84a]</a></span> but spottily
+productive of game or timber or anything else, and often causes high
+runoff and erosion in critical watersheds.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Recreation</h3>
+
+<p>Many of the things we have called amenities here are subject to
+full-fledged economic uses necessary to the region's wellbeing and not
+usually in great conflict with scenic and ecological values if they are
+carried out right. Farming and commercial fishing and logging used to be
+generally exploitative and hard on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84b" id="Page_84b">[Pg 84b]</a></span> the natural scheme of things in this
+country, for instance, but they no longer need to be and in most cases
+are not. Using the Potomac's water for towns and factories and power and
+navigation entails some interference with natural processes, but it does
+not have to be widely destructive of them. Discharge of treated wastes
+to streams is still necessary to a degree, and up to that degree not
+badly harmful, though as we have seen, it is far too often excessive.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img084.jpg"  width="400" height="256" alt="Recreation" title="" /></div>
+
+
+
+<p>Urban expansion is necessary also with present population pressures. It
+is an irreversible exploitation of the landscape, but if the type of
+land-use principles mentioned in this chapter were to get wider
+employment, urbanization would quite certainly not have to be as
+destructive of natural and human values as its present usual form is.
+The same thing is true of industry in its many manifestations, including
+mining, and of the woven network of roads and utilities. The public
+needs them, and the people responsible for them need to be aware of the
+great value of the natural framework within which all men must exist.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img084b.jpg"  width="400" height="281" alt="Recreation" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>Average people's direct use of the natural world is most often of the
+kind summed up as "outdoor recreation," an umbrella phrase under which
+are lumped a diversity of satisfactions found by widely differing
+persons in many types of more or less natural places. Muscular hunters
+and elderly birdwatchers, water-skiers and bank-fishermen, Sunday
+drivers on crowded highways and lean backpackers on dim trails in the
+South Branch highlands, baseball players and people who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84c" id="Page_84c">[Pg 84c]</a></span> take naps on
+the grass beside the C. &amp; O. Canal, amateur archaeologists and stock-car
+racing fans&mdash;all these and many other kinds of folk depend somehow on
+the Potomac outdoors for their pleasure. They use it.</p>
+
+<p>How much they use it and how much pleasure they get out of it are
+governed by the time on their hands, the availability of their chosen
+recreation, and whether it is good of its kind. A would-be hunter who
+cannot escape from the District of Columbia is out of luck unless his
+mobility improves. An Alexandria water-skier can divert himself on the
+metropolitan estuary during the summer months, but under ordinary
+conditions at present it is something less than what is known as a
+"quality experience," as is fishing there or any other water sport. A
+West Virginian has to have some time to spare if he wants to enjoy
+beaches and ocean breezes; so do Tidewater residents with a penchant for
+mountain trout fishing.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the Basin holds a great deal for almost all tastes, and
+most of what it holds is of excellent quality. The main recreational
+needs are fairly clear: to protect and restore the Potomac outdoors from
+the deterioration noted in this and earlier chapters, to spread the
+chance at different kinds of pleasure around as much as possible, to
+guard against clashes between different kinds of use and against the
+destruction of the quality of quiet and natural places that occurs when
+too many people are jammed together in them, to make the Basin's
+pleasant corners and shores and byways easier to get at, and&mdash;not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85a" id="Page_85a">[Pg 85a]</a></span> least
+important&mdash;to encourage uses that contribute to appreciation and
+preservation, helping to make sure that in the long run outdoor
+recreation in this region will be possible.</p>
+
+<p>People's need for outdoor activity in their spare time varies a good
+deal. An oysterman-crabber working out of the Yeocomico through the
+progression of seasons and weathers, a Shenandoah plowman turning earth
+his great-great-grandfather turned at the foot of the blue-green
+mountains, a timber cruiser in the high forests&mdash;such individuals are
+not as likely to need to go looking for added outdoor satisfactions as
+most other kinds of people, for whom ordinary life tends to be more
+separate from pleasure in the open air. Maybe if the cities can be
+brought back to health and their growth shaped to fit in better with
+human needs, this will change. But with more and more people coming on,
+more and more leisurely and affluent as technology cuts down on work,
+more and more urban, outdoor recreation as a specific goal is going to
+be an ever more important consideration in planning. It is already
+important&mdash;and already, as we are reminded with statistics, big
+business.</p>
+
+
+<h3>City recreational needs</h3>
+
+<p>Recreation in and around the central city of Washington has to be a
+primary aim. The most people are in this area, many of them through
+poverty or habits of life not given to farflung pleasures but
+constrained to seek them where they live, or near at hand. The worst
+environmental threats are here as well, despite the foresight and pride
+that have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85b" id="Page_85b">[Pg 85b]</a></span> saved much more open space and pleasant park land than most
+other American cities can show.</p>
+
+<p>The metropolitan river has to be cleaned up and made attractive. It used
+to be the city's most supremely valuable amenity and potentially it
+still is. Measures within reach can realize much of the potential inside
+of a reasonably short time, so that productive and varied fishing and
+good boating and a beautiful wide body of water will be within strolling
+distance for people in the central parts of the metropolis on both sides
+of the Potomac, and the recreational value of the lands already
+preserved along its shores will be incalculably multiplied. Safe
+swimming and other water contact sports in the open metropolitan
+estuary, often mentioned as an aiming point for clean-up programs, may
+be a somewhat more distant future prospect. Our studies in the past
+three years have made it clear that pollution here is more complex and
+diffuse in origins than had ever been supposed, and that sources of
+dangerous bacteria are probably going to continue to exist for a good
+while despite all efforts against them. The goal of swimming is a worthy
+one and will probably be reached, but not quickly. In the meantime, more
+public pools in the City and easy transportation to public areas farther
+down the estuary may be required.</p>
+
+<p>Some recreation areas within the city, like Rock Creek Park, presently
+get too much use for their own good and for people's full pleasure in
+them because they are superior to anything else accessible to many of
+the city's people. This is a local manifestation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85c" id="Page_85c">[Pg 85c]</a></span> a national problem,
+for even sections of the great national parks, like the one at Yosemite,
+are presently being battered by overuse by a generation of city-dwellers
+anxious to come in touch with natural and basic things. In such places,
+people's very numbers shut them off from those basic things and coarsen
+the quality of their experience. The only really satisfactory answer
+will be to put additional, equally attractive places within reach of the
+same people. In Washington this means developing other pleasant areas
+within the city and making it easier for the city's people to get to the
+other parks and natural places farther out. Improvement of the river,
+development of extensive new parklands along the Anacostia including the
+Kenilworth Dump site, more neighborhood playgrounds and swimming pools,
+and other such action will all help to relieve the situation, which is
+getting much official attention and is a specific subject in the report
+recently published by the Potomac Planning Task Force, the group formed
+under auspices of the American Institute of Architects.</p>
+
+<p>The array of Federal, State, regional and county parks and other public
+areas ringing the metropolis will be more accessible as public transit
+improves. Another means to this end, and an especially organic and
+appropriate one, will be the urban stretches of the Basinwide network of
+hiking, bicycling, and horseback trails which will be discussed a little
+farther along.</p>
+
+<p>If, as prophets reiterate, ever-increasing percentages of the American
+public in the future will be living in the great cities, a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86a" id="Page_86a">[Pg 86a]</a></span> deal
+of nature and conservation education is going to be needed if the mass
+of people are not to lose all understanding of natural things and all
+sympathy with their working and their preservation. It cannot be
+entirely a classroom sort of thing, no matter how many films and
+preserved or caged wildlife specimens may be provided. There is need
+now, and there will be more need hereafter, for rich nature preserves
+and study centers within reach of Washington and specifically dedicated
+to such use.</p>
+
+<p>In general, suburbanites have more freedom of choice regarding the
+places they play in and the ways in which they play there than do people
+at the urban center. Many of them live fairly close to outlying parks
+and open areas, and if good planning gains in strength and effectiveness
+as the metropolis spreads, this neighborhood availability of outdoor
+pleasures will increase, with more Rock Creeks and Pohick Creeks to put
+stream-valley parks and pleasant small lakes and streams and such things
+within reach of everyone, and more green open space just outside
+people's doors. They are going to be needed, for public pressure on the
+available recreation areas around the metropolis is already heavy.</p>
+
+<p>Suburbanites also, however, are more mobile than almost any non-nomadic
+civilian population in history. A great variety of things to do are
+within driving distance of their homes on an afternoon off, or a
+weekend, or a vacation. Therefore, the question of providing and
+improving outdoor recreation for them, as well as for more mobile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86b" id="Page_86b">[Pg 86b]</a></span>
+residents of the central city, merges with the wider question of outdoor
+recreation on a Basinwide scale, for residents and visitors alike.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Basin recreational needs</h3>
+
+<p>If the things are done that need to be done to reverse the environmental
+deterioration that has been the subject of so much of this report, the
+public's chance to enjoy widespread, high quality outdoor recreation in
+the Potomac Basin will be tremendously increased. Recreation and
+preservation are not separable subjects. If a river is cleaned up and
+its shoreline protected against clutter and ugliness, its use by
+fishermen and boatmen and others will be enhanced. If a park is
+established to protect a unique natural asset, people's enjoyment of
+that asset will be assured. Most preservation leads to more recreational
+opportunity; many things that are done to provide outdoor recreation
+afford some measure of protection for the environment as well, but the
+emphases are sometimes different.</p>
+
+<p>Among specific recreational problems, access is a major one. For those
+who can afford cars, getting around the Basin grows easier all the time
+as roads proliferate, but getting at the agreeable things to do is hard
+in many places. Here and there important parts of the public lands in
+the National or State forests, for instance, are cut off from easy use
+by private inholdings. But the main amenity that is usually hard to
+reach is water, which happens also to be the major magnet for outdoor
+recreation of many kinds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86c" id="Page_86c">[Pg 86c]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The estuary's 200,000 acres of superb recreational potential are a case
+in point. It has a few drawbacks that can and ought to be dealt with,
+like the thousands of old sunken pilings and stakes that make boating
+dangerous in many places, and some others that may be tougher to
+eliminate, like the great annual summertime incursions of stinging
+jellyfish in its lowest reaches, the milfoil weed that sometimes clogs
+its tributaries, and the erosion of its shores by winter storms. But
+even as it stands, it offers fishing and boating and hunting of the
+finest sort in its lower part, with excellent swimming higher up where
+salinity drops and the jellyfish cannot come&mdash;a zone whose useful length
+will increase upstream as metropolitan pollution diminishes. Yet along
+the estuary's shores, except at certain historic sites like Wakefield
+where types of use have to be limited, there are only two major public
+parks at present and very few other public areas of any size where
+people can launch boats, fish, camp, or merely get at the open water.
+Some of the great military bases there are closed to the public, while
+others permit limited use.</p>
+
+<p>The main stem of the flowing Potomac is parallelled on the Maryland
+shore by the C. &amp; O. Canal in Federal ownership, a unique resource. But
+the bulk of the land between the canal and the river&mdash;7200 acres out of
+10,000&mdash;is privately owned. Along most of the 120 miles where the canal
+property touches the Potomac it is much too narrow to permit heavy use,
+so that public enjoyment of the river except at occasional spots is
+lim<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87a" id="Page_87a">[Pg 87a]</a></span>ited to hikers, cyclists, and boatmen. Maryland's Fort Frederick
+State Park, which joins the canal property and forms a much-frequented
+node of public use, is the only such park on any of the main rivers of
+the upper Basin.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 outstand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87b" id="Page_87b">[Pg 87b]</a></span>ing one is the shortage in the upper
+Basin of what is called "flat water"&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87c" id="Page_87c">[Pg 87c]</a></span> throughout the Basin can quite often be designed to
+function as first-rate recreational attractions too.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img087.jpg"  width="400" height="303" alt="Recreation" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88a" id="Page_88a">[Pg 88a]</a></span> grounds
+alone, even aside from the need for it below in terms of water quality.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88b" id="Page_88b">[Pg 88b]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img088.jpg"  width="400" height="273" alt="Recreation" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>For a multitude of residents and visitors, nothing would contribute more
+to apprecia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88c" id="Page_88c">[Pg 88c]</a></span>tion of what the Basin has to offer than a system of
+unobtrusive parkways and scenic wandering roads joining together the
+region's attractions&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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. &amp; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89a" id="Page_89a">[Pg 89a]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Avenues toward coping with landscape problems</h3>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89b" id="Page_89b">[Pg 89b]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img089.jpg"  width="400" height="282" alt="Recreation" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Active Federal programs of public works, technical assistance, grants in
+aid, cost sharing, taxation, home loans, mortgage insurance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89c" id="Page_89c">[Pg 89c]</a></span> and such
+things&mdash;often with counterparts at state levels&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90a" id="Page_90a">[Pg 90a]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90b" id="Page_90b">[Pg 90b]</a></span>
+seen&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90c" id="Page_90c">[Pg 90c]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> State water quality standards. In terms of the
+other elements of the landscape, it is equally justifiable.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img091.jpg"  width="500" height="419" alt="Riverside lock" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as we strongly believe&mdash;to oversee continuing action to clean
+up the Potomac river system and keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92a" id="Page_92a">[Pg 92a]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The main recommendation with a specific<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92b" id="Page_92b">[Pg 92b]</a></span> 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The Potomac Basin is only a piece of what needs to be done. But it could
+be a beginning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img093.jpg"  width="400" height="239" alt="Chapter header" title="" /></div>
+
+<h2><a name="V_COMPLEXITIES_AND_PRIORITIES" id="V_COMPLEXITIES_AND_PRIORITIES"></a>V. COMPLEXITIES AND PRIORITIES</h2>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;unity in politics, economics, and culture&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the District of Columbia and portions of four separate
+States, with all or part of some 39 counties and a number of independent
+cities&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>None of the capitals of the four Basin States lies within the Basin's
+limits. This means that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94a" id="Page_94a">[Pg 94a]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94b" id="Page_94b">[Pg 94b]</a></span> and trust through local agents,
+and Basin Congressmen who hardly have to leave home to exercise their
+legislative function have further strengthened these ties.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94c" id="Page_94c">[Pg 94c]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95a" id="Page_95a">[Pg 95a]</a></span> alliance
+between middle-class suburbs and rural areas against the beleaguered
+central cities with their slums and other huge specific problems.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;though exactly what effect is not at all certain.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Public attitudes toward environmental action</h3>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>In relation to the environment, certain differing philosophical currents
+of this kind have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95b" id="Page_95b">[Pg 95b]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Stout among them is the traditional American&mdash;and human&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;a hardy, exultant line of subjugation and exploitation moving
+across the virgin continent&mdash;are not remote but fresh.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img095.jpg"  width="500" height="197" alt="Staff meeting" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>Certainly in its crasser manifestations&mdash;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 long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96a" id="Page_96a">[Pg 96a]</a></span>standing 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96b" id="Page_96b">[Pg 96b]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img096.jpg"  width="500" height="370" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96c" id="Page_96c">[Pg 96c]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, chi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97a" id="Page_97a">[Pg 97a]</a></span>canery 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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Pecuniary matters</h3>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as seems likely&mdash;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&mdash;a
+hopeful trend of recent date&mdash;a private organization's use of its money
+to facilitate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97b" id="Page_97b">[Pg 97b]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img097.jpg"  width="359" height="500" alt="Coins" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97c" id="Page_97c">[Pg 97c]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 proj<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98a" id="Page_98a">[Pg 98a]</a></span>ects 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>The implications of complexity</h3>
+
+<p>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 ear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98b" id="Page_98b">[Pg 98b]</a></span>lier 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.</p>
+
+<p>Taken all together and linked to the assumption&mdash;fundamental in this
+report&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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 pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98c" id="Page_98c">[Pg 98c]</a></span>tection, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99a" id="Page_99a">[Pg 99a]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>The question of an agency</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>An <i>interstate compact</i> 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 <i>Federal-interstate compact</i>,
+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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99b" id="Page_99b">[Pg 99b]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Two kinds of Federally-directed bodies with primary emphasis on planning
+are in operation in various river basins. <i>A Title II river basin
+commission</i>, 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 <i>Basin inter-agency committee</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 recom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99c" id="Page_99c">[Pg 99c]</a></span>mended by
+the commission.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100a" id="Page_100a">[Pg 100a]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;one each from the four Basin States,
+the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100b" id="Page_100b">[Pg 100b]</a></span> 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&mdash;adequate authority, accepted responsibility, and protection
+of the interests of the participant jurisdictions while moving toward
+coordinated Basinwide accomplishment&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100c" id="Page_100c">[Pg 100c]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<h3>Action now</h3>
+
+<p>In the different chapters of this report,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101a" id="Page_101a">[Pg 101a]</a></span> 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 <i>Interim Report</i> 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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>(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;</p>
+
+<p>(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;</p>
+
+<p>(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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101b" id="Page_101b">[Pg 101b]</a></span> D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland;</p>
+
+<p>(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;</p>
+
+<p>(5) That water quality programs and research be accelerated toward
+certain minimum goals;</p>
+
+<p>(6) That Soil Conservation Service and related Forest Service
+programs for erosion control, water management and development, and
+recreation benefits be accelerated;</p>
+
+<p>(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;</p>
+
+<p>(8) That Mason Neck on the upper estuary be preserved; and</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p></div>
+
+<p>One of the recommendations has had to be deferred, though the need
+implicit in it remains acute&mdash;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&mdash;the primary point of reference being Western<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101c" id="Page_101c">[Pg 101c]</a></span> streams
+flowing through sparsely peopled, often publicly owned country&mdash;would
+make sense or be feasible in a settled region.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the <i>Interim Report</i> 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
+re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102a" id="Page_102a">[Pg 102a]</a></span>ality, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Interim Report</i>, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102b" id="Page_102b">[Pg 102b]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>These considerations still apply. However, the more complete picture of
+Basin water problems that has emerged in our studies since the <i>Interim
+Report</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102c" id="Page_102c">[Pg 102c]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img103.jpg"  width="400" height="271" alt="Tunnel" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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 plan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>ners freedom to choose perhaps better ways of
+meeting future demands than are now available.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;stretches like the lower North Branch and the metropolitan
+estuary&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_NATIONS_RIVER" id="THE_NATIONS_RIVER"></a>VI. THE NATION'S RIVER</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ACTION PLAN</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img105.jpg"  width="500" height="252" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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:</p>
+
+<p>a. During the next five years a series of actions must be taken to
+control the Basin's most immediate pollution problems:</p>
+
+<p>(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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(6) Adoption and implementation by State and local authorities of a
+policy that will prevent significant quality deterioration in high
+quality waters.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>(1) First must come research and investigations to seek better
+methods of control where existing information and technology are
+inadequate. This includes:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(e) Completion of a survey of agricultural waste sources in the
+Basin, both organic and chemical, and the application of measures
+to control them.</p>
+
+<p>(f) Acceleration of research to find methods of treating industrial
+wastes for which suitable methods presently are not available.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Concurrently&mdash;and at the earliest possible date&mdash;must come
+application of knowledge obtained through research, demonstration
+projects and field investi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>gations 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:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img106.jpg"  width="500" height="368" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>2. For the control of sedimentation and erosion and their effects, the
+following action will be needed:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>a. Cooperative Federal-State-local efforts to accelerate land-use
+adjustment and land treatment in the Basin.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img110.jpg"  width="500" height="370" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Large-scale or general problems call for large or general
+actions:</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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 <i>Potomac Interim
+Report to the President</i> 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 <i>Interim Report</i> and was recommended in
+the Corps of Engineers <i>Potomac River Basin Report of 1963</i>.
+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.</p>
+
+<p>According to present data, for maximum usefulness and safety,
+Bloomington<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> should be completed on an expeditious basis and the
+others at appropriate intervals thereafter in relation to growth of
+demand.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>(a) Individual reservoirs should be susceptible to reevaluation and
+modification during design stage in light of new techniques of
+water supply&mdash;including demonstrated feasibility and acceptability
+of the upper estuary for this purpose&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<p>(c) A special study should be made, based on extension and
+coordination of studies now authorized or under way to determine
+the feasibility and accepta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>bility 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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img112.jpg"  width="500" height="366" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>(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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img112.jpg"  width="500" height="366" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+<p>(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.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img114.jpg"  width="500" height="368" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img116.jpg"  width="500" height="377" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></div>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> more available for public use and
+enjoyment. For these purposes, the following measures are strongly
+recommended:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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 <i>Potomac Interim Report</i>, is detailed in the
+legislative proposal now being considered by Congress.</p>
+
+<p>2. Completion of the long-deferred restoration and improvement of
+public facilities along the C. &amp; 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. &amp; O. feeder dams should be rehabilitated or
+rebuilt, sections of the Canal rewatered, and better public access
+provided.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>4. Encouragement of local action to preserve the banks of smaller
+free-flowing streams by zoning, park acquisition, or other means.</p>
+
+<p>5. Provision, under auspices of State fish and wildlife agencies or
+otherwise, or better facilities for public access to all main
+streams&mdash;including, where appropriate, roads, trails, parking
+areas, boat launching ramps, and public transportation.</p></div>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img118.jpg"  width="500" height="382" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>2. Research and management programs of the fish and wildlife
+agencies are vital, and need expansion based in broad public
+support and adequate funding.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img122.jpg"  width="500" height="370" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>2. Development of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation
+Area, designated by Congress in 1965, should be accelerated.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img124.jpg"  width="500" height="370" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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 <i>Potomac Interim Report to the President</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the two trunk
+elements of the system&mdash;will be promptly achieved under the
+legislation recently acted upon by the Congress.</p></div>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>2. If the Basin's traditional farms are to be preserved not only
+for their beauty and as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> 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.</p></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img126.jpg"  width="500" height="388" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img129.jpg"  width="500" height="429" alt="End cover" title="" /></div>
+<p><br /></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgdcover.jpg"  width="500" height="391" alt="Untitled" title="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nation's River, by 
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nation's River, by 
+United States Department of the Interior
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Nation's River
+       The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac
+
+Author: United States Department of the Interior
+
+Commentator: Stewart L. Udall, Kenneth Holum and James J. O'Donnell
+
+Release Date: February 2, 2007 [EBook #20503]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NATION'S RIVER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark C. Orton, Janet Blenkinship and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    THE NATION'S RIVER
+
+
+    A report on the Potomac from the U.S. Department of the Interior,
+    with recommendations for action by the Federal Interdepartmental
+    Task Force on the Potomac.
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS OF TRANSMITTAL
+
+UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
+
+OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240
+
+  October 1, 1968
+
+  Dear Mr. President
+
+The enclosed report, _The Nation's River_, is submitted in response to
+your February 8, 1965, request that we prepare a program for your
+consideration which would assure that the Potomac would serve as a model
+of scenic and recreation values for the entire country.
+
+This is the final report of your Potomac planning team. In my opinion,
+the study contributes significantly to a more complete understanding of
+both the opportunities and the problems of this magnificent river. The
+proposed program of action, when implemented, will move the area a long
+step forward toward the challenging goals identified in your directive.
+
+Your call for a broadly based conservation plan for the Potomac has
+stimulated a wide range of useful actions by citizens' groups and by the
+Federal, State and local governments during the course of our studies.
+While these are too numerous to recite, the participation and
+involvement of citizens in decisions affecting the future of the Basin
+are most promising and deserve recognition and encouragement.
+
+Our recommendations for action cover three broad aspects:
+
+... those related to present and future water resource problems in the
+Basin; ... those related to the protection and restoration of the
+Basin's scenic and natural assets; ... those to ensure that future
+planning and action will proceed in a wise and coordinated manner.
+
+I call particular attention to the following recommendations:
+
+... to protect the mainstem Potomac River and its banks from Washington
+to Cumberland, Maryland, and to make it accessible to the public, the
+report calls for prompt legislative authorization, funding and
+establishment of a Potomac National River consisting of Federal, State
+and local components. The proposed legislation to establish the Potomac
+National River which you sent to the Congress on March 6, 1968, and
+which was introduced as S. 3157, is based on the new and exciting
+concept that the urgent objectives of Potomac River conservation can and
+should be accomplished through cooperative action by all levels of
+government;
+
+... to achieve the water-quality goals established as State standards,
+the report recommends coordination of Federal, State and local powers to
+achieve the waste treatment measures required, within five years, and
+effective action toward meeting similar requirements in handling wastes
+at all Federal establishments in the Basin. It calls, also, for
+immediate reconvening of the 1957 Enforcement Conference on the Potomac
+to focus attention on the timetables for controlling pollution in the
+estuary;
+
+... to provide a measure of drought insurance, the report calls for
+early completion of Bloomington Dam and Reservoir;
+
+... to meet growing needs for municipal and industrial water to achieve
+anticipated economic growth in upstream areas, the report identified six
+reservoirs which are consistent with other aspects of the report. The
+river management afforded by operation of the reservoirs could also meet
+the water supply needs of the Washington metropolitan area for at least
+20 years. The report urges continuing research and study of alternative
+sources for the metropolitan area supply, including use of the upper
+estuary to meet critical short-term demands;
+
+... to assure continuity of comprehensive planning and management, the
+report recognizes the need to mobilize the skills and authorities of
+all levels of government and support therefore by alert and informed
+citizens and citizen groups. The Governors of the Basin States and the
+District of Columbia have proposed a Federal-Interstate Compact for the
+Potomac and arranged to have a draft prepared by the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee. The Water Resources Council will continue to work
+with the States in this effort--anticipating that proposals will emerge
+which merit both State and Federal support.
+
+Your assignment, Mr. President, has been exciting and challenging. We
+hope that our effort has contributed to achieving your dreams for this
+magnificent valley.
+
+  Respectfully yours,
+
+  [signature]
+
+  Secretary of the Interior
+
+  The President
+  The White House
+  Washington, D.C.
+
+  Enclosure
+
+
+  UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
+  OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
+  WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240
+
+  October 1, 1968
+
+Dear Mr. Secretary:
+
+Since early February 1965, when President Johnson asked you to develop a
+program which would make the Potomac "a model of scenic and recreation
+values", there has been a continuing joint effort to achieve this
+exciting objective.
+
+The Interdepartmental Task Force, which you and your fellow Cabinet
+officers established, has coordinated the Federal effort. When the four
+Basin State Governors and the Commissioner of the District of Columbia
+acted to establish the Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, we had a
+genuine opportunity to achieve useful and effective Federal-State
+cooperative relationships. As you know, our two groups have worked
+together in a cordial and productive way.
+
+We have listened carefully to the views of individual citizens and
+citizen groups in a real effort to sense the needs and aspirations of
+the people who live in the valley and the millions who visit our
+Nation's Capital and the historic and beautiful Potomac valley.
+Publication of an Interim Report two years ago proved to be a useful
+means for obtaining citizen participation.
+
+This report summarizes a series of studies made in response to the
+President's directive. Although it is our final report, we urge that it
+be looked upon as the next step in a continuing planning process. It
+points to action to meet present and near-term needs and to the
+desirability of continued planning to provide sound bases for the
+further resource-use decisions which citizens of the Basin will be
+called upon to make as those decisions become more timely.
+
+The body of the report is a Department of the Interior document, couched
+whenever possible in nontechnical language in the hope that it may find
+a wide lay readership. The program for action, which constitutes the
+final chapter, is concurred in by the Federal agencies on the
+Interdepartmental Task Force. Comments of the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee are set forth in the attached letter from its
+Chairman, Mr. James J. O'Donnell. Responsibility for leadership in
+proceeding with the proposed actions is identified, as appropriate, to
+specific Federal agencies, States or local governmental entities.
+
+Other reports have been or will be issued which form integral parts of
+this endeavor. These include the following:
+
+     _Potomac Interim Report to the President_--January 1966 ... _The
+     Creek and The City_--Urban Pressures on a Natural Stream--Rock
+     Creek Park and Metropolitan Washington--January 1967 ... _The
+     Potomac_--The Report of the Potomac Planning Task Force--Assembled
+     by the American Institute of Architects--September 1967 ... _Report
+     of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army Corps of Engineers,
+     Potomac River Basin, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia,
+     Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia_ (This report, now in
+     the process of official review, will provide a basis for action on
+     water supply and related matters.)
+
+In addition to the published documents, each of the four Sub-Task Forces
+established by the Interdepartmental Task Force prepared reports which
+constituted invaluable working documents on several aspects of Potomac
+Basin planning. These include the following:
+
+     _Report of the Water Supply and Flood Control Sub-Task Force_ ...
+     _Report of the Water Quality Sub-Task Force_ ... _Report of the
+     Sedimentation and Erosion Sub-Task Force_ ... _Report of the
+     Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force_.
+
+Copies of these working documents will be distributed to concerned
+local, State and Federal agencies and will be on file in those offices.
+
+You will note particularly that the attached report emphasizes the
+urgent need for a continuing and broadly based planning effort. If we
+are to fully achieve the objective of making the Potomac a model, and we
+must, resource planning and management must mobilize the authorities and
+the skills of the Federal Government, the States, the local
+jurisdictions and the citizens. I am convinced that the Potomac Basin
+needs:
+
+     ... an alert, active, basinwide citizen organization with the
+     perspective to see the area's total needs and the determination to
+     make certain that action is taken to meet those requirements;
+
+... a formally established relationship between the various levels of
+government to continue comprehensive planning--and to make certain that
+action at all levels is consistent with the established objectives.
+
+  Sincerely yours,
+
+  [signature]
+
+  Kenneth Holum
+  Assistant Secretary
+
+  Honorable Stewart L. Udall, Secretary
+  Department of the Interior
+  Washington, D.C. 20240
+
+  Enclosure
+
+
+
+
+  POTOMAC RIVER BASIN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
+  1025 VERMONT AVENUE, N.W.,
+  WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005
+
+  MARYLAND
+  PENNSYLVANIA
+  VIRGINIA
+  WEST VIRGINIA
+  DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
+
+  September 15, 1968
+
+Dear Mr. Holum,
+
+The Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee was pleased to have the
+opportunity to review the recommendations compiled by the Federal
+Interdepartmental Task Force for inclusion in the forthcoming Report to
+the President. These recommendations represent the culmination of
+intensive studies in the areas of water supply and flood control, water
+quality, sedimentation and erosion, and landscape and recreation. As
+such, they are of the utmost significance to the people of the Potomac
+River Basin.
+
+We note in particular that the recommendations
+
+     (a) Highlight today's most pressing problems and propose feasible
+     solutions;
+
+     (b) Recognize the interrelationship of the separate needs of the
+     urban and rural areas of the Basin, and propose action by federal,
+     state and local governments;
+
+     (c) Specifically consider the economic growth of the Basin in
+     relation to water resources development; and
+
+     (d) Emphasize the need for an intergovernmental organization, along
+     the lines of the proposed Potomac River Basin Compact, which would
+     have continuing responsibilities for the planning and development
+     of the Potomac River Basin.
+
+During the past two years the Advisory Committee has focused attention
+on preparation of a draft of a proposed interstate-federal compact which
+has been submitted to the governments and the people within the Potomac
+River Basin for comment. We believe that an interstate-federal agency
+for the planning, development and management of the Potomac, envisaged
+by the Compact, offers by far the most promising opportunity for the
+people of the Basin to guide the water resources development of the
+Potomac, and for the implementation of many of the Report's
+recommendations.
+
+The Advisory Committee wishes to commend the Federal Interdepartmental
+Task Force for the constructive and imaginative manner in which this
+difficult assignment has been carried out. The Committee wishes also to
+thank you for the opportunity of being associated with the work of the
+Task Force through our state observers.
+
+As representatives of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
+and the District of Columbia, we shall recommend that our heads of
+government, the legislatures, and the state and local agencies accord
+the most careful consideration to this report.
+
+  Sincerely yours,
+
+  [signature]
+
+  James J. O'Donnell, Chairman
+  Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee
+
+  Honorable Kenneth Holum
+  Assistant Secretary
+  Department of the Interior
+  Washington, D.C. 20240
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  THE RIVER IN TIME                                                    8
+  I THE WAY THINGS ARE                                                15
+  II TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER                                       23
+  III THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS                                     39
+  IV A GOOD PLACE TO BE                                               65
+  V COMPLEXITIES AND PRIORITIES                                       93
+  VI THE NATION'S RIVER--AN ACTION PLAN                              105
+
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. All   |
+|other inconstencies in spelling or punctuation are as in the original.|
++----------------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER IN TIME
+
+
+_Time, abetted by man and nature, has changed the face of the Nation's
+River. Nature's rains, snows, ice and floods continually carve the
+shores. Man, also, changes the Potomac through man-made fills, walls,
+docks, bridges and piers. The arbitrary changes by man and nature have
+reached the point where careful planning and consideration must be given
+to the river's future in order to preserve its majestic beauty as The
+Nation's River._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: 1830]
+
+[Illustration: 1800]
+
+[Illustration: 1872]
+
+[Illustration: 1936 Flood scene]
+
+[Illustration: Civil War Chain Bridge]
+
+[Illustration: Early 1900--canoeists near Seneca, Md.]
+
+[Illustration: 1917 Washington Waterfront]
+
+[Illustration: Washington Waterfront today]
+
+[Illustration: POTOMAC RIVER BASIN]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I THE WAY THINGS ARE
+
+
+With good reason, people sometimes claim that the Potomac has been
+studied more often and more thoroughly than any other American stream.
+Its intimacy with the national capital at Washington and with great
+figures and events of our history have centered much American interest
+on it. In many ways it is a classic Eastern river, copious and scenic,
+that drains some 15,000 square miles of varied, historic, and often
+striking landscape, from the green mountains along the Allegheny Front
+to the sultry lowlands of the estuary's shores where the earliest
+plantations were established among the Indian tribes. It has tributaries
+large and small whose names echo with connotations for American
+ears--the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, the Saint Mary's, Antietam Creek,
+Bull Run....
+
+And it has long been the subject for debate and discussion over how it
+may best be handled to serve man's ends, for in common with other rivers
+in civilized regions it has developed problems of pollution, of
+landscape destruction, of occasional floods, of impending shortages of
+water for its basin's increasing population. Out of the debates have
+emerged studies and plans, some fragmentary and some whole, some
+specialized and some general. This present report concerns the latest
+study, made under the leadership of Secretary of the Interior Stewart L.
+Udall according to a directive given him by President Johnson in 1965.
+The report is "final" only in that it sums up this study. It is by no
+means final in terms of the Potomac, for it points toward future action
+and continuing study and planning, and an important part of its function
+will be to show why a degree of inconclusiveness in such matters is
+necessary and desirable.
+
+Within a remarkably few years after Captain John Smith sailed up the
+Potomac estuary in 1608 to assess its treasures and to make the
+acquaintance of the Algonquian tribesmen whose villages flourished on
+either shore, other vigorous white men came there to stay, on both the
+Maryland and Virginia sides. In the century that followed they raced and
+leapfrogged one another upriver, elbowing the Indians out, and with the
+aid of indentured labor and later of African slaves they helped to shape
+the Tidewater tobacco civilization that engendered so many future
+leaders of the American republic. Near the head of navigation, shipping
+centers grew up--among them Alexandria and Georgetown, forerunners of
+the metropolis that bestrides the river at the Fall Line today. Above
+there in the upper Piedmont, and then across the Blue Ridge in the Great
+Valley, the westering waves of migrant English met other waves of
+Scotch-Irish and the Germans coming down from Pennsylvania, and before
+the American Revolution the combined breeds of men had built up enough
+pressure to push Indians almost entirely out of the Potomac Basin and to
+occupy all the good farmland, even in the Basin's ridged western areas.
+
+Since then their successors have used the land for farming and for other
+purposes. In using it they have changed it, and the changes have
+registered in the river system that drains it. For land, water,
+vegetation, wildlife, minerals, and men's habits are not separable from
+one another in the natural frame. So that if the early planters, using
+methods of hoe tillage scarcely less primitive than those of the
+Indians, mined the Tidewater soils for tobacco production in a way that
+required new fields every few years, one result was that those soils
+tired and thinned and finally stopped supporting the social magnificence
+that had grown up there, for production and prosperity moved inland and
+west. And another result was that the Potomac estuary itself grew
+shallower and different with the silt that washed down off the land, and
+many a tributary bay that once served as harbor for oceangoing ships is
+now a rich, reedy marsh with a single narrow gut of shoal water
+wandering down across it to the Potomac.
+
+And if later generations of men cut down the forests on the mountains in
+the western Basin, and fire followed the cutting, thousands of years of
+soil washed down from those slopes too to change both mountains and
+river, and elk and panther vanished. And if along the Potomac's North
+Branch there was once a fine coal boom, there is now the boom's legacy
+in the form of gray dour towns and dark sad streams corrosive with mine
+acids.
+
+And if old Alexandria and Georgetown and all the land around them have
+burgeoned into one of the nation's great cities, there has been a price
+to pay for that also. The stately upper estuary on which they front is
+often turbid with silt and sometimes emerald green with algae nourished
+on sewage and other septic riches, and the hills stretching back from
+the river are spiky with tall buildings linked by urban and suburban
+clutter, where life lacks the natural elbow room that the old Tidewater
+folk--planters and yeomen and bondsmen and slaves alike--were able to
+take for granted.
+
+These are facets of an Age of Problems, of course. They and other
+related troubles have been growing apace lately as men have grown in
+numbers, in the demands they make on the natural environment that shaped
+and nourished their species, and in their technological power to enforce
+those demands. The troubles pose a threat to men of flavorlessness and
+grayness and the loss of essential meanings, a threat of diminished
+humanity. For dependence on that environment, intricate and deep-rooted,
+psychological as well as physical, has not grown less with the human
+advance toward power and sophistication.
+
+Yet in the Potomac Basin as a whole the threat so far is mainly still a
+threat, not a reality. Where men's employment of the land has been
+reasonable, as it has in the Great Valley almost from the start, the
+land not only remains useful and pleasant but has a specific traditional
+beauty dependent on man's presence. Where new comprehension of the
+processes of destruction has been attained and shared, as in soil
+conservation and forestry and such fields, much damage done in the past
+has been repaired.
+
+Most of the Potomac river system's flowing waters are unnaturally
+polluted to one degree or another, but only in spots does the pollution
+even approach the sort of poisonous hopelessness to be found along some
+more heavily populated and industrialized American rivers, and on the
+Potomac its spread is already being slowed. Water shortages loom, but
+have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at
+certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington
+metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller
+life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the communities built
+to receive them often deny it to them. But in modern terms there are not
+really enormous numbers of them yet, and for their pleasure and
+fulfillment a great deal of varied and handsome and historic landscape
+has been more or less preserved, by design or happy accident.
+
+[Illustration: Proposed Water Resource Development
+
+  1. Sixes Bridge
+  2. Sideling Hill
+  3. Town Creek
+  4. Little Cacapon
+  5. North Mountain
+  6. Verona (Staunton)
+
+]
+
+[Illustration: North Mountain]
+
+[Illustration: Town Creek]
+
+The Potomac Basin, in other words, is still generally a wholesome place
+two-thirds of the way through the 20th century. If it gets the
+protection it deserves, and is developed thoughtfully and decently to
+meet men's demands upon its resources, it can stay a wholesome place
+into the indefinite future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Water pollution was the first Basinwide problem to make itself
+thoroughly evident, and the need to deal with it led to the first
+Basinwide activities besides studies. Soil conservation practices for
+sediment control were instituted in the 1930's, and in 1940 the
+Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, often called INCOPOT,
+was formed by compact among the four Basin States and the District of
+Columbia, with the formal permission of Congress. INCOPOT's powers are
+only advisory in relation to State and community action against
+pollution, and it has never been generously financed. But during the
+quarter-century of its existence it has developed a wise combination of
+investigation, persuasion, and public education to fight this problem,
+with the result that on the Potomac conditions have in some ways
+actually improved during a period of wars and booms and haphazard urban
+expansion when many other rivers were headed straight down to stinking
+corruption.
+
+In 1956 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was directed by Congress to
+undertake a Basinwide study to develop a plan for flood control and the
+conservation of water resources and related land resources. The emphasis
+in this assignment was upon a full long-term functional solution for the
+Basin's water problems in feasible economic and technological terms. In
+carrying it out, the Army enlisted the aid of other Federal agencies,
+and their _Potomac River Basin Report_, published in nine volumes in
+1963, presented the study's results and a plan for Basin water
+development to meet needs to the year 2010. It is a monumental piece of
+work to which anyone concerned with the Basin henceforth will have to
+refer, because of the completeness with which it examines the Potomac
+water resource and the careful technical knowledge it brings to bear on
+Potomac problems.
+
+However, the plan it presents--including recommendations for sixteen
+major multipurpose reservoirs on the Potomac and its tributaries--would
+bring about a massive and permanent revision of the free-flowing stream
+system and would inundate much valley land. It aroused articulate
+opposition at local, state, and Congressional levels, a good deal of
+which was focused on the key Seneca dam on the Potomac main stem just
+above Washington--an area where earlier single proposals for dams, first
+at Great Falls and then at River Bend, had provoked similar resistance.
+
+Clearly enough, a powerful continuing body of opinion cares about
+something more than strictly functional values along the Potomac and in
+its Basin. It is a long-settled region, whose natives generally cherish
+what they have in the way of scenic and historic amenities. It is the
+part-time home of many influential lawmakers, who concern themselves
+about its beauty and well-being. And together with the national capital
+at the core of its metropolis, it is the vacation goal of millions of
+American tourists from elsewhere each year, who go home aware not only
+of monuments and marble halls of state but of crucial Civil War
+battlefields, dark mountain ridges overlooking classic river valleys,
+rolling Piedmont estates, and the wooded headlands of Virginia and
+Maryland that recede behind one another into haze as one looks down the
+estuary in summertime.
+
+This national interest in the river was recognized publicly early in
+1965 by President Johnson when, in connection with his noted "Message on
+Natural Beauty," he issued directives to Secretary Udall making him
+responsible for the preparation of a conservation plan for the Potomac.
+In addition to the tasks of cleaning up the river, assuring an adequate
+water supply for the decades ahead, and providing flood protection, the
+Secretary was instructed to protect the natural beauty of the river and
+its Basin and to plan for full recreational opportunities there for both
+natives and visitors. A stipulated aim, which seized the public
+imagination, was to make the Potomac a model of scenic and recreational
+values for the entire nation.
+
+In response, the Secretary shaped a Federal Interdepartmental Task Force
+under Interior direction, in whose specialized sub-task forces were
+enlisted the skills available in the Corps of Engineers, the Department
+of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (where
+the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was then located),
+and the various concerned bureaus and services of the Interior
+Department itself. Shortly after this, Secretary Udall met with the
+governors of the four Basin States and the commissioners of the District
+of Columbia to ensure that State and local interests would have a hand
+in the planning process. Out of this came the Potomac River Basin
+Advisory Committee, composed of State and District representatives,
+which has conferred often with the Interdepartmental Task Force on
+overall questions and has assumed prime responsibility in studying the
+central problem of creating a planning and administrative body to handle
+Potomac water and related land problems hereafter.
+
+In addition, a blue-ribbon panel of distinguished planners and
+specialists, assembled by the former president of the American Institute
+of Architects at Secretary Udall's request and subsequently known as the
+Potomac Planning Task Force, undertook a separate study of Potomac
+questions, both in general and with specific focus on the metropolis.
+Their independent report, The Potomac, was lately published. It makes a
+detailed, wise, and instructive plea for considering the river and its
+landscape as a whole and meaningful thing, for proceeding with their
+development and protection according to high esthetic and ecological
+principles, and for a distinctive form of management.
+
+Existing private, public, and semipublic organizations with an interest
+in the Potomac or in the type of problems it presents have joined in the
+present effort by sponsoring public meetings and publishing discussions
+or otherwise doing their part to help. Among them may be mentioned
+INCOPOT, the Conservation Foundation, the Metropolitan Washington
+Council of Government, Resources for the Future, Inc., the League of
+Women Voters, the Potomac Basin Center, the National Parks Association,
+and a number of local planning or action bodies. Through these meetings
+and other media, public comment on the Federal Task Force's work has
+been voluminous and often helpful, particularly since the publication of
+its _Interim Report_ in January of 1966, which made certain proposals
+for immediate action to begin providing for short-term metropolitan
+water needs, to protect specific scenic treasures, and to get moving on
+the long task of cleaning up the river.
+
+With so many viewpoints somehow included in the planning process,
+opinions have often diverged as to how much of what ought to be done
+about the Potomac, and how soon, and in what order. Well they may
+diverge. In a time of economic expansion and population growth
+unparalleled in human history, predictions about the economy and the
+population of the distant future--necessary to full planning--verge
+perilously near to crystal gazing even when the best available
+yardsticks are applied. And this is only one uncertainty. Among the
+others which will be examined later in this report are the prospect of
+drastic technological change that may soon offer cheaper, more
+effective, and less disruptive ways of dealing with environmental
+problems including water; the doubtfulness of sufficient public money
+for large conservation projects in a time of international tensions and
+urban crisis; and the solid American political complexity of the
+boundary-laced Potomac Basin, which bristles with various forms of veto
+power and a multiplicity of assorted regional, professional, and
+philosophical viewpoints.
+
+Such complexities and uncertainties have a powerful reality and
+relevance for planners. They impose a need for breadth of view, for
+leaving many future options open, and by the same token they present a
+danger of piecemeal action, excessive compromise and indecisiveness.
+
+The body of this report is an Interior Department document, couched
+wherever possible in untechnical language in the hope that it may find a
+wide lay readership. Necessary technical supporting material mainly has
+been or will be made available in separate form. The report examines
+environmental problems in the Potomac Basin and possible solutions for
+them. Its underlying emphasis is ecological, based in a conviction that
+man's own good is heavily dependent on the good of the earth in all its
+complexity. No one at this point in time, obviously, is going to be able
+to reconstitute the primeval Paleolithic world, nor would many people
+want to. The earth has changed with people in their long surge toward
+dominion over its ways and its creatures. But there is a difference
+between adaptive change and the degeneration that modern times are
+forcing on the earth men have always known. Growing millions of people
+are coming to consider that human beings' right to see and know woods
+and plains and mountains and streams and coasts in a cleanly and decent
+condition--whether primitive or adapted in one way or another to man's
+use--together with the communities of wild creatures that belong there,
+is quite as practical and urgent as their right to usable tap water or
+to a share in the Gross National Product. For upon the retention of
+these ancient realities future human sanity and wholeness may well
+depend.
+
+We who are responsible for this report believe that this point of view
+is going to gain enough strength and political acceptance to become one
+of the motive forces of this century. Already it has much power. Even
+though many established attitudes, laws, and practices are still firmly
+rooted in the old exploitative, often heroic urge to seize upon all
+resources and put them to use at whatever ultimate cost, disgust over
+pollution and the destruction of beautiful places is getting to be a
+political factor to be reckoned with at all levels of government. So is
+concern over man's lemminglike multiplication in numbers and the way
+his technology and his expansionism are gobbling up things quiet and
+graceful and eternal--things he needs. It seems certain that political
+"muscle" and respectability for the legitimate conservationist viewpoint
+is shaping up fast enough that it will be able to dissipate the worst
+threats--the grabbing and the spoiling, the ignorance and the archaic
+attitudes, the onward shove of brute technology for technology's own
+sake rather than for man's--before they have forced mankind on into the
+gray sterility of life that would be their ultimate effect.
+
+And upon the emerging potency of this sound and urgent concern with the
+way the natural world is being used up, we believe a flexible form of
+planning can be based that will do away with the dilemma posed by the
+complexities and uncertainties of the moment. With a minimum of
+compromise, such planning will be able to identify and propose solutions
+for immediate problems in places like the Potomac Basin, while moving
+toward longrun solutions for other problems as those problems'
+dimensions become clearer than at present, and as technology and
+politics make better solutions feasible.
+
+Solutions for pressing and immediate problems have to be in terms of
+present possibilities--political, financial, and technological. Some
+such immediate problems--of water supply, pollution control, and scenic
+preservation--exist in the Potomac Basin and are analyzed in this
+report, and presently feasible action is recommended for their
+alleviation. A considerable part of the report is concerned with such
+problems, with the range of possible solutions for them and with our
+reasons for making specific recommendations.
+
+These immediate solutions do not constitute what has been called a
+"quick fix"--piecemeal, one-shot action to patch up things until another
+crisis arises. As much as possible, they have been worked into the
+picture of longterm Basin needs insofar as those needs can be discerned,
+and it is intended that action against future problems shall be built
+upon them. Furthermore, we have sought to maintain an ample view in
+identifying long-term difficulties and indicating what should be aimed
+for when it is essential to act against them.
+
+But we have not shaped a rigidly complete, prescriptive plan identifying
+exact measures for the cure of all present and future ills of the
+Potomac Basin. For a variety of reasons, we have concluded that such a
+rigid plan would not only be self-defeating in the long run, but that it
+is actually undesirable. We are aware that this conclusion is going to
+arouse criticism among those who during the past three years have
+consistently demanded that we provide a total answer, for the purpose
+either of unseating the governing principles of the 1963 plan or of
+reinforcing and amplifying those principles. Nevertheless we are certain
+that the conclusion is right.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It would be right even if the development of new technology were the
+only uncertainty confronting planners. Barring a complete breakdown in
+the present impetus of research and discovery, radical change in the
+technology of water supply and water quality control appears to be
+extremely probable within the next few decades. Some of the best of the
+emerging tools, there is reason to hope, may permit men to deal with
+water problems in ways that are more harmonious with natural ways and
+less structurally imposing than present methods. Possibly the present,
+often essential reliance on large storage reservoirs, for instance, is
+going to be modified, though how much the ultimate way of doing things
+will have to combine old and new technologies is something that cannot
+be guessed.
+
+If it cannot yet be guessed, it cannot be incorporated in a rigid plan,
+which has to deal in technological certainties--i.e. in present
+technology--and must therefore impose that present technology on the
+future, whether or not the future is going to need it. If we are right
+in believing that from this generation on, people are going to be
+increasingly jealous in the preservation of their natural heritage,
+future Americans will not be likely to thank this generation for having
+unnecessarily robbed them of choices as to how to handle the
+streamwaters of a superb river basin like the Potomac's. Any more than
+they would thank us for having done nothing at all and leaving them to
+scramble for water, and filthy water at that. Quite simply, no one has
+the right to do either of these things to them.
+
+It is our belief that if genuinely conservationist values are
+established as the ruling principles in a flexible, properly paced,
+continuing planning process, there will be no need to fear that future
+generations are going to be either stuck with large mistakes on our
+part, or cursed with shortages, floods, and pollution. With this report
+we hope to initiate such a process for the Potomac.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+II TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER
+
+
+If the Potomac has been much studied, it has nevertheless been subjected
+to only meager "development" over the centuries of its service to
+civilized men. Most past attempts to alter it significantly for man's
+use have either failed or have not led to lasting results, though their
+changing purposes over the years summarize, to a degree, America's
+shifting attitudes toward the utility of flowing water. Early projects
+under George Washington and others to assure the navigability of the
+main river above the Fall Line, which they saw as an artery for eastward
+and westward currents of trade, left only some quaint ruined locks and
+flowing bypass canals around falls and rapids. The later C. & O. Canal,
+which ran alongside the river and was replenished by its water above
+occasional low dams, required over two decades of toil and death and
+heavy expense to complete upriver to Cumberland, Maryland, which it
+reached in 1850. There had been some public opposition to the project
+and it was never a great success even after completion, for the railroad
+era had begun and the Canal suffered periodic heavy damage from Potomac
+floods, being finally abandoned to picturesque decay after a mighty
+inundation in 1924.
+
+Largely because of a stalemate between public and private power
+advocates, the early 20th century heyday of small-scale hydroelectric
+power development of rivers mainly missed the Potomac, though at one
+time a power company acquired land at Great Falls in anticipation of
+such development. Other modern water projects in the Basin have been
+relatively modest or have run afoul of strong opposition. Therefore,
+today a sprinkling of small channel power dams and water intake
+structures, some levees and improved creek channels, and a few
+unimposing reservoirs of various sizes and types high up on small
+tributaries are the sum total of the development to which the Potomac
+water resource has been lastingly subjected, if we disregard for the
+moment its waste disposal function and the maintenance of navigation in
+its estuary.
+
+In general this is undoubtedly a fortunate thing, for the application of
+modern technology to rivers in the past half-century of our national
+growth has not always had happy results. "A river," Justice Holmes once
+wrote, "is more than an amenity, it is a treasure." His feeling is
+shared by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who live
+along the Potomac and its tributaries or who go there to float down them
+in bass time, to picnic and swim, to hunt, to dig into the region's
+history, or just to listen to the purl of green water against the rough
+stonework of a ruined bridge pier. Deteriorated though a few stretches
+may presently be, these rivers are still treasures.
+
+The lack of development also presents planners with a fairly clean slate
+on which to write. In terms of water, few massive human mistakes
+confront them except the pollution of the upper estuary and certain
+other reaches like the afflicted North Branch. Therefore they can begin
+more or less from scratch and can usually find various choices for
+action against the water problems of the Basin--against pollution,
+against flood damages, and against impending or existing shortages of
+water for municipal and industrial use.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Though for clarity in discussion we need to classify these various kinds
+of problems separately, in practice they do not so neatly divide from
+one another. Nor do they divide from the way the land in the Basin is
+used or from the pleasure and fulfillment people find in the outdoors.
+If a region's use of a stream's water is heavy in a dry August, for
+instance, whatever pollution the stream gets below towns and factories
+will be more concentrated and damaging than if the stream were flowing
+well. Pollution itself can affect the utility of water as well as
+people's enjoyment of it in a stream. A creek watershed that has been
+ignorantly farmed or roughly assaulted with bulldozers for urban
+development is an eyesore of erosive destruction, unproductive of crops,
+wildlife, or poetic appreciation, and can cause both heavier stream
+flooding in time of storm and lower flow in time of drought by the way
+its disruption alters the normal behavior of rainwater. The silt that
+storms wash off of it is not only a major ugly pollutant of flowing
+water below that point but can complicate flooding and bank-cutting and
+navigation and other things by settling out into bars and shoals in
+still stretches, including reservoirs.
+
+All of these things, and others as well, have to be considered together
+as parts of a whole problem. And that problem is that men's hugely
+increasing numbers and their multiplying technological power over their
+environment have made it necessary to readjust the balances somewhat in
+great natural units like river basins--to restore, manage, and protect
+them in such a way as to be able to hand them over decent and whole and
+useful to the people who come after.
+
+
+Problems of Water Supply in the Potomac Basin
+
+Wisely handled, the water that runs annually through the streams of the
+Potomac river system can be counted on to satisfy any demands that
+people there are likely to make on it in present times or during the
+foreseeable future. More than 2-1/2 trillion gallons of fresh water
+normally flow down the Potomac in a year. It would be pleasant to
+believe that this means that the natural and unassisted river system is
+going to continue to serve human needs in the future as it has served
+them heretofore--that after cleaning up the network of streams and
+ensuring against their repollution and the desecration of their
+landscape, men will be able to leave them respectfully alone to run down
+toward the Chesapeake Bay as they have run during and before human
+memory.
+
+However, it is not so. Whatever human population might be considered
+ecologically tolerable under natural conditions for the nine million or
+so acres of earth, rocks, vegetation, and water that make up the Basin,
+it has long since been exceeded by hundreds on hundreds of thousands.
+And if those who predict such things are right, it is going to be
+exceeded much further in the near and middle future. Today's
+approximately 3.5 million Basin inhabitants are expected to double by
+the turn of the century, with accompanying complex shifts in the ways
+they will be making their livings and in the numbers of them who will
+live in the country as compared with the cities and towns. Thereafter,
+further geometric increases are contemplated, calmly by some
+contemplators and less so by others.
+
+As a result of past and present populations and their activities,
+conditions in the Basin--including the river system--are necessarily
+far from natural, for specific structural development is not the only
+form of change. The Potomac environment has been adapted to man's use,
+and in places where that use has been unreasonable it is already in
+trouble. Clearly it is going to have to be manipulated artificially to
+some extent to meet people's demands on it and to guard it against the
+worst effects of their numbers. In fact, very luckily, it already is
+being so manipulated in dozens of ways ranging from methods of farming
+and forest management to sewage treatment. It is possible to hope that
+present population forecasts may somehow find less than ample
+fulfillment, but it is not possible to count on it for planning
+purposes. Nor is it possible to wish out of existence situations already
+serious.
+
+[Illustration: WATER SUPPLY POTOMAC RIVER, WASH. D.C.]
+
+At times during the hot months of drouthy 1966, the climax of a dry
+cycle that had begun to develop five years earlier, the Washington
+metropolis was not too far from the bottom of its water barrel. The
+situation was not as bad as in some other Northeastern regions, nor as
+bad as some local analyses claimed, but it was bad enough. The highest
+daily withdrawal of the year was on June 26, when the metropolitan water
+intakes in the Potomac sucked out approximately 380 million gallons. Of
+this some 30 million gallons had to do with a pumping pattern pertinent
+to adjustments within the system, and the other 350 million went for the
+use and refreshment of a metropolis afflicted by summer's heat. The
+total figure represented less than half of the river's flow at that
+time.
+
+[Illustration: GROUND WATER LEVELS WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA]
+
+For a couple of days in September, however, the Potomac's flow reached
+an all-time low of about 390 million gallons a day. Even if the demand
+on those days had risen as high as in June, which it did not, there
+would still have been an excess, but not a very safe one. Heavy storms
+shortly thereafter eased the situation, and rainfall since then has
+definitely broken the long drought pattern, returning stream and
+groundwater levels to normal.
+
+The sober fact is that the Washington metropolis is nearing the point
+where its traditional main dependence on the Potomac's free and
+fluctuating flow for water supply--with supplementary quantities from
+Occoquan Creek, the Patuxent, and a few wells--is not going to work
+during prolonged dry periods. Total flow even in a drought year remains
+impressive, but dependable daily flow--which is what counts for
+supply--varies tremendously.
+
+Other centers of population in the Basin are up against water supply
+problems or are going to come up against them shortly. The towns and
+industries along the North Branch, around Cumberland and upstream, are
+strongly aware of a water need complicated by the deep-seated pollution
+of their stream system and the scenic and economic disruption of their
+watershed lands. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a handsome town in a
+prosperous farming district of the northern Great Valley, is approaching
+a critical point in the relationship between the water available to it
+and its demands. Far south in the Valley, Augusta County, Virginia,
+which contains the thriving towns of Staunton and Waynesboro, is
+experiencing an upward surge of industrial development that seems
+certain to continue and is going to call for a great deal more water
+than can be counted on from present sources. Public awareness of this is
+shown by the fact that county citizens voted in a referendum in November
+of 1966 in favor of construction of a Federal reservoir at Verona near
+Staunton on the Middle River, which had been strongly opposed when it
+was presented as a part of the Army 1963 plan.
+
+On the Monocacy in Maryland's Piedmont, the old agricultural center of
+Frederick has begun to come under the changeful, expansive influence of
+Megalopolis as a result of easier access from both Baltimore and
+Washington, and has been brought abruptly face to face with a looming
+water shortage. Recent studies by the Maryland Department of Water
+Resources indicate that the dependable flow of the Monocacy will not
+serve the town for more than another seven or eight years even if the
+flow needed to maintain adequate water quality is left out of account,
+and the summers of 1965 and 1966 made even those figures seem slightly
+optimistic. Both city and State have declared themselves in favor of an
+upstream major reservoir at Sixes Bridge, also a 1963 proposal. And
+elsewhere throughout the Basin, a good number of smaller places face
+similar dilemmas.
+
+
+Possible Answers
+
+Except for acid mine drainage, most of the Basin's main problems are
+found at metropolitan Washington. Because they are primarily people
+problems and more people live there than anywhere else, the problems
+tend to be bigger, including that of water supply. A conceivable
+shortage of several tens of millions of gallons of water per day within
+the near future is not a small shortage, and small measures are not
+going to cope with it.
+
+A number of possible measures have been considered and weighed. Some
+seem undesirable for one reason or another, even in terms of the distant
+future. Others are unusable now, but have promise for later, when more
+is known, or technological processes involved have been perfected, or
+cost have been brought within reason. Still others, undoubtedly, cannot
+even yet be discerned. And some will work now at prices that can be
+paid. Ultimately, it seems certain, the super-Metropolis of the future
+will depend on a mix of sources for its water, getting part of it by one
+means and part of it by another and so on, as technology makes new means
+possible, and as economy, safety, and other factors may dictate.
+Therefore, there is no single "right" answer for the long run, and an
+attempt to prescribe one inflexibly would compound confusion over the
+years and undoubtedly perpetrate an injustice on future citizens in ways
+already mentioned. We need to do them the favor of believing that they
+will be able to cope with their own immediate problems at least as well
+as we can do it for them, and probably in ways better suited to their
+tastes.
+
+Nevertheless, it is imperative that the city be given a margin of
+drought insurance for two decades or more, and for this margin some
+source definitely feasible in present terms must be identified and
+guaranteed.
+
+Going outside the Basin for any significant part of the metropolitan
+water supply does not appear to be justified. Some water is presently
+being drawn from impoundments on the Patuxent just north of the city,
+but no more of it can be counted on. Diversion from the voluminous
+Susquehanna much farther north is feasible from an engineering
+standpoint. But the cost of it would be relatively high, and there are
+also certain strong objections in principle, based on the facts that the
+Potomac does have plenty of water and there is no inherent moral
+advantage in transferring the question of development elsewhere, that
+the Susquehanna Basin may well need its own water at some future time,
+and that the ecological effects of such diversion on the immensely
+valuable fisheries of Chesapeake Bay, which are dependent in large part
+on a shifting balance of salinities maintained by the tributary rivers,
+are unclear.
+
+"Planned scarcity" of water in a community, wherein administrators and
+public alike accept the certainty that during dry times lawns and parks
+and golf courses and sometimes human skins will have to do without the
+application of water for a spell, is a reality of life in some arid
+regions and is probably always going to be. Elsewhere it is, or should
+be, an element in the design planning of industries that use heavy
+quantities of water for cooling and such processes. All water supply
+planning must consider it, for to build against any conceivable shortage
+would be prohibitively expensive. Pricing of water so as to cut down on
+waste without curtailing ample legitimate use may well be a longrun
+tool, as has been suggested. But in terms of general municipal and
+industrial water, any great degree of calculated shortage hardly seems
+appropriate for a humid-zone city which has a fine river at its doorstep
+and happens also to be the national capital, so that a scarcity would be
+of national concern in a number of ways. Federally established and
+maintained parks and open spaces, for instance, with their carefully
+tended vegetation, would be one of the first things to suffer.
+
+Desalting of sea water, another reality now in arid zones and one of
+immense importance, has a certain degree of planned scarcity built into
+it by way of its price, at least at present. Some people believe that in
+time this process will be refined to the point that it can furnish
+abundant cheap water to all the world's seacoast cities. Certainly as it
+develops it may well have a potential for marginal drought-proofing at
+Washington, an emergency source to be drawn upon if needed. But the day
+seems distant when it will be truly competitive in price with riverine
+sources in regions of adequate rainfall.
+
+Inland arid regions and perhaps other places as well are undoubtedly
+going to find one answer to water shortages in the recirculation of
+their treated waste waters through municipal systems. In one form or
+another such recirculation is already working at certain places in the
+United States on an emergency basis, and its full potential for
+industrial use has yet to be explored. However, the indications are that
+towns' and cities' reliance on it during anything but temporary
+emergency conditions is going to depend on expensive methods of
+refinement and "fail-safe" overdesign, plus dilution with new water,
+which means again that it will probably not be competitive in price with
+natural water where enough good natural water can be had. To this may be
+added the observation that the consuming public presently has a few
+definite lingering qualms about the idea involved, particularly if there
+is other water around.
+
+The underground rocks and sands of the Basin hold huge reserves of water
+with a fundamental relationship to the whole river system, whose basic
+dependable sources lie in these aquifers' outflow to the surface. Around
+the metropolis, some ground water is being taken from wells even now to
+supplement the overall supply and to satisfy the whole demand of any
+number of outlying communities. Though locally available quantities are
+limited and pumping costs rather high, such wells will undoubtedly be
+highly useful for future extensions of the metropolis, especially into
+the Coastal Plain.
+
+There is also much promise in studies of the Basin's aquifers being
+carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey to determine detailed patterns
+of their contribution of water to the stream system and to see if it can
+be regulated and made even more useful. Such a possibility has great
+implications in terms of augmenting river flows both for water quality
+control and water supply, and could mean much at Washington. So could
+certain techniques of deliberate drawdown of aquifers to induce recharge
+with excess surface waters or sometimes treated sewage effluent, also
+presently under study. Ground water as a source has some unique
+advantages--among them a minimum of evaporation loss, less need for
+surface structures, and protection against catastrophic
+contamination--and it deserves full exploration, though it cannot at
+present be counted on as a significant part of the answer for the
+metropolis.
+
+Far out, though possibly not very far off in time, is the likelihood
+that future water planners will be able to count on some degree of
+control over a given region's rainfall and snow. Through
+experimentation, this subject is rapidly being excised from the mists of
+superstition that once surrounded it, and the Department of the Interior
+has an active program of research and study in the West, with tremendous
+implications. But, yet again, present planning cannot take it into
+account except in the sense that, along with some of the other
+technologies already mentioned and undoubtedly others that have not yet
+even emerged to view, it adds to the near certainty that future planners
+are going to have a much wider range of alternative methods at their
+disposal, to choose from and mix as may seem best. And this, in turn,
+reemphasizes the wisdom of flexibility in present planning and the need
+to keep big irreversible decisions to a minimum.
+
+The upper Potomac estuary from Little Falls down to the vicinity of
+Marshall Hall and Mount Vernon or below contains a great deal of fresh
+water, an accumulation made up of inflows from the river above the Fall
+Line, local storm runoff and tributary flows, and treated sewage
+returned to the tidal river. The volume of this water that would be
+available for use without salinity has been variously estimated. At low
+tide, there would be 9 billion gallons of fresh water in the upper
+estuary from Chain Bridge to the mouth of the Anacostia River; In the 10
+mile stretch from Chain Bridge to the District of Columbia's Blue Plains
+treatment plant, 15 billion gallons; and, from Chain Bridge to the
+saltwater front near Indian Head, Maryland, 100 billion gallons. Most of
+the time now it is afflicted with heavy pollution, as will be detailed
+in the next chapter of this report. But it does constitute a large
+natural reservoir of potentially usable municipal and industrial water,
+whose attractiveness for these purposes, as well as for all others, will
+grow steadily as the pollution is brought under better and better
+control. These facts have led some opponents of any and all major
+reservoirs in the Basin to conclude that the water in the upper estuary
+is a presently satisfactory reserve with which to face any foreseeable
+metropolitan shortage of supply from the upper Potomac.
+
+The assumption has strong appeal, but it appears to be too risky to
+serve as a basis for adequate present planning to meet looming demands.
+That even now the water in the estuary's uppermost reaches, above the
+main metropolitan treatment-plant outfalls, would be usable for short
+emergencies by the installation of relatively simple pumping equipment
+below the falls, cannot be doubted. That in the long run the major part
+of the freshwater tidal river at and below Washington is likely to be a
+valuable source of metropolitan water, maybe a principal source, is
+quite possible. Its use is and will be a strong consideration in
+longterm planning--another good reason, in fact, for flexibility. But
+the truth is that right now enough doubt and ignorance exist in regard
+to its exact potentiality that it should not be counted on to provide a
+safe margin of supply under all conceivable conditions during the next
+twenty years or so, for which planning provisions need to be more rigid
+and definite.
+
+The doubts and unknown factors have to do mainly with the quality of
+this water, which comes under discussion later. In abridged summary of
+relevant facts at this point, it may be observed that unless all sewage
+and sewage effluents were collected and diverted to points well beyond
+the limits of the upper estuary, use of its water for periods beyond a
+few days of emergency would become essentially a form of recirculation
+of waste waters--with, at this time, the main drawbacks that we noted in
+regard to that process and certain others besides. For, under the
+low-flow conditions that would bring about its use, the effluents in the
+river below the mouth of the Anacostia would penetrate upstream as water
+was pulled out below the falls and would reach the pumps in fairly short
+order, probably moving in a tongue up the main channel.
+
+With the radical improvement in the functioning of the metropolitan
+treatment plants that must be achieved, and other measures to relieve
+pollution in this part of the river, valid objections to such
+recirculation will of course weaken and ultimately disappear. But no
+one can reasonably expect that these things are not going to take a
+certain amount of time--quite conceivably enough time to run the city up
+against an emergency it could not handle without other, more standard
+sources of auxiliary water. Besides the matter of consolidating and
+improving treatment of collectible wastes, there are certain other
+diffuse and stubborn sources of pollution, as will be seen, for which
+good counter measures simply do not yet exist--among them are surface
+runoff during local storms and overflow from combined sewer systems.
+
+If the collectible wastes were diverted out of the upper estuary and if
+it proved possible to cope quickly with other pollution or to ignore it,
+during prolonged use salt water penetration from downstream would take
+place as fresh water was withdrawn above and not replaced. Studies on a
+mathematical model of the estuary indicate that under conditions that
+could materialize, this would make the water at the intake too salty for
+use. A barrier dam across the entire estuary at one or another point in
+the freshwater section could prevent such penetration, but would be
+hugely expensive and undoubtedly more obtrusive on a much-used part of
+the riverscape than most upstream reservoirs could possibly be.
+
+Furthermore, even if all these doubts and areas of ignorance were to be
+easily resolved, insistence that the upper estuary is the only logical
+answer to metropolitan Washington's water problem ignores the fact that
+major water demands are building fast in certain already-mentioned areas
+of the upper Basin, and that, since the Basin is a hydrological unit,
+measures to satisfy these demands can easily, economically, and quite
+logically be designed to furnish a good part of the metropolis'
+near-future safe margin of water supply as well.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A need for vigorous research specifically directed toward exploring all
+these alternative means of supply is evident. If it moves fast enough
+and the knowledge that comes out of it is made available to planners, it
+may very quickly make a great difference in the kinds of sources of
+water they can turn to for the solution of problems, just as studies
+since the early 1960's, when the Army work on the Potomac was completed,
+have altered prevalent ideas about pollution control through flow
+augmentation, and have therefore greatly diminished the overall amount
+of water considered necessary to meet the Basin's demands.
+
+In the crucial meantime, the established certainty of storage in
+reservoirs is available. In river basins with reasonable annual amounts
+of precipitation but with human demands on streams that sometimes exceed
+the rate at which water flows down, such reservoirs are still usually
+the most dependable and efficient item in the present technology of
+water supply. And since they generally have other purposes to which
+proportionate shares of construction costs are assigned in individual
+cases--flood protection, water quality control, navigation,
+hydroelectric power, recreation, silt detention, etcetera--they tend
+often to be the most economic sources of big quantities of water. In one
+form or another they have been built from very ancient times, and they
+have been indispensable to the useful development of water resources in
+our expansive economy.
+
+In parts of the United States far from sea-coasts or large natural
+lakes, reservoirs built for water supply and other purposes have become
+the focus of enormously popular forms of recreation that would otherwise
+be impossible in those regions--sailing and motorboating and
+water-skiing and the sort of fishing possible only on big water, and
+such things. Properly designed and located, they can be beautiful bodies
+of water, as the vacation homes that grow up around many of them
+testify.
+
+Strong objections to them also frequently are voiced. They are one of
+the most massive manifestations of man's technological ability to adapt
+natural processes to his use, and they sometimes have profound effects
+on fish and wildlife and the whole ecology of a stream system region, to
+the dismay of many conservationists. Often too they flood out large
+areas of riverbottom farmland and other private property, arousing the
+ire of some rural folk and small townsmen who feel that their interests
+have been sacrificed to the water or flood-protection demands of
+downstream city dwellers. Opponents of major dams sometimes assert that
+many of them have been built not to meet real hydrological needs but to
+foster economic development which may or may not materialize and may or
+may not be worth the loss of natural or scenic or agricultural resources
+disrupted by the reservoirs. Other thinkers, not necessarily against
+reservoirs in general, express a doubt that the potential effects of
+specific structures are always thought out sufficiently beforehand.
+Among these are the authors of a recent publication of the National
+Academy of Sciences--National Research Council, _Alternatives in Water
+Management_:
+
+"_We create great reservoirs that stop the migration of fish and then
+provide costly fishways, hatcheries, and other devices to maintain the
+fishery, and with no certainty of success. We impound water without
+knowing the effects of that impoundment on its quality. We build an
+irrigation project and then find salinity increasing dangerously in the
+river downstream. We eliminate high-flood peaks by reservoir storage,
+but downstream from some reservoirs we see unpredicted erosion,
+sedimentation, bank-cutting, and other effects, even unto, as in
+California, the loss of beaches along the seacoast, starved of their
+supply of sand._"
+
+The list of objections could be extended--and often is by objectors--to
+a point of pettiness. Nevertheless, the main doubts are gaining much
+acceptance and are imperatively having to be taken into account more and
+more these days, as new elements of water technology and
+philosophy--some of them mentioned earlier in this chapter, others to
+emerge in subsequent discussions--come closer to full feasibility and
+become a part of general human knowledge. Delay in building reservoirs
+until it is certain they are needed is on the verge of becoming a
+respectable element in planning, and in the future dams may well become
+merely one of many ways to guarantee water and handle it. At least some
+water authorities, though certainly not all, have voiced the opinion
+that most present reservoirs will some day serve primarily for
+recreation, if emerging new principles of water supply, water quality
+improvement, flood protection, power generation, and such things attain
+general use.
+
+That day, however, has not yet dawned, nor is the interim before its
+arrival calculable. It is necessary to face present reality with present
+tools, and the reality at the Washington metropolis and elsewhere in the
+Basin is that a good deal of water is going to be needed rather soon,
+and that no reasonably economic alternatives with any clear esthetic and
+ecological advantage over reservoirs are presently available to furnish
+it.
+
+Nor, if planners and designers are aware of the whole set of problems,
+do reservoirs necessarily have to be weighty in their impact on the
+natural scene and the public interest. The quantities of stored water
+needed for the Basin's near future are relatively modest in comparison
+to potential supplies, and a multitude of good reservoir sites exist to
+be chosen from. There is no reason why, with present knowledge, a
+minimum of necessary reservoirs cannot be planned and designed for a
+maximum of beauty and pleasure. It is a notable fact that a very large
+number of Americans prefer boating and fishing and other aquatic sports
+on reservoirs to any other form of recreation, and another notable fact
+that in the upper Potomac Basin there are very few places where even
+small numbers of Americans can thus indulge themselves at present.
+
+In terms of metropolitan Washington's water supply, considered apart
+from other Basin water problems, the best reservoir site by far in the
+whole Potomac drainage would be the old River Bend site or the one
+proposed in 1963 at Seneca, both just upstream from the Falls above the
+metropolis. In one package, either of them would impound enough water to
+take care of any likely municipal and industrial demands of the
+metropolitan region for more than a half-century, besides trapping most
+silt from upstream to keep it out of the estuary, and providing a good
+measure of protection for flood-susceptible metropolitan shores.
+Furthermore, the proximity of such a reservoir to the city would ensure
+a great deal of aquatic recreation for people there and would somewhat
+simplify water management problems.
+
+Thus, it is natural that Seneca, the latter proposal of the two, has
+found strong champions among metropolitan administrators, water
+engineers, and planners whose thinking has to be primarily in terms of
+sure and efficient water supply and flood protection. It has found
+equally strong opponents, however, enough of them to have stalled it to
+date. It is not yet dead, for it emerges in each new discussion of the
+city's water situation. It will not be dead until the metropolitan water
+problem, short-term and long-term both, has found a full satisfactory
+solution in other terms.
+
+Our feeling remains unchanged since the publication of our _Interim
+Report_: that when all factors are weighed and future uncertainties are
+taken into account, Seneca should not be built at this time. If the
+price in money would not be high in relation to immediate "market"
+advantages gained, the permanent price, in river and countryside and
+those other intangibles that are getting to have more and more weight in
+men's minds year by year, would be heavy.
+
+The full main stem Potomac, carrying the water from the combined North
+and South Branches and the Shenandoah and the other upper tributaries
+down through the Blue Ridge water gap and across the rolling Piedmont
+and the Fall Line, is at its most typical in the 39 miles from Harpers
+Ferry to Great Falls. Seneca as originally proposed would inundate 35
+miles of this stretch, together with islands and bottomlands, forests of
+big hardwoods, meadows and productive fields, and that much-used
+segment of the publicly owned C. & O. Canal, with the trail along its
+wooded towpath. Even reduced in size and designed as strictly a water
+supply structure, it would have many of the same effects. There is
+special and tranquil beauty in this piece of the river, which makes a
+fine float trip and is much fished, as well as a lot of historical
+significance dating back to the Senecas and the Piscataways and before.
+Here these things are not forgotten and removed from men's reach but are
+available to metropolitans who go to the trouble to seek them out, as
+many do. Nor is there anything else around to take their exact or even
+approximate place if they were gone.
+
+It has been pointed out that if the metropolis grows according to
+predictions, a major part of that growth is going to be upriver, and the
+main stem of the Potomac will have the same relationship to the
+metropolis of the future that Rock Creek has to the Washington of today.
+Thus the decision that is made about the main stem in our generation is
+similar to the decision that planners had to make about Rock Creek
+three-quarters of a century or more ago. Those planners decided
+magnificently well, bequeathing to the future an urban stream and park
+unique in this country and perhaps the world, a treasure that the public
+is presently defending against other, newer, subtler threats than mere
+damming or encroachment.
+
+A reservoir above Seneca clearly could not mean that sort of thing. It
+would be a useful lake, but devoid of the changeless tone of the
+Potomac as it flows there now. The reservoir's proper functioning would
+require fluctuations in its level, with occasional ugliness at the
+shoreline, and if it would permit a great deal of happy water-skiing and
+flat-water fishing, the same opportunities are going to be available to
+Washingtonians in the nearby estuary when it is suitably cleaned up,
+even though the section immediately adjacent to the metropolis may take
+a good while to bring up to swimming standards.
+
+In terms of the overall good of the people of the metropolis and the
+Basin and the country, the water situation at Washington now and during
+the near future hardly bears a desperate enough aspect to warrant the
+sacrifice of much of the main flowing river to a reservoir which, like
+the freshwater estuary, could not be meshed with upstream needs but
+would serve only the urban areas at and below the Fall Line. Conceivably
+at some future time, if technology should renege on its promise to bring
+forth good new alternatives, and population pressures continue to grow,
+the city may badly need a reservoir there. It is a uniquely valuable
+site. For that reason, we repeat our Interim proposal that the reservoir
+site, minimally defined, be preserved against the mass encroachment with
+which it is imminently threatened, and be utilized principally as part
+of a major park complex protecting the river and its shores. To defer
+irreversible decisions and to leave them as much as possible to future
+generations whose conditions of life and desires we cannot predict with
+accuracy, can be a principal way of maintaining freedom of choice.
+
+In the category of reservoirs, at the other end of the spectrum are the
+comparatively small headwater dams that the Soil Conservation Service
+has been designing and supervising for three decades in authorized
+watersheds throughout the country. These structures can serve several
+functions and can furnish for small watershed areas and small centers of
+population many of the benefits that the Corps of Engineers and Bureau
+of Reclamation dams furnish for large areas. On their own scale, they
+are vulnerable to some of the same objections that are aimed at large
+reservoirs. But the scale is smaller; they tend to be less imposing and
+pre-emptive of good land than big river dams, "catch the water where it
+falls" to hold it for local use and to alleviate local flooding, and are
+backed up by erosion control practices in a program that has proved to
+be one of the best available stimulants to good land use. For these
+reasons they have appeal for many rural people and conservationists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+However, the conclusion which some of their supporters have reached is
+that if only enough of the small dams could be built throughout the
+headwater areas of a river basin, they would eliminate the need for most
+other forms of water management, leveling out flood and drought flows
+and holding a great aggregate amount of water on tap for use anywhere
+down the line. At times in the past, the controversy between supporters
+of big dams and supporters of little dams achieved the proportions of a
+bloodless war, but after a good many years of testing and observation
+it is now generally agreed by hydrologists that both have their place
+and that the most appropriate focus for the small dams' functioning is
+local.
+
+At any rate, they are not an answer for Washington's problems. Even if
+enough of them were installed specifically to provide the storage volume
+needed for metropolitan use, the question of operation--ensuring and
+coordinating releases from a large number of places at varying long
+distance upstream from the point of intended use, in such a way as to
+make the required volumes of water arrive at the right time, without
+waste--would be very difficult even with much more sophisticated and
+expensive design than these structures customarily have. Without it the
+problem would be insuperable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus, for metropolitan Washington's water in the near reaches of the
+future, some reservoir storage is indicated with fewer ecological,
+recreational, and scenic drawbacks than a Potomac main stem dam, and
+more efficiency for massive supply than the small headwater structures.
+Since the Potomac river system is a unit, with the metropolis at the
+downstream end of its non-tidal part, water stored anywhere in the upper
+Basin can be released for use there. This gives much freedom of choice
+in the selection of sites for reservoirs and in the combination of
+releases from various places to make up an adequate total supply, though
+obviously good management will be needed to coordinate the releases and
+avoid the waste of water.
+
+It also means, if good principles of river-basin management are
+followed, that reservoirs to supply water at Washington can be located
+and designed so as to satisfy major upstream demands at the same time,
+and that they can be fitted in with regional and Basin needs for water
+quality improvement, flat water recreation, and in some places flood
+protection. In such conjunctive planning, based in the Basin's physical
+unity, commencing now and continuing on into the future as new needs and
+new ways of satisfying them come to view, lies the main hope of
+developing the Potomac water resource in such a way as to avoid waste of
+money, waste of water itself, and waste of the landscape and the general
+environment. Without it, nothing can result but a piecemeal haggling to
+bits of the river system as local demands grow acute and local pressures
+force the adoption of one-shot measures. With it, towns and areas and
+industries can be guided toward sensible and thrifty action that fits in
+with the wellbeing of the whole Potomac region--toward buying a share in
+the water of a rightly designed, rightly placed reservoir large or
+small, toward development of ground water resources where these are
+adequate, toward the use of new technology that may be feasible and
+suitable.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The range of choices is certain to enlarge with time, and the ease with
+which right choices can be made. In this computer age, mathematical
+models of river systems, including the Potomac, are at work manipulating
+hydrological data and quickly indicating optimum coordinated solutions
+for given water problems that formerly would have taken many weeks to
+solve, if indeed men could have arrived at such exact solutions at all.
+Computers are no better than the material that is fed them, however, and
+the need for new water data--for facts--is acute, if computers and the
+men who run them and the policy makers to whom they report are to pick
+the best ways of doing things. So is the need for means of giving
+"intangible" values their right weight in the whole process. But the
+computers are the keystone of the new technology and they are going to
+make right coordination simpler.
+
+With coordination also, as we shall see hereafter, there is the
+strongest possibility of getting the river system clean again and
+keeping it that way, and furthermore of vouchsafing some measure of
+protection to the landscape through which it flows. For the physical
+unity of a river basin has many implications, and not the least of them
+is that the people who live there can be guaranteed at least a physical
+chance to lead full and wholesome lives.
+
+Water supply for upstream areas of the Basin, then, is not a separate
+thing from water supply for the downstream metropolis and should not be
+treated as separate. They are all drinking from the same fountain. Where
+an upstream demand is great enough or is going to be great enough in a
+short span of years to warrant major storage, that storage must be keyed
+in with all other demands that it might meet or help to meet, including
+that at Washington. Where an area of lesser need is shut off by its
+location from sharing in such major storage, groundwater development or
+headwater reservoirs may well be the answer, but these measures too
+should be made to serve as many purposes as may be required for the
+protection of the area's whole range of interests and the good of the
+entire Basin. The need for such interweaving--for coordination, for
+planning and action that are unified--is primary, and will emerge again
+and again.
+
+
+Flooding in the Basin
+
+The subject of floods is fraught with more drama than that of water
+shortages, for a flood can be not only a hardship but a catastrophe. For
+this reason, accounts of floods tend sometimes toward exaggeration, and
+appeals and proposals for protection against flood threats often take on
+the highpitched tones of impending disaster. The subject badly needs
+sober public understanding, despite the fact that for decades a good
+many knowledgeable scientists and engineers and planners have been
+laying out their conclusions for general perusal.
+
+Rivers are supposed to run out of their banks occasionally.
+Topographically, stream flood plains--the expanses of flat bottomland
+that have been deposited over long periods of geological time by the
+streams they border--are similar to what legal terminology calls
+"attractive nuisances." Men have always known that they were dangerous
+and yet have always utilized them to some degree, because they contain
+the best farm land, are convenient to water, and are easier places in
+which to build houses and factories and roads than are the safer hills
+and uplands.
+
+In times before engineering technology was able to erect such effective
+control structures as today, populations who had lived along "flashy"
+watercourses long enough to learn their habits tended to build their
+more valuable structures back away from the parts of the flood plain
+that got wet most often, leaving those parts for cropland and timber, or
+sometimes for shacktown, promenades, and parks. Thus long-settled
+countries and regions have often developed through trial and error a
+degree of what is now called "passive flood protection," which simply
+means recognizing that the flood plain is sometimes a rather perilous
+place, and treating it accordingly. It was valid in past ages, and it is
+still valid today.
+
+The Potomac Basin has been inhabited by civilized men since long before
+modern engineering evolved. Possibly early town-builders' wariness of
+floods contributed to the fact that the problem of flood damages here,
+though quite real, is somewhat less severe than in certain other
+sections of the nation. At specific points of concentrated flood plain
+development--Petersburg, W. Va., on the South Branch; Cumberland, Md.,
+and the areas upstream from it on the North Branch; and metropolitan
+Washington at the head of the estuary--figures show significant amounts
+of average annual destruction by rampaging stream waters. In headwater
+areas or small urban watersheds scattered throughout the Basin, there
+are a number of other places where some damage takes place, whether
+agricultural or structural. The total average annual damages for the
+Basin, as computed in the 1963 Army _Report_, amount to about $8.6
+million.
+
+Along small streams, whether urban or rural, the same principles apply
+as along large ones, and the proper protective measures are similar if
+smaller in scale. Leaving the worst parts of the flood plain in fields
+or parks is the usual and effective form of passive protection. Where
+existing development demands structural measures, it has been common
+practice to cover streams over as sewers or to confine them to
+straightened concrete channels that sluice rainwater and mud away as
+fast as they will flow--though often this is not fast enough, as is
+shown by occasional messy and costly overflows of Four Mile Run between
+Arlington and Alexandria. And the loss of pleasant brooks and creeks
+through such practices is a heavy price to pay.
+
+More and more often lately in such cases, a combination of some passive
+protection with the small headwater dams that "catch the water where it
+falls" and soil conservation measures to protect the watershed lands
+above the reservoirs, has proved to be a better solution. This is what
+has been done in the Rock Creek watershed in the District of Columbia
+and Montgomery County, Md., and its value was shown during the heavy
+rains of September 1966. Here stream valley parks have given passive
+protection for a long tune, though the popularity and heavy use of the
+parks have caused a big investment in picnic areas, playgrounds, and
+other facilities, which themselves have often suffered expensive flood
+damages. As a result of long effort by a watershed association, two S.
+C. S. dams had been finished shortly before the September flood at the
+only useful sites on the creek's upper branches that rapidly spreading
+residential development had left available. They kept runoff from the
+big sudden rains entirely in hand in Maryland and reduced damage in the
+Federal park in the District to a point far below what it would have
+been without them.
+
+Ideally, of course, such planning should be done before heavy
+development, and a pilot urban watershed program of this sort is being
+undertaken in the Pohick Creek basin on the metropolitan fringe in
+Fairfax County, Virginia. With freedom to locate necessary structures in
+the right places and to protect them against silt and ruinous runoff by
+requiring good land treatment and a sensible distribution of buildings,
+pavements, and wooded or grassy open space, planners there ought to get
+good flood protection while preserving a pretty valley and stream for
+the people who will be living in the neighborhood. From any number of
+standpoints, this is vastly preferable to the more usual traditional
+procedure of letting growth run wild and then trying to cope with
+trouble when it comes up.
+
+The headwater dams are equally effective in reducing flood damages in
+small rural watersheds where losses warrant their installation. But even
+on a massive scale of installation they have little influence on
+downstream flooding along the main rivers. In such places--at
+Cumberland, Petersburg, and the Washington metropolis, and at certain
+other river towns where less damage occurs--other measures are going to
+have to be selected and applied in each individual case according to
+costs and benefits, physical possibilities, and the best interests of
+the region.
+
+Cumberland and the lesser damage centers on the North Branch are
+scheduled for the classic engineering solution of big dams upstream. The
+existing Savage River reservoir, finished in 1950, has cut down flooding
+notably in that area, and a dam at Bloomington above Westernport,
+already authorized by Congress, will relieve it still more, as well as
+fitting into the complex clean-up task along the North Branch and
+furnishing water for local and Washington use.
+
+The 1963 plan proposed similar protection for metropolitan Washington
+and for Petersburg, West Virginia, in the form of major reservoirs at
+Seneca and Royal Glen. Physically and culturally, there is very little
+similarity between the two communities, but their flood situations and
+the potential effects of the proposed protective structures have a
+certain kinship.
+
+At both places there has been development of the flood plain, with the
+result that damages occur when the communities' respective rivers get
+out of their banks. In relation to its size--around 2000
+people--Petersburg is subject to much heavier trouble of this sort than
+the metropolis. It sits near the head of the lovely narrow farming
+valley through which the main downstream South Branch flows, a few miles
+below the point where two principal forks of the river join after
+rushing out of the mountains. In June of 1949, a flood there claimed
+five lives around Petersburg and three at Moorefield downriver, where
+still another main fork comes in, and wrought major destruction through
+the neighborhood.
+
+The 1963 Army _Report_ calculated Petersburg's average annual flood
+damages at over $200,000, and advocated construction of a $30 million,
+multipurpose reservoir at Royal Glen just upstream from Petersburg, to
+do away with most of the damage and to permit further industrial
+development of the flood plain, as well as to provide a great deal of
+water for downstream use and for regional recreation. People and groups
+in the area with interests standing to benefit from the reservoir were
+naturally in favor of it. Under present Federal policy--which will be
+mentioned again--its flood-protective function would cost them nothing,
+whereas levees or other locally effective approaches would demand a good
+deal of local effort and outlay, besides disrupting the town's aspect
+and its relationship to the river.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Opposition developed also. The very name of Royal Glen suggests the
+scenic qualities of the country roundabout. As at Seneca, a dam here
+would flood out some country with unique scenic and recreational values,
+including the famous Smoke Hole Gorge down which the clean South Branch
+runs between steep mountains dotted with caves and flavored with the
+quiet simplicity of the life that isolated hill folk lived there up into
+modern times. It is a section much appreciated by whitewater canoeists
+and hikers and horsemen and others from that region and elsewhere, who
+care about rugged and unspoiled places. Despite its remoteness, the
+proposal that it be inundated aroused more vigorously hostile comment
+among conservationists and nature lovers in general than perhaps any
+other item in the Army program except Seneca. The State of West Virginia
+declared itself opposed to the project, and to date has maintained that
+position.
+
+Again like Seneca, the Royal Glen site does have certain unique
+advantages for use as a reservoir. But, as at Seneca also, its
+functional virtues do not appear to be nearly so unique as those of the
+scenery and natural values whose obliteration would be a heavy part of
+the reservoir's price. In 1965, the immense scenic value of a large part
+of the country it would wipe out was recognized by its inclusion in the
+big Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. It is strongly to
+be hoped that that recognition is never withdrawn.
+
+The issue of scenic destruction at both Royal Glen and Seneca tends to
+obscure another set of even more basically relevant considerations
+having to do with the whole question of flood plain occupancy and use,
+the extent to which those who benefit from it should share the cost of
+such protection as may be necessary, and possible ways of reversing a
+present trend toward inexorably larger national flood damages each year
+despite ever larger and more expensive structural protective measures at
+public expense.
+
+[Illustration: THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE]
+
+It is a complex subject that can only be summarized here. What it
+amounts to is that America has strayed too far from the ancient hard-won
+wisdom of treating flood plains with respect. It has been lulled by the
+achievements of engineering, encouraged by a general absence of
+inadequacy of State and local planning that takes such matters into
+account, and conditioned to a set of Federal laws and policies
+piece-built over a long period of time, with consequent inequities,
+imbalances, and loopholes that tend to emphasize structural protection
+at Federal expense for indiscriminate flood plain development. The
+result has been a neglect of the possibilities of flood plain
+management, which undoubtedly in the long run--as in the long past--will
+prove to be the most valuable tool for reducing these damages, for it
+will bring about a restriction on ill-advised and uneconomic
+encroachment in these streamside areas.
+
+The reason most such encroachment is bad, with or without a dam
+upstream, with or without levees, is that it establishes the certainty
+of further and larger flood damages in the future, with the certainty of
+further and larger expenditures to combat them. It has been pointed out
+that no such thing really exists as flood _control_, but only a given
+degree of flood _protection_. Economics and technology dictate that
+reservoir capacities devoted to the storage of flood water, for example,
+be considerably smaller than the maximum runoff conceivably possible.
+This means that sooner or later there is going to be a great flood
+against which the reservoir or reservoirs will not suffice. If the
+reservoirs' presence, as is most often the case, has directly encouraged
+a lot of flood plain speculation and construction downstream, then the
+great flood is going to do more damage than was ever done before, and
+more reservoirs and other protective measures, most often Federally
+financed, are going to be demanded, at a price that rises sharply as
+less desirable sites and methods have to be employed, and with
+frequently catastrophic scenic effects. These considerations apply to
+small watersheds as well as large ones.
+
+This costly cycle, which frequently makes the general public pay both in
+tax money and the sacrifice of amenities to protect the investment of a
+relatively few who profit from the wrong kind of flood plain use--in
+plain words, makes the public subsidize their ventures--has established
+itself widely. In some places, of course, certain kinds of development
+can take place only on the flood plain, and planning for its structural
+protection may be amply warranted, with equitable cost-sharing. But the
+difference between this sort of flood plain use and the much more
+common, thoughtless, quick-profit type needs to be more widely
+recognized and established in policies at all levels of government. The
+subject has been much studied. In August 1966 the findings of a
+distinguished Task Force on Federal Flood Control Policy, which made
+detailed recommendations for injecting some sense into the situation,
+were submitted to the attention of Congress by President Johnson. At the
+same time, he issued Executive Order 11296 on the subject, directing all
+Federal executive agencies with influence in such matters to do
+everything possible to discourage uneconomic and unwarranted use of the
+nation's flood plains. This, of course, includes the present Potomac
+planning effort.
+
+[Illustration: FLOOD PLAIN DELINEATION POTOMAC RIVER AT HANCOCK, MD.]
+
+At Petersburg, there is little question that the wisest approach to
+present and future flooding problems would be one that would seek to
+give reasonable protection to the development already on the flood plain
+but at the same time deter further construction unless it is
+floodproofed or houses activities that find a flood plain location so
+advantageous as to be well worth the risk. In currently available
+terms, this could be accomplished most feasibly and at the least net
+expenditure--though not, under present policy, as cheaply to the
+community itself as by the Royal Glen dam, and not without some notable
+changes in the town's landscape--by combining a levee system around
+present development with rigid zoning of the unoccupied part of the
+flood plain, or its acquisition as parkland.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Another approach that may shortly be possible was suggested by the
+President's Task Force and is the subject of legislation proposed to
+Congress by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Under this
+legislation, owners of existing flood plain residences and small
+businesses would be given a chance to buy Federally subsidized
+insurance against flood damages at reduced rates, while new construction
+in flood hazard areas would be subject to rates based on the full true
+risk involved. After 1970, under this proposed legislation, such
+insurance could be sold only in areas with enforceable codes and
+ordinances or other measures for sound flood plain management. Such a
+program could go a long way toward eliminating casual and expensive
+flood plain clutter, if it were backed up by adjustments in other phases
+of Federal flood control policy that would similarly place a share of
+any protective costs where they belong, and hence give an additional
+strong nudge to citizens and local and state governments to bring the
+situation into balance.
+
+At Washington, because a high proportion of the flood plain on both
+shores is in Federal ownership and the use it is put to is determined by
+Federal agencies, Executive Order 11296 has special relevance in
+forestalling future increases in the amount of flood damage. Existing
+damages in the whole urban area are estimated to average $1.4 million
+each year. The most damaging flood in the metropolis' history occurred
+in March of 1936, and if a flood of the same dimensions were to strike
+today, it would cause estimated damages of about $21 million.
+
+These are not small figures, though if they are considered in the light
+of the area's population and extent and the total value of construction
+there, they seem less formidable. Obviously the threat of damages of
+this magnitude must be dealt with, but just as obviously as at
+Petersburg, the manner chosen for dealing with them should not be
+allowed to stimulate unwise flood plain construction that would lead to
+still greater longterm damages.
+
+The Seneca reservoir as proposed in 1963 provided floodwater storage
+calculated to reduce metropolitan damages by 46 percent. This is a
+significant though not startling amount of reduction, and it constitutes
+the most economical one-shot measure of protection that could be
+attained. However, if the construction of Seneca is precluded for the
+time being or for good, that measure is not available. Second-best, by
+Army calculations, would be a combination of several large multipurpose
+reservoirs on main tributaries farther upstream. But quite aside from
+other considerations of desirability, these could only be justified
+economically if a great part of their stored water were destined to
+furnish massive flow augmentation to ease pollution in the upper
+estuary. As will be noted in the following chapter, recent studies have
+raised doubt that such augmentation would be likely to help the estuary
+nearly as much as had been thought and it is no longer being considered
+a primary tool for that purpose.
+
+This leaves passive devices and local protection works as the main
+available instruments for coping with floods at the metropolis. They
+will probably be most effective if applied in a carefully selected
+combination of means, with levees and other protective works installed
+where feasible and desirable, and backed up in other areas by zoning,
+flood warning systems, and good design including flood-proofing,
+elevated structures, and similar devices. Some of these principles of
+design are already being incorporated in new buildings and renewal
+projects, but the task of planning and locating such things as levees
+usefully on a flood plain containing a good part of "monumental
+Washington," the beauty of which is a national concern, is not going to
+be simple. A good program must be instituted soon, and the extent of the
+Federal interest in the lands involved should considerably ease the job
+of coordination.
+
+Interestingly, certain floods to which Washington is susceptible can be
+partially guarded against only by such approaches as the ones mentioned
+above, and not at all by upstream dams. One of them occurred in August
+of 1933, when a hurricane pushed the water in the estuary upstream and
+raised it to flood stage at the capital.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+III THE CLEANSING OF THE WATERS
+
+
+Streams have always had to carry and digest wastes that enter them
+through drainage from the land. It is one of their functions in the
+scheme of things, and so well have they performed it through the
+millennia that human beings have been able to take it for granted.
+Within limits that might be considered normal, the ability of running
+water to handle loads of waste is phenomenal, and in earlier times those
+normal limits were seldom exceeded, for even in populated areas the
+general lack of sanitary sewer systems kept the loads from being
+concentrated.
+
+In civilized parts of the modern world, however, there are now so many
+people generating so many wastes of one kind and another, which often
+enter the streams at concentrated points, that the streams can no longer
+digest them without help. Too often, in the face of uncontrolled human
+increase and expansion, that help has either been denied them or has
+been weak and perfunctory. The result is plain enough now in the sorry
+mess of sick or dead or dying waters that we Americans have on our
+hands, the heritage of having kept on taking them for granted long after
+we had bred ourselves out of the right to do so.
+
+As civilized rivers go, the Potomac is rather lucky. It is polluted, but
+many parts of it are not nearly as dirty as people are sometimes led
+into believing by a look at the summertime estuary at Washington. The
+fabled and scenic German Rhine, for instance, is much more degraded in
+its main flowing reaches than is the Potomac, and so are a majority of
+the other rivers in the northeastern United States and many elsewhere in
+the country. Industrialization on the Potomac and its tributaries has
+been spotty so far, and there are no really big clusters of population
+in the upper parts of the Basin. Furthermore, pollution here has already
+been given quite a lot of dedicated and expert attention and some
+rectification. Thus anyone who travels up and down the river and its
+tributaries finds many miles of pleasant flowing streams capable of
+sustaining fish and the other things that are supposed to live in and
+around water, and fit to soothe frayed nerves.
+
+He will find a lot of grubby and unsoothing stretches too, extensive in
+places, and even in the pleasant streams troubles exist that are
+invisible to the eye. There is little to be complacent about, for
+threats are multiplying rather than fading, and some parts of the
+Potomac river system already need more than help; they need
+resurrection.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Basin has several standard sorts of pollution, often found in one
+combination or another. Chemical contamination occurs along the North
+Branch, in areas where pesticides and other economic poisons get into
+the stream system, and in spots and stretches where specific industrial
+wastes create local problems. There is much and widespread pollution
+through organic wastes--often sewage solids, but not always--whose
+breakdown by natural processes may demand so much oxygen that a stream
+has little or none left over to maintain aquatic life and "stay alive."
+
+Sometimes associated with organic wastes and sometimes entering the
+river system otherwise are dangerous bacteria, and also the so-called
+"nutrients"--dissolved fertilizing agents that can stimulate excessive
+growth of algae or weeds in the water to the detriment of other forms of
+life, often to such a degree that these plants' death and decay sets off
+a whole new cycle of oxygen demand. And there is sediment washed off the
+land, which clouds the water and settles out into a smothering cloak on
+the bottom, building up in quiet stretches into ugly and damaging mud
+banks and shoals.
+
+
+Troubles above the Fall Line
+
+Pollution of the Potomac begins at or near its traditional source, the
+tiny Appalachian spring at the head of the North Branch where in 1746
+Thomas Lord Fairfax's surveyors set an inscribed stone to mark the
+northwestern corner of that possessive nobleman's vast holdings.
+Abandoned strip coal mines lie within sight of the spot, and it is
+doubtful that the infant river trickles more than a few yards before
+receiving its first injection of the acidic mixture of substances that
+springs and seeps and runoff water extract from bared coal strata and
+the mines' spoil heaps and carry down to the streamlet they feed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Such additions are frequent for the next 45 miles or so downstream, as
+the North Branch in its narrow valley swells into a mountain river with
+the water of brooks and creeks flowing off ridges pocked with coal mines
+old and new. The river and such tributaries sustain no aquatic life at
+all among the discolored stones in their channels.
+
+This mine-derived pollution has been much studied but is still not well
+understood. Sulphuric acid is its most damaging component, but may be
+accompanied by iron salts and other substances also leached from
+materials in and around the vast coal beds of Appalachia. Some acid
+entered the streams there naturally, before men ever touched the coal,
+but it has increased to deadly proportions with widespread mining. It
+issues from both surface strip mines and the old-fashioned underground
+sort, though the latter furnish by far the most--an estimated 75 to 90
+percent. The overall magnitude of the problem is indicated by the fact
+that the more than 60,000 square miles of the Appalachian region
+underlain by coal, including the Potomac fraction, contributes five to
+ten million tons of sulphuric acid annually to streams and rivers, a
+rate of production that is expected to continue for at least a thousand
+years.
+
+At Westernport the North Branch enters more populated realms, and
+receives one of its latter big doses of acid from Georges Creek, which
+drains a devastated, economically depressed valley mined since very
+early days. This creek may be the single most unfortunate stream in the
+Potomac Basin, for the accumulation of raw wastes it brings down from
+the valley's communities is pickled rather than assimilated by its
+heavily acid water.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the 40 or 50 miles below that point, the North Branch accumulates
+great quantities of more usual kinds of pollution as it runs down a
+broadening valley past towns and industries that have grown up because
+of the conjunction of coal, timber, water, and railways--and in the old
+days water transport, for flatboats used to shoot the river at high
+water, and later the C. & O. Canal operated upriver as far as
+Cumberland. Treatment of wastes in this reach is spotty and mainly
+inadequate. Some industries and towns sluice them raw into the dark, sad
+water, and others give only perfunctory primary treatment; the city of
+Cumberland releases the equivalent of about 18,000 persons' body wastes
+each day as effluent, besides extra raw wastes whenever storm runoff
+overloads its combined storm and sanitary sewer system and causes it to
+overflow. Where major efforts have been made, as at the Upper Potomac
+River Commission's Westernport plant below the big Luke, Maryland, pulp
+and paper mill, the wastes are so voluminous and complex that some of
+them still have to be dumped, and the effluent from even highly
+efficient treatment further degrades the river.
+
+Fortunately, the North Branch, acid above, deprived of oxygen and
+overenriched and septic below, is not typical of the flowing parts of
+the Potomac river system, but it stands as a good grim example of what
+pollution can mean, and as a foretaste of what may be expected to happen
+elsewhere in the Basin if it is not stopped soon. Mine acid is not a
+significant problem in any streams outside of that region, but untreated
+or inadequately treated wastes are badly blighting many streams and
+rivers or stretches of them. Some smaller watercourses, like historic
+Antietam Creek below Hagerstown, Maryland, have deteriorated under the
+influence of discharges from single or limited sources, while larger
+ones suffer from a cumulative waste buildup in areas of concentrated
+population or industry. Some twenty miles of both industrial and
+municipal pollution in the South River Branch of the Shenandoah's South
+Fork below Waynesboro, Virginia, have done much damage to that legended
+river for a good distance downstream, a situation that is worsening with
+the area's growth. On the North Fork of the Shenandoah similar effects
+have been wrought by heavy organic loads from poultry processing and
+other things. The list could be extended: aside from a few happy
+exceptions like the prized Cacapon, draining rugged, forested, thinly
+peopled hill country, nearly all the Basin's flowing streams of any size
+receive damaging loads of waste from towns and industries.
+
+[Illustration: WATER TREATMENT STEPS
+
+(1) River water enters here
+
+(2) Water chlorinated
+
+(3) Water settles. Heavy particles sink
+
+(4) Water pumped to Pretreatment Building
+
+(5) Various chemicals (chlorine, alum, lime, carbon) added. Chemicals
+and water stirred in rapid mixing basins
+
+(6) Slow mixing to form "floc" (see Alum below)
+
+(7) Water settles for 2-1/2 hours. "Floc" carries impurities to bottom
+
+(8) Water filtered through 94 rapid sand beds
+
+(9) Final chemical treatment (chlorine, lime, fluoride, phosphate)
+
+PURPOSE OF CHEMICALS
+
+  CHLORINE:     Destroys organic materials
+  PHOSPHATE:    Lessens pipe corrosion
+  FLUORIDE:     Lessens tooth decay
+  CARBON:       Controls taste and odor
+  ALUM:         Forms "floc" (snowflakes) to trap impurities
+  LIME:         Helps "floc" formation; lessens pipe corrosion
+]
+
+The basic and usual damage comes from oxygen depletion. A stream has a
+natural capacity for hastening the decay of organic wastes, which is
+determined by such things as the volume of its flow, the pollution
+already in it, its velocity and depth, and its temperature. When that
+capacity is exceeded, as we have noted, too much of the stream's oxygen
+is used up by the process of decay and the stream, which is an
+intricately complex work of living things, begins to die. Under really
+bad conditions, the waste solids themselves cannot all be assimilated,
+and hence may build up in layers of stinking sludge at the bottom of
+the stream and continue to seize available oxygen for a long time
+thereafter.
+
+Conventional waste treatment, in plants built by towns or by industries
+whose raw materials are animal or vegetable in origin, is aimed at
+removing the solids in the wastes and reducing the bio-chemical oxygen
+demand--called B.O.D. It is a speeded-up version of the same process of
+purification that goes on normally in any stream when loads are not too
+heavy. "Primary" treatment removes such solids as will readily settle
+out and passes the rest on back to the stream as part of the effluent.
+"Secondary" treatment plants, after settling out the gross solids, speed
+up decay by furnishing air to the bacteria that eat up dissolved and
+finely suspended materials; a good secondary plant, under much more
+skillful supervision than is usual, can get rid of 85 or 90 percent of
+the organic materials and the associated B.O.D. by the time it turns its
+effluent into a stream. How damaging that effluent will be depends on a
+number of things, chief among them being the size and condition of the
+receiving stream and the volume of organic materials that went into the
+treatment plant in the first place. A riverside town of 1000 with a
+secondary treatment plant operating at 75 percent efficiency is going to
+inflict on its river a daily load roughly equivalent to the raw sewage
+from 250 people.
+
+Over the years a lot of hard effort, notably on the part of the
+Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, has resulted in some
+degree of treatment for about 85 percent of all municipal wastes and 83
+percent of those produced by industry along the Basin's flowing
+streams. Put in another way, by INCOPOT calculations the total waste
+load imposed on the Potomac is only about three-quarters of what it was
+in 1956, despite a population increase of nearly a fifth.
+
+That it is still much too high in many parts of the upper Basin does not
+require elaborate instruments to detect, but only a nose and a pair of
+eyes. A very few industries and towns are still dumping raw wastes, and
+many of the others need better and bigger sewers and treatment plants or
+better operation of the plants they have. Sewage collection systems are
+sometimes of the old-fashioned combined type, like Cumberland's--and, as
+we shall see, like Washington's--which have to carry storm runoff as
+well as wastes, and overflow during rainy periods, releasing heavy
+pollution without treatment. But even separate sanitary sewers are often
+overloaded by having to serve greater populations than they were
+designed for, which means that their escape valves may leak raw sewage
+more or less continuously into surface watercourses and that the quality
+of treatment given the sewage that does reach the treatment plant
+signifies less than it ought to.
+
+Antiquated or overloaded treatment plants cause much trouble. Old
+primary plants too small for present populations often remove only about
+a third or less of the organic material, but by their very existence
+they tend to lull communities into a false conviction that they are
+doing their part toward clean rivers. Tiny plants of the sort authorized
+locally for new leapfrog subdivisions and vacation colonies are usually
+doomed to restricted efficiency by their very size. These often are
+underdesigned even for initial loads, let alone for the growth that
+comes later, and most of them are poorly run.
+
+This question of operation is crucial. A new, well-designed, expensive
+plant in slovenly or inexpert hands--a frequent paradox--can put out a
+much greater waste load than a well-operated old one. The plant at
+Romney, West Virginia, on the lower South Branch, the best example of
+responsible operation in the Basin, is old, but because it is well run
+it usually achieves about 92 percent elimination of B.O.D. in comparison
+with the 75 percent or even less that some newer and more imposing
+plants can claim.
+
+The reasons for poor operation are various. One is a shortage of
+qualified operators, based on a need for better salaries, more training
+programs, and rigid mandatory State certification of operators'
+abilities. Another reason can be a pinchpenny attitude on the part of
+municipal authorities toward sewage treatment. It is one sizable
+expenditure whose results cannot easily be pointed out with pride to
+local taxpayers at election time, for its main effect is usually
+downstream from the municipality itself. Thus the big encompassing
+reason for bad plant operation--cutting corners, refusing to spend what
+needs to be spent, failing to supervise--has to be called philosophical.
+It comes from a failure on the part of local operators and authorities
+and much of the public to comprehend the immorality of deliberate
+avoidable pollution, and it may mean that municipal operation of
+treatment plants is itself often a major source of trouble.
+
+A clear example of this philosophical deficiency is one large Basin
+treatment plant that was reported to have "handled"--i.e., properly
+disposed of--a third less sewage sludge in 1965 than it had in 1960,
+despite a large increase in the population it serves. The unhandled
+sludge, of course, went straight into the local river for reasons of
+convenience, economy, and callous indifference.
+
+For the most part, large private industry demonstrates more
+responsibility in this respect than the Basin's municipalities or
+Federal installations. There are some miserable exceptions where
+individual industries dominate a locality's economy and take casual
+advantage of that fact. But responsible industry is concerned with
+public relations, and knows that a fish kill or a gray-blue stretch of
+blighted water downstream from its outfalls is the poorest kind of
+public relations to be had.
+
+To be able to say precisely how much bad plant operation is adding to
+pollution in the Potomac will require exhaustive and continuous sampling
+and analysis of a kind that may be expected now that the Water Quality
+Act of 1965 is about to make itself felt through application of new
+State water quality standards. But experienced observers in INCOPOT and
+elsewhere feel strongly that bad operation does much more damage than do
+over-aged or outgrown facilities, though these play a big part too.
+
+Bacterial pollution--the category of most interest from a public health
+standpoint--fluctuates a great deal in the Basin's flowing streams, but
+is heavy in most of them by current standards during times of normal
+flow. It may come from raw waste discharges, from treatment plants that
+skimp on chlorination of their effluent, or from storm runoff and
+natural drainage off the land and urban pavements. But before anyone can
+confidently say how dangerous it is to swimmers and others who make
+intimate use of rivers and creeks, water scientists are going to have to
+learn more about its measurement and classification than they presently
+know.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+No easily applied method of testing can effectively establish the
+guaranteed absence of human disease germs. The traditional "Coliform
+Count" plays safe, as it must. It measures the concentration of certain
+easily spotted "indicator" organisms that do not themselves make people
+sick but are always voluminously present in the fecal discharges that
+can carry harmful germs, and it gauges the danger by the concentration
+of these indicators.
+
+However, concentrations of coliform bacteria, originating in animal
+manure or elsewhere, may invade a stream through runoff from rural lands
+without having any meaningful relationship to human disease germs.
+Counting them under such circumstances is a little like measuring the
+depth of the proverbial well by the length of the pump handle.
+Furthermore, no one really knows how easy or how hard it may be to catch
+given diseases by swimming. In this country, outbreaks of leptospirosis,
+an illness common to man and certain animals, have been traced to
+swimming holes, and other links are obvious. On the other hand, some
+careful British investigations turned up a good many quite healthy
+people who habitually splashed about in sea water teeming with
+pathogenic organisms of one sort or another. Sea water and fresh water
+have vastly different qualities, but the subject is presently full of
+confusion, and it needs much research.
+
+Land runoff in general furnishes a large amount of pollution of all
+classes, and in all parts of the upper Basin except the least-used
+forest sections. Besides bacteria, heavy loads of organic material may
+be washed into streams in regions with high densities of livestock or
+poultry, and some pollution of this sort is found practically
+everywhere. The wild and domestic animal population of the Basin above
+Washington has been estimated to produce wastes equivalent to those of
+about 3.5 million people. Much of this is dealt with by the "living
+filter" of the soil, but much also reaches the streams, associated with
+sediment from erosion producing rains. And the sources, particularly in
+areas such as those along the Shenandoah and the Monocacy and other
+streams with wide rich valleys, are numerous and diffuse.
+
+Nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients, which foster weeds and slime in quiet
+stream stretches and contribute to the problems of the estuary
+downstream, are found in undesirable concentrations in most of the
+Basin's waters above the Fall Line. Not only are the growths encouraged
+by these fertilizing agents ugly, but they also upset the ecological
+balance of streams by favoring certain types of aquatic life over
+others, and they can cause tastes, odors, and clogging in water supply
+systems and sometimes, by rotting, a secondary sort of oxygen
+deficiency. Nitrogen and phosphorus occur in the effluent from waste
+treatment plants, for they are present in human wastes and in
+detergents, and in dissolved form are little affected by standard
+treatment processes. And in the upper Basin a large part of the nutrient
+load in streams appears to be associated with sediment from the same
+diffused land runoff mentioned above, for they occur abundantly in
+manure, in synthetic fertilizers, in certain natural soils, and in
+decaying organic substances of many kinds. The health and growth of
+living things is dependent on these elements, of course; it is their
+excessive release into waters that causes trouble.
+
+From the same farming regions and even more from lawns and gardens and
+parks in more populated areas, pesticides and other economic poisons
+accompany sediment into the stream system or are blown into it as
+sprays and dusts. They seem not to be as great a problem in the Potomac
+as in some other rivers, but they are present in probably significant
+amounts; indicator tests hover near Public Health Service drinking-water
+limits in the river. Their use, here as elsewhere, increases year by
+year, for they are tremendously effective against many of man's ancient
+enemies. Being easily available, they are often used in uninformed and
+careless ways despite government efforts to determine and publicize safe
+levels of application. Knowledge about their side effects, both
+immediate and long-term, is still full of gaps. Badly misused, they are
+obviously dangerous. But information about the precise results of their
+ordinary use and their buildup in nature accumulates very slowly.
+
+The persistent chlorinated hydrocarbons--DDT and its relatives--last for
+a long time after being released into the environment, concentrating at
+various points in the natural food chain and often in man himself. It is
+said that an average adult Californian's tissues today contain more DDT
+than is allowed in beef for interstate shipment. But no one is yet
+certain what this means in relation to that average Californian's
+physical wellbeing, and in terms of fish and wildlife, though the link
+between these materials and certain destructive changes can be seen,
+evidence in other cases--the declining fertility and numbers of bald
+eagles, for instance, which some investigators believe to derive from
+pesticide residues--only points toward such a link. Until all the facts
+are in and the impact of such poisons has been clearly restricted to the
+pest species at which they are aimed, they are going to continue to be
+a heavy concern for conservationists and others alarmed about
+environmental pollution, along the Potomac and elsewhere.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+One of the principal Potomac pollutants, silt, not only comes from the
+land but is the land, most often good topsoil, washing away toward the
+sea. Even under pristine conditions streams are likely to run somewhat
+muddy after storms; it is a natural phenomenon, a by-effect of the way
+climate carves landscapes. On the evidence, however, the Potomac
+landscape since its colonization by white men has been undergoing a much
+more rapid carving than anyone could consider to be natural. Most of its
+streams, particularly in their lower reaches, are thickly opaque for
+long periods after rain, and gross erosion in the Basin--the amount of
+soil washed away from where it usefully belongs to somewhere
+else--averages about 50 million tons per year, a major depletion of the
+soil resource and a degrading influence on the landscape through
+erosion. The part of this silt that gets into streams cuts down on the
+usefulness of the water, creates ugly turbidity, chokes quiet pools and
+reservoirs, suffocates bottom-dwelling creatures and plants on which the
+streams' wholeness may depend, and rides down the current to add heavily
+to the problems of the estuary, into which some 2.5 million tons of it
+are annually discharged.
+
+Sediment is dislodged from the land by the pounding action of raindrops
+and the flow of runoff, and sometimes is washed from streambanks during
+high flows--which may themselves be higher and more frequent because of
+silt-clogged channels. The bulk of it can be blamed on unsound land use.
+This may be rural, based in the old use-her-up-and-move-along pioneer
+outlook that has never died out among us despite wide understanding of
+better ways of doing things. People in places still overgraze pastures
+and clean-cut timber so that rain can get at the soil and eat it away,
+and they still farm land too steep to stay in place without its
+vegetative cover, or they plow even suitable rolling land in straight
+rows up and down hill so that water and soil sluice away together down
+the furrows when it rains. Despite a sharply effective three decades of
+work and public education by the Soil Conservation Service and other
+agencies, these old practices continue in some places and cause much
+erosion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Also, increasingly, bad land use involves the ways in which great
+machines adapt the landscape to hundreds of sophisticated purposes. The
+massive eatings of powered blades and scoops to get at coal and other
+minerals on the steep slopes of the North Branch watershed and
+elsewhere, add heavily to sedimentation. So do broad rights-of-way
+gashed out of the countryside and left bare under storms in the months
+before highway construction is done, and secondary roads that even when
+finished may be left for years or forever with denuded clay shoulders
+and ditches and banks that wash with every rain. And so, most
+particularly, do the great polygons of rolling land around the Basin's
+town and cities that are stripped naked by bulldozers and left sitting
+in that condition for long periods, while they await the erection of
+buildings and blocks of homes. This is occurring throughout the Basin,
+but most notably around Washington, where the highest erosion rates of
+all are found. We will take a look at its details and the reasons for it
+a little further along in this chapter when we examine the estuary's
+situation.
+
+Except for the acid parts of the North Branch, the upper Basin's waters
+in most places, most of the time, can still serve the "practical"
+purposes to which they are put--irrigation, industrial uses, municipal
+supply after purification, and even the absorption and digestion of
+effluents from adequate, well-run treatment plants. Most of the streams
+are usually good to look at, especially in conjunction with the superb
+rural landscapes against backgrounds of wooded mountains that are
+characteristic. They furnish much pleasure to fishermen, hunters,
+boatmen, swimmers, picnickers, and other folk, though in some places it
+is an open question, as we have seen, whether or not contact with the
+water is prudent. And almost everywhere, aging locals can recall a time
+when their stream was a happier amenity than now--when it held more
+fish, ran clearer over stones and gravel not coated with weeds and
+green slime, did not have the smell it presently emanates, was colder
+and more copious....
+
+Their nostalgia probably does not play them false, even though
+conditions in many places are better now than in the intermediate past,
+after modern times had settled in, but before INCOPOT and the Soil
+Conservation Service and such influences had begun to push for reform of
+the casual, anciently human ways of doing things in which present human
+populations can no longer afford to indulge themselves. Some of the
+gains that have been made are being cancelled out by growth and new
+types of pollution, however, and in general the flowing Potomac river
+system is teetering at the brink of bad trouble. It needs help.
+
+If the flowing upper Potomac had any lingering oxygen deficiency in its
+lower stretches--though it seems usually not to--it would tend to
+rectify the lack in its turbulent eighteen-miles descent across the Fall
+Line, a superb natural "treatment plant." Normally it arrives at
+Washington charged with oxygen, but does bring down with it the part of
+its nutrient load that has not fertilized upstream weeds and algae,
+periodic waves of bacterial concentration, and a great deal of debris
+and silt in season.
+
+In the broadening, slowing upper estuary, its sluggish currents confused
+by the twice-daily surge and ebb of tides, these materials from above
+are stirred in with an array of specifically metropolitan
+pollutants--with more silt off of the outraged urban watershed, with
+junk and debris of a thousand sorts, with decaying substances and
+bacteria from many sources, and with vast new quantities of nitrogen and
+phosphorus. The consequence is a weighty and sometimes spectacular
+pollution problem directly adjacent to the proud national capital. It is
+at its vivid and aromatic worst in summer, when the most Americans come
+there fondly to view the city and the Potomac, and when locals who want
+to boat and fish and swim and do the other things one does on water
+would make most use of the river--indeed, do make use of it in spite of
+everything.
+
+Like the meek, the upper estuary inherits the earth, or at least that
+part of the Basin's earth that is washed downriver as silt. There are
+enough fine suspended sediment particles in the water of the
+metropolitan river to make it drably opaque most of the time, even
+during relatively dry spells, when heavy sand and gravel dredging helps
+to keep it stirred up. As the current loses force and washes back and
+forth with the tides, the particles settle out slowly into smothering,
+continually renewed blankets on the bottom, and over two centuries have
+accreted into great mudbanks and shoals. Channel dredging to maintain
+navigation has been going on since the early 19th century, about 180,000
+cubic yards being presently removed each year. The dumping of the
+dredged materials on the marshes and long low shores has built up wide,
+flat, new flood plain areas around the city over the years, including
+the sites of Washington National Airport, Anacostia and Bolling Air
+Fields, and East and West Potomac Parks.
+
+Such channel dredging has little effect on the gradual shoaling of this
+whole part of the river in general. Miles of formerly navigable water
+downstream from Memorial Bridge are now only one to four feet deep and
+useless for either pleasure or commercial craft. It has been estimated
+that present rates of deposition will within fifty years fill in the
+upper estuary completely to a mile or so below Alexandria, except for a
+river channel. The same process is at work in the tributary creek-bays
+that give onto the estuary, some of which have silted so heavily since
+Colonial Days that formerly thriving ports--among them Bladensburg,
+Dumfries, and Port Tobacco--are now distant from the water.
+
+The bulk of estuarial silt comes down the main river from the upper
+Basin. But a heavy increment is added in the metropolitan area. Modern
+mechanized development of the city's hilly environs on a huge scale,
+continuing year by year with few thoughtful rules to guide it
+heretofore, has brought about erosion that on individual patches of
+bared land may reach a temporary rate of 50,000 tons per square mile per
+year, and even average rates in this area are far in excess of anything
+else in the Basin.
+
+We had to examine the reasons for this rather closely last year in a
+study of Rock Creek's ailments, whose findings we published in a report
+called _The Creek and the City_. This much-admired metropolitan stream
+has been relatively well protected, with the parks along its wooded
+valley and an upper watershed that until quite recently remained
+essentially rural. But as development has proceeded in standard and
+careless ways--the wholesale stripping and scarification of big tracts
+of rolling, fine-textured land, the long naked wait for development--the
+creek has come to be muddy and ugly almost all the time and has been
+spewing an estimated 100,000 tons of sediment a year into the estuary,
+with frequent floods.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+To help save the creek and its parks and to stimulate a better kind of
+development of the rest of its basin, citizens formed a watershed
+association under Soil Conservation Service auspices and brought about
+the construction of two small upstream reservoirs to control
+flooding--with results noted in the preceding chapter--and to collect
+silt. They sought to promote better land use as well, for the
+reservoirs' effectiveness is obviously dependent on their not filling up
+quickly with an excess of sediment. Better land use around a city
+depends on zoning and other legal devices to regulate the density and
+distribution of construction, and on controls over the way land is
+shaped, and a sharp conflict developed between the watershed's defenders
+and the Council of Montgomery County, Maryland, in office at that time,
+whose rezonings in favor of standard massive suburbanization and whose
+failure to enact sediment-control ordinances threatened the whole
+effort. Rock Creek has many friends, and their subsequent fight for its
+salvation has had good effect, though much remains to be done.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+However, Rock Creek is only one of many metropolitan streams that need
+protection, both for their own sake and for that of the estuary. Some
+are getting it--in the preceding chapter we noted the happy example of
+Pohick Creek in Virginia, where whole watershed planning is being
+accomplished almost from scratch, before development. But many more are
+being ruined by the steady advance of standard urban sprawl.
+
+Thus the main cause of urban silt is faulty or nonexistent or powerless
+land planning, and the problem merges with the whole question of
+landscape preservation. The ecological principles involved in good
+practical land planning--the distribution of uses based on what land and
+water can take without being degraded and causing silt, flooding, and
+downstream pollution--are the same basic principles that lead to scenic
+beauty and a decent human environment. This is a subject we will explore
+in more detail when we arrive at considering the landscape as a whole,
+but for now it may be worthwhile to note that insofar as urban erosion
+and silt stem from decisions of political agencies inclined to subjugate
+well-known good land use principles to speculative pressures,
+expediency, and other things, their origin is political and economic.
+
+Organic materials are pervasive enough in the upper estuary that during
+periods of even normal flow their decay pulls oxygen levels down. Under
+usual conditions this B.O.D. grows worse and worse downstream and
+reaches a peak in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon, though its effects
+continue to be felt below. Fish kills among the rugged resident species
+that predominate in these reaches of the river are not uncommon, the
+shoreline windrows of deceased carp and perch periodically adding their
+essence to what metropolitans have come to accept as the Potomac's
+normal summer smell. And along with the organic materials are heavy
+concentrations of bacteria.
+
+The organic and bacterial load enters the estuary from many sources,
+most of them local, for only a little of this material comes down from
+the upper river. A significant amount of it issues from the network of
+small urban watercourses like Rock Creek. Many of these were covered
+over as storm sewers or troughed in concrete long ago, but they continue
+to serve their age-old function of draining the lands they traverse,
+even if through cast-iron gratings.
+
+A good bit of the organic load in these tributaries consists of raw
+human waste, incongruous and particularly obnoxious around a modern
+city. The bulk of it is released in periodic surges when local
+rainstorms overload the old-fashioned combined sewer systems of the
+District of Columbia and Alexandria. In dry weather these systems send
+both collected sanitary wastes and street drainage down to the cities'
+respective treatment plants, but during storms when street drainage is
+heavy the sewers' capacity is exceeded and overflow gates gush mixed
+stormwater and sewage out into the streams, which carry it to the
+estuary.
+
+In the suburbs, more modern separate storm and sanitary sewers are the
+rule, but they too have some problems of a kind we noted in relation to
+the upper river. Investigations on Rock Creek revealed steady dribbles
+of raw sewage entering the creek or its tributaries from a large number
+of storm-sewer outfalls and other places. Partly these flow from
+malfunctioning individual septic systems in outlying areas,
+surreptitious connections of house sanitary sewers to the storm system,
+breaks and leaks in sanitary sewers, and such things. Partly too they
+seem to come from the fact that some sanitary sewers are having to carry
+more sewage than they were designed to handle, so that their overflow
+valves leak more or less constantly into the storm sewer system. The
+capacity of sewage collection systems is related to planning. If a pipe
+is laid down to a fringe area where county zoning maps indicate only
+limited development is going to be permitted, its size is gauged to that
+kind of development. But if the zoning is changed later and three times
+as many houses are hooked up to the line as were originally envisioned,
+trouble results. Rock Creek is heavily affected by such sewage, and the
+chances are that the situation is much worse on many other urban
+drainways, for their longstanding degradation or sheer disappearance
+from view has lost them the alert defenders who watch over Rock Creek in
+its pleasant valley.
+
+Out of the storm sewers whether combined or separate, off of the roads
+and streambanks and hillsides, down the urban tributaries or directly
+overland into the estuary, comes still another big jolt of organic and
+bacterial pollution every time there is a heavy rain. This is surface
+runoff, the washings of the street and parks and sidewalks and rooftops.
+Besides debris, it contains vast hordes of bacteria and many kinds of
+organic oxygen-demanding substances, of which animal droppings are only
+one easily definable example. Around a city the size of the Washington
+metropolis, this runoff would constitute a worrisome pollution problem
+even if the matter of sanitary wastes were thoroughly in control.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Ships and large boats in the estuary, in accordance with an
+unfortunately persistent nautical tradition, generally discharge toilet
+wastes and garbage directly into the water on which they float. Some of
+these are coastal or transoceanic vessels, both commercial and naval.
+Many more belong to the fleet of pleasure boats which have been
+increasing at Washington despite the water's unpleasant state to which
+they add their bit, degrading the element that is supposed to provide
+the enjoyment for which the boats were built. It is not a problem
+limited to the Potomac estuary, but widespread these days and the focus
+of much concern among public health and pollution control authorities,
+conservationists, and the boat and marina industries themselves.
+
+Around the various marinas to be found along metropolitan
+shores--several of them Federally owned--sanitary facilities are
+generally skimpy, and no regulations govern the discharge of wastes from
+boats. Since individual marinas may berth as many as 600 or 700 craft, a
+great many of them in daily use during the recreation season and some
+inhabited as dwellings the year round, summer conditions that frequently
+prevail around these places are not to be described in polite terms.
+
+Less visible at the point of origin though not in its ultimate effects
+is the huge organic load that comes to the estuary in the effluent of
+local sewage treatment plants, estimated at possibly 300 to 350 million
+gallons per day. There are many smaller plants strung out down both
+shores of the upper estuary, but four larger ones handle the bulk of
+metropolitan sewage. Of these, three--the main plant at Blue Plains in
+the District, the Alexandria plant, and the Fairfax County Westgate
+plant--furnish secondary treatment, and the fourth, the Arlington County
+plant on Four Mile Run, is on the verge of putting new secondary
+facilities into operation.
+
+Yet the same problem of plant operation that exists in the upper Basin
+also rears its head here. A casual boat ride down the shoreline with a
+few excursions up tributary creek-mouths demonstrates that many of the
+smaller plants, including a number of Federal ones, are emitting a very
+low quality of effluent, and this is borne out by sanitary surveys. The
+proliferation of such small plants around cities and elsewhere is a
+headache to sanitary authorities, for their very size and numbers create
+a probability of trouble. Much effort is going into eliminating them and
+channeling the wastes they receive into the larger plants.
+
+But the large plants themselves at this point are a much bigger part of
+the problem; on the basis of sheer volume, their contribution to
+estuarial pollution dwarfs all others. The Blue Plains plant is by far
+the largest of the four, handling wastes from about 1.4 million people
+in Washington and outlying areas on both sides of the river. By the
+terms of a conference convened in 1957 by the Public Health Service to
+investigate the sanitary state of the Potomac at Washington, the
+District committed itself to maintain 80% efficiency of treatment at
+this plant, which was then brand new. Last year, ten years afterward,
+the most generous recent calculation of the efficiency there was 62%,
+and some qualified observers expressed a conviction that Blue Plains had
+never consistently functioned at much over 50%--in other words, it had
+been returning to the estuary unassimilated organic materials equivalent
+to the raw discharges of a population of roughly 500,000 to 700,000
+people each day. Nor do these figures include a great deal of sludge
+that has been flushed on into the river when digesters have failed to
+function properly, or the plant's frequently inadequate use of
+chlorination against bacterial pollution and odors. Since the same 1957
+conference required of the other metropolitan jurisdictions only that
+they do equally as well as the main plant in quality of treatment, they
+have clearly not been obligated to superhuman effort.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Criticism of Blue Plains is in part criticism of ourselves. Because of
+the distinctive relationship between the District and the Federal
+Government, the District's treatment plant is in a sense a Federal
+installation, funded through Congress and with more direct links to
+Federal water quality agencies than any other big municipal plant in the
+country. The number of people the plant serves has, of course, increased
+greatly in the past ten years. It may have been, as has been claimed,
+somewhat underdesigned to begin with, and it undoubtedly needs expansion
+now. Yet a rather substantial improvement in the quality of treatment
+there in quite recent months, mainly under the stimulus of this planning
+effort and the present surge of interest in the Potomac, indicates that
+had emphasis on low operating costs been subjugated to pride in
+results, the present plant could long ago have been made to function
+reasonably well and the estuary would have had to cope with a much
+lighter load of wastes.
+
+The truly spectacular manifestation of pollution in the metropolitan
+Potomac is the periodic growth of algae there in summertime. When
+conditions are right--when sun, summer temperatures, low inflows from
+the river above, and a heavy concentration of nitrate and phosphate
+nutrients all combine to make of the upper estuary one vast inspired
+pool of fertility--the whole surface of the river may be covered with a
+thick bright emerald mat, and boats that pass at speed leave wakes of
+green instead of white. The infestation may extend downstream for thirty
+or forty miles, in various degrees of concentration, and even if the
+water were bacterially safe this "bloom," as it is called, would
+prohibit its recreational use by anyone without a strong stomach. It
+further disrupts aquatic life balances, and periodically dies and decays
+aromatically, setting off whole new cycles of oxygen depletion, fish
+kills, stink, and fertilization.
+
+The problem is one of fertility, of course, and stems from the huge
+quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus perennially present in the water.
+Some of this comes down from the upper river--where, as we noted, much
+of it derives from land runoff--but by far the greatest part of it
+originates at the metropolis and enters the river through the effluent
+of waste treatment plants. Efficiency of operation has hardly anything
+to do with it, for even the best standard treatment has little effect on
+nutrients.
+
+Eutrophication is the scientific name of this kind of overenrichment. It
+is occurring in many places, Lake Erie being the best-known single
+example in this country. Though its causes are mainly known, the process
+itself is still not fully understood, particularly in regard to the
+function of nitrogen and the way it works. But the other key element,
+phosphorus, has been more amenable to study and to possible action. It
+occurs in body wastes, in artificial fertilizers, as a by-product of
+natural decay, and very notably in detergents. Some eight tons of it are
+released into the estuary each day from the treatment plants in addition
+to the undetermined but much smaller amounts arriving from upriver, and
+the usual overall accumulation is enough to make the river's phosphorus
+content exceed that considered desirable all the way from Theodore
+Roosevelt Island to Quantico, Virginia, and below, which represents the
+general extent of the summertime "blooms."
+
+Dilapidation begets disrespect, and the abused and often repellent
+waters of the upper estuary are undoubtedly subjected to much additional
+miscellaneous pollution by people who believe perhaps that a little more
+cannot possibly matter. Again, Federal or Federally connected
+institutions have not been setting the best possible example, and there
+are many of them around the capital city. Unwarranted waste discharges
+of one kind or another have been traced to most of the military
+installations fronting the river, to military hospitals, to government
+heating plants, to the National Zoo, to National Parks, and to similar
+Federal sources including the marinas already mentioned. In most cases,
+measures are now being taken to eliminate these discharges, but it is a
+commentary on the complexity and difficulty of the whole task of dealing
+with pollution that at the level of government where real concern with
+the problem has been acute for a decade or more, and furthermore at and
+around the very seat of that government, such practices should have
+persisted this long.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Junk and debris of all descriptions infest the metropolitan river,
+floating about, washing onto the shores, poking up stolidly here and
+there out of mudflats. Most items in a dreary inventory that might be
+compiled would turn out to be something that was discarded somewhere it
+didn't belong by someone who did not want to go to the trouble to put it
+where it did belong. Therefore, the main source is undoubtedly simple
+disregard for the sensibilities and rights of others, multiplied and
+complicated by the immense number of people in the metropolis and the
+wide territory they occupy. In our study of Rock Creek last year, some
+powerful subsidiary reasons for the prevalence of debris turned up also,
+ranging to streetcleaning methods and the inconvenient hours kept by
+some public dumps where citizens have to carry their larger trash.
+Metropolitan problems are seldom simple, and many of them in one way or
+another manage to inflict a part of their complexity on the river at the
+national capital, which is sad but possibly appropriate in a time like
+the present.
+
+
+The lower estuary
+
+Downriver from the main effects of the metropolitan complexities, the
+widening brackish and salt portions of the Potomac estuary form a
+generally healthy body of water, though changes loom as the metropolis
+moves inexorably outward from its center and as hitherto remote
+Tidewater areas are brought more and more under the influence of modern
+ways of being. Localized problems of pollution point to general dangers
+that will certainly materialize unless safeguards are set up in time,
+for estuaries are delicate, immensely productive, and still somewhat
+mysterious aquatic environments that have been and still are too much
+taken for granted.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Rapid human intrusion on estuaries during the past twenty years has
+been making apparent their phenomenal value in a natural condition.
+Vulnerable, attractive to diverse interests that work their beds for
+sand and gravel and fill in their marshes for development and casually
+pollute them, they have recently been called America's most endangered
+natural habitat. They are almost unbelievably fertile places, with
+involved biological cycles that can convert the fertility into usable
+food at rates per acre far exceeding those of the finest farm land; in
+terms of money, one recent set of experiments indicates the possibility
+of attaining an annual shellfish production on tended beds worth over
+$26,000 an acre.
+
+Furthermore, aside from the direct harvest of this wealth from estuaries
+each year by commercial and sport fishermen, these in-between waters
+make an indispensable contribution to the entire Atlantic coastal
+fishery, an industry worth a billion dollars a year. The reason for this
+is that at least 70 percent of coastal fishes spend some essential part
+of their life cycle within an estuary--spawning there, or passing
+through on their way to spawn in running fresh streams, or moving in as
+fry from the rivers or the open sea to find a "nursery" in one of the
+varied estuarine habitats--bays, marshes, sandy shorelines, mudflats,
+tidal creeks, or weed beds.
+
+The oysters from the famous beds in the Saint Mary's River off of the
+lower Potomac are mainly condemned as unfit for consumption because of
+local sewage pollution, and these beds are not the only unfit ones, for
+towns and resorts in the region have been growing and sanitary
+facilities have not been keeping pace. Already some arms of the superb
+natural harbors formed by the tributary creeks are noxious with
+discharges from boats at big marinas, and gravel dredging is stirring up
+silt to smother bottom life, including shellfish. As Tidewater
+agriculture revives and modernizes, pesticides and artificial
+fertilizers are coming to be as much a part of the scene there as in
+other farming regions, and may be expected to influence the estuary--in
+fact, they undoubtedly already are doing so in subtle ways with effects
+not yet apparent.
+
+Yet most of this part of the river is still beautiful and continues to
+yield good harvests of seafood. The Potomac River Fisheries Commission
+has been alert to obvious dangers and has moved against them where its
+powers have permitted, and natives of the area are increasingly alert in
+protecting the estuary. Many of them depend on it for a living, most are
+oriented toward it for their pleasures, and until lately a good many of
+them counted on it for transportation. In a number of different ways, it
+matters in their lives. And that fact offers some hope for the future,
+especially if it is fostered and strengthened by overall protective
+measures.
+
+
+Techniques for cleaning up
+
+Two main general approaches to water quality improvement exist:
+treatment of pollution at its source or occasionally after it has
+entered a stream, and augmentation of the stream's flow to help it
+assimilate loads of waste beyond its natural capacity. A third
+possibility in certain situations is the diversion of wastes out of a
+stream's drainage entirely. In practice, these methods can be varied and
+combined in any number of ways to fit a need.
+
+To take the last one first, diversion of whole wastes as received from
+their sources is a total and dramatic means of coping with a pollution
+problem stemming from collectable wastes, but it often has
+disadvantages. One of these, of course, is the possibility that the
+pollution problem may be simply transplanted elsewhere--that the water
+in which the wastes eventually end up will suffer. Another is loss of
+water from the stream system. If, as is usual, a town gets its water out
+of the local river or a tributary and does not give it back after
+use--preferably well cleaned up--other users downstream are not going to
+have as much water available to them, and the essential processes and
+ecology of the river itself may suffer.
+
+The only place such wholesale diversion of wastes has been seriously
+considered in the Potomac Basin is at metropolitan Washington, whose
+sewage could feasibly be piped across Chesapeake Bay and the Delmarva
+peninsula and well out into the Atlantic--possibly, as has been
+suggested, in combination with sewage from Baltimore. It would be a
+permanent means of disposal, but very expensive in terms of both
+investment and operating costs. Furthermore, though in the estuary no
+downstream users would suffer a loss of water supply, the water content
+in metropolitan sewage has at times risen as high as 80 percent of the
+flow of the river above the upstream intakes. The effects of such a
+subtraction of fresh water on the estuary itself--changes in flow, and
+in the penetration of salt water upriver, with an inevitable alteration
+in valuable fisheries and the whole balance of aquatic life established
+through millennia--could easily turn out to be disastrous.
+
+Standard treatment of pollution at its source consists of the primary
+and secondary processes we have glanced at, sometimes adjusted to
+specific industrial wastes. It has to be brought up to peak efficiency
+along the Potomac, for this is a "known factor" of great significance.
+Plants can and must be improved physically where necessary, and
+qualified operators provided for them. Collection systems have to be
+improved or enlarged in many places. Diminutive plants, doomed to
+inefficiency by their size and the financial impossibility of hiring
+expert workers for them, need to be eliminated in favor of regional
+waste collection and treatment facilities, which are quite feasible,
+particularly in the watershed units of the upper Basin.
+
+Even so, it has emerged clearly to view in this Potomac study that
+standard treatment alone is no longer an answer in areas of concentrated
+or continuous population and industry, where the leftover wastes and the
+nutrients in the effluent from even well-run standard plants can often
+add up to a killing load for water.
+
+Total diversion of treatment plant effluents is sometimes possible, but
+is subject to the same objections that apply to total diversion of
+untreated sewage--possible pollution of the receiving water (such as
+Chesapeake Bay or the lower Potomac estuary, both of which have been
+suggested and considered for Washington's effluent) and the alteration
+of hydrological and ecological conditions. Modified forms of effluent
+diversion, however, may offer more promise.
+
+Effluents from maximum standard treatment processes, for instance, can
+be injected into underground strata as recharge water for aquifers--a
+process mentioned earlier as one alternative in the emerging package of
+water supply techniques--or may be spread over the surface of large
+areas of rural land where they serve as irrigation water and fertilizer
+combined, as well as soaking down into underlying aquifers. For large
+scale, sustained use, both of these practices still offer some technical
+difficulties--algae buildups that interfere with percolation, odor
+problems, limited aquifer capacities, the large amounts of land required
+for spreading, the effect of rain and freezing weather, and such things.
+And where the aquifers in question do not feed the original source
+stream system, a big subtraction is again involved. But for certain
+conditions in certain places these problems are undoubtedly going to be
+worked out.
+
+A more modest but highly useful modification of effluent diversion is
+the spacing of treatment plant outfalls at intervals for a long distance
+downstream from a treatment plant. If nutrient and organic loads are not
+tremendously heavy in relation to the size of the receiving stream, this
+procedure can help to assure that no one stretch gets too strong a dose
+of them. It is likely to find good use in the Potomac and elsewhere,
+though only as an adjunct to the best available treatment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Advanced treatment" and "tertiary treatment" are becoming common terms
+nowadays. They refer to any of a considerable array of additional or
+intensified processes aimed at attaining levels of purification that
+would have cost an impossible price a few years ago. Most of them are
+still experimental and often still expensive, and they involve
+everything from filtration through powdered coal to flash distillation,
+with still others in prospect. Some bypass conventional treatment and
+deal with whole raw wastes. More build on conventional treatment and are
+designed to remove nutrients and residual organic material from its
+effluents. Of these latter approaches, at least one, involving lime
+precipitation and other processes to remove nearly all phosphorus and
+most remaining organic material, is nearing a stage of development and
+economy that may warrant important use. It will be applied first at the
+new Piscataway treatment plant of the Washington Suburban Sanitary
+Commission in Prince Georges County, Maryland, which will also
+incorporate research and demonstration projects in nitrogen stripping
+and other things.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the long run such advances offer the main hope of clean water for a
+superpopulated future America, where volumes of wastes are going to be
+enormous and first-rate off-stream treatment is going to have to be the
+main way of handling them. Even where wastes can be collected easily for
+treatment, however, as in industry or in sewered populated areas, it may
+take a good many years to work out varied forms of advanced treatment
+adaptable to different sets of circumstances, at prices that communities
+can afford to pay--and a willingness to pay what can be paid is going to
+have to be a part of the long clean-up job ahead. Undoubtedly continuing
+research will work out such forms of treatment, but the research itself
+may be quite costly and no one can predict its pace.
+
+Where waste sources are too diffuse to be channeled into collection
+systems--as along many agricultural streams heavily polluted through
+land runoff and drainage, and also in some urban situation--present
+tools are extremely limited. Soil conservation practices aimed at
+cutting down erosion--to be discussed within a few pages--tend to keep
+not only silt but nutrients and other substances on the land to some
+extent. Concentrated sources of animal manure such as dairies, poultry
+operations, and feed lots can be brought under some control by fencing
+stock off from streams and by techniques of lagooning and later field
+spreading, which need much wider use in the Potomac Basin. But even if
+these approaches were applied fully throughout the region within a
+shorter time than appears likely or even possible, land runoff would
+still be a heavy source of water degradation.
+
+Hence it is probable that flow augmentation--sometimes called "flow
+dilution" or included in the broader term "flow regulation"--through the
+release of stored water, will be an important auxiliary tool in water
+quality management for a good while to come. This is not a form of
+flushing wastes downstream from their source and out of sight, as some
+opponents continue to insist, but a means of helping streams to
+oxygenate and decompose excess wastes by the same processes they have
+always used on natural and normal loads. On the other hand, neither is
+flow augmentation the end-all cure for pollution that enthusiasts of a
+few years ago claimed it to be. Its effect on slow masses of water is
+uncertain and probably minimal, and too much dependence on it even for
+flowing streams would obviously encourage neglect of the practical and
+moral need to keep filth and troublesome substances from getting into
+the streams in the first place. Furthermore, such dependence would lead
+rapidly to a point of diminishing returns, like the flood-plain
+development and protection cycle examined in the preceding chapter.
+Increases in populations and pollution would lead to a necessity to
+provide more and more augmentation of flows, with storage space in
+reservoirs becoming more and more expensive precisely as flood
+protection does. Flow augmentation is no substitute for good treatment,
+but a valuable adjunct.
+
+In the record drought summer of 1966 the South Fork of the Shenandoah,
+heavily polluted with municipal and industrial wastes near Waynesboro,
+and with fertilizer, manure, and other substances in drainage from the
+rich and intensively utilized farm country through which it flows, ran
+very low for months. In many places it was slimy and unpleasant, and
+aquatic life suffered to some extent, but the picture was not nearly so
+dismal as it would have been if the river had not been helped out more
+or less by accident. The source of this help was some 2000 gallons of
+water per minute that the Merck plant at Elkton and the Dupont plant
+near Waynesboro were releasing after having pumped it out of deep
+aquifers and used it for cooling. If all sources of pollution had been
+receiving adequate treatment, this minimal dilution might not have been
+so badly needed to avoid the fish kills and algal stagnation and other
+results that would have ensured without it. But "all sources" include
+the problematic agricultural drainage, and for that matter the
+definition of "adequate treatment" is going to have to go up and up in
+our expansive future.
+
+The sad situation of the smaller and much less industrialized Monocacy
+in the same summer underscores the point. The Monocacy flows through
+similar farming country and passes by a few towns. The largest of these
+is Frederick, Maryland, for whose approximately 40,000 people the little
+river furnishes water and a conduit to carry away the effluent from
+their average-to-good secondary plant. At times during that dry summer
+practically the entire flow of the river below Frederick consisted of
+effluent, with effects on stream life, esthetics, and the general
+surroundings that are not hard to imagine.
+
+Another good example of a place where, under present conditions,
+augmentation could sometimes be used beneficially is at Great Falls and
+in the Potomac gorge below. Heavy public expenditure has protected the
+shore in much of this neighborhood and provided pleasant recreation
+areas whose main scenic focus is the violent magnificence of the river
+in its plunge. But the magnificence becomes a rather drab joke in dry
+summers when metropolitan withdrawals of water above that point shrink
+the river to a semblance of normal flow.
+
+[Illustration: Low Flow Augmentation]
+
+The North Branch and some smaller Basin streams also need this same kind
+of help and most will continue to need it even when the best
+economically feasible treatment of all collectable wastes entering them
+is ensured. It can be provided out of reservoirs, large or small, whose
+need for other purposes as well will keep the cost of dilution within
+reason. A future possibility, if research presently going on in the
+Basin verifies it and shows ways of putting it to use, is to employ
+ground water in the same way. There can be no doubt that if the flowing
+waters of the Basin are to be put back in good condition and kept that
+way under population pressures that are in prospect, flow augmentation
+in some places is going to be an important tool.
+
+In the upper estuary, however, its usefulness appears to be far more
+limited. The plan proposed in the _Army Report_ of 1963, in line with a
+Public Health Service approach emphasized in the 1961 Water Pollution
+Control Act, was designed to provide an eventual minimum flow into the
+upper estuary of 3100 cubic feet per second, or around two billion
+gallons per day, for the purpose of dealing with treatment-plant
+effluents and miscellaneous pollution. But more recent investigations
+have raised strong doubt as to whether such augmentation could do the
+job in the estuary with its huge volume of water, and its slow,
+tide-baffled currents that greatly lessen its assimilative capacity.
+
+In terms of dissolved oxygen, dilution of such a body of water for
+quality improvement appears to decrease in unit effectiveness as the
+volume of dilution is stepped up, which means that past a certain
+minimal point of improvement it gets expensive and requires
+unreasonable amounts of storage. In terms of nutrients, one authority
+has calculated that about 20,000 cubic feet per second would be required
+to reduce the nutrient level in the upper estuary to a point where it
+would be only twice that of a normal and healthily "rich" section of the
+upper Chesapeake Bay. Some augmentation below the point of diminishing
+returns will undoubtedly be needed, not only for the estuary but to keep
+the river alive in its gorge above Washington during periods of low
+flow. But as a main tool for the metropolitan river, it will not
+substitute for achievement of the best possible standard treatment
+followed by advanced treatment and other techniques.
+
+Obviously, just as in water supply, an ultimate cure for water quality
+ills is going to consist of a "mix" of solutions, different techniques
+being applied to the situations they are best suited to deal with, and
+combinations of them being worked out where combinations are what is
+indicated. Already the same kind of sophisticated mathematical models of
+given bodies of water--including the Potomac--that are being used to
+study solutions for water supply problems are being put to use on water
+quality as well, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of various
+combinations of means. And, just as in water supply, ultimate "hard"
+technology is undoubtedly going to make better solutions possible, while
+a strong and meaningful start is possible with the technology that is on
+hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Silt is a truly Basinwide problem. The individual tiny grains of soil
+that mass to sully and choke the estuary may have originated anywhere
+in the thousands of square miles of drainage above. They constitute an
+economic loss at their points of origin as well as a trouble all along
+their downstream course of migration.
+
+The basic-physical ways of preventing silt are twofold and easily
+defined: first, the maintenance of proper land cover--vegetation or
+humus or mulch which blankets and anchors the soil particles and
+prevents falling or flowing water from dislodging them--and second,
+structural approaches that control the flow of water and can also serve
+to trap eroded material. These latter can be anything from good contour
+plowing practices to a major reservoir with a certain silt capacity
+built into it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Such techniques are the basis of existing programs of the Soil
+Conservation Service and the Forest Service that have proved their
+effectiveness over many years of rural application. Watershed planning
+with small reservoirs, check dams, and terraces backed up by good land
+treatment and use, soil surveys, wise forestry practices, and such
+things are stimulated and bolstered in these programs by technical and
+financial assistance given to private landowners, States, and local
+organizations. They have already had important local effects in the
+Potomac States as throughout the country, but for maximum value in
+relieving sedimentation they are going to need much wider and more
+intensive application.
+
+In modified form, they can be effective against newer and more
+concentrated sources of silt, while sometimes accomplishing other
+purposes as well. As we noted in discussing metropolitan pollution,
+urban land undergoing development can enormously benefit from good
+watershed planning. Preservation of critically erosive and flood-prone
+land in grass and forest, insistence on prompt re-vegetation of bared
+land and the use of such things as sediment detention basins by
+developers, the construction of small headwater reservoirs when they are
+needed to trap silt and reduce flooding--all these elements of watershed
+planning are effective not only against silt but against standard urban
+and suburban ugliness. The translation of rural techniques to city use
+cannot be literal, for both urban hydrology and urban land use are
+distinctive, and a good deal remains to be learned about making the
+techniques work better there. But their basic principles are obviously a
+main hope.
+
+Other modifications of them, if put into wide practice, can cut down on
+the heavy production of silt by strip mines in the upper Basin;
+these involve both the reclamation of abandoned mines and the use
+of more care in scraping new ones. And application of the same
+principles--protective cover and detention of runoff--to new highway and
+road construction, as well as to the reclamation of banks and shoulders
+on old secondary roads, has to be achieved.
+
+The silt already in the upper estuary, and likely to continue to be
+deposited there even after the best available controls may have been put
+into operation above, will need radical treatment. The tens of millions
+of tons already choking the metropolitan river, the stockpile of
+centuries, will have to be dredged out if the river is going to be as
+pleasant and useful at the capital as it ought to be, and so will the
+yearly additions that can inevitably be expected. This can be done if
+the money is available, though a considerable unsolved problem, under
+research at present, is where to put the silt after it has been taken
+out of the river, for appropriate fill sites are growing scarce.
+
+Turbidity in the sluggish upper estuary will continue to be a problem
+too, for the fine particles of silt that cause it are the least affected
+by standard land treatment and sediment control measures.
+Polyelectrolytes--chemicals which when applied in quite small amounts
+can coagulate such suspended silt and settle it out--offer some promise
+as tools against turbidity and are being tried out experimentally above
+one of the reservoirs on upper Rock Creek, with good results thus far.
+Very possibly they may prove to be useful for clearing up the estuary
+after it has been roiled by storm runoff, and for achieving some
+control of murky waters around sand and gravel dredging operations.
+However, ironically, it has also been pointed out that until the excess
+of nutrients in the upper estuary is eliminated, such clearing of the
+water could very possibly cause a great increase in the already
+disastrous algae blooms, by allowing sunlight to penetrate to greater
+depths and foster more production of this undelightful greenery. Cleanup
+of pollution as complex as that evolved in the 20th century has to be
+across the board.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Barring a general philosophical revolution on the part of the American
+people, the problem of junk and debris in our waters is likely to
+continue and even to increase as people and their consumption of the
+products of the economy maintain their geometric growth. Clean rivers in
+themselves might deter a good many people from cluttering them thus, and
+so might public education, stiff fines, and the provision of better
+municipal pickup and dumping facilities. But mainly getting rid of such
+detritus is probably going to be a matter of fairly continuous
+gathering and disposal. On navigable waters like those of the upper
+Potomac estuary, ingenious collection craft under the command of Army
+Engineers are in prospect; elsewhere the job is likely to be more
+old-fashioned and laborious.
+
+For certain remaining pollution problems, no definite full technological
+answers exist at present and the main hope must be to alleviate them as
+much as possible while pressing a search for long-run answers. Some are
+relatively restricted in their effects in the Potomac Basin so far,
+though they have some drastic local effects and some long-run
+implications. Certain industrial wastes not amenable to any presently
+known form of treatment, such as tannery discharges at Petersburg, West
+Virginia, and Williamsport, Maryland, are one example. So are the
+noxious exudations of raw sewage and garbage from ships and pleasure
+craft. Marinas themselves and the boats docked there can and must be
+connected to waste collection systems. Laws can and should prohibit
+discharges from watercraft in harbors and rivers. But until better means
+of on-board waste treatment or retention than exist at present are
+evolved and made mandatory, the multitudes of boats with standard toilet
+facilities are going to keep on causing trouble.
+
+Other sources of trouble without clear-cut present solutions are big
+ones. Surface runoff from both cities and rural areas, as we have seen,
+causes much pollution. In the country, soil conservation measures can
+slow it somewhat and strain out some pollutants, and augmentation of
+streams' flow can enhance their capacity to oxidize the wastes. But
+neither of these seem likely to do much to ease the longrun buildup and
+diffusion of persistent pollutants like pesticides, or to avert the
+possibility of disastrous spills. Public education and wiser restrictive
+legislation may help, but the only real hope in terms of these poisons
+appears to be that more selective and less indestructible substitutes
+will be found, and all promising means of biological pest control
+explored. Continuing programs are focused on the problem, but it
+continues to be serious.
+
+Pollutive runoff from urban areas merges with the whole question of
+urban sewer systems, for most of it gets to the river through storm
+sewers. We have seen that the old-style combined sewers of the District
+of Columbia and Alexandria cause gross pollution when storms force open
+their overflow gates, and we have seen too why the approach to this
+problem that formerly prevailed--the arduous, hugely expensive digging
+up of sewers and their replacement with dual pipes to carry storm runoff
+and sewage separately--is no longer considered satisfactory. For the
+more modern dual systems also contribute much trouble through the filthy
+rainwater that pours out into streams from the storm system and through
+the accidental or illegal channeling of sanitary wastes into storm
+sewers.
+
+A wholly satisfactory answer would allow runoff water as well as all
+sanitary wastes to be held for full treatment at a standard plant. But
+when we consider that at the Washington metropolis the dirty local
+runoff from a single storm may amount to billions of gallons, the
+question of where to hold it grows a bit complex, and is leading toward
+experimentation with such ideas as vast subterranean networks of tunnels
+for storage. Partial answers might come from subjecting storm and mixed
+flows to different and lesser kinds of treatment by micro-screens at
+sewer outfalls, detention and settling tanks, and filtration beds. These
+possibilities and others need much investigation and testing.
+
+Then there are the multitude of nasty mysterious dribbles that help to
+degrade Rock Creek and can undoubtedly be found in even more profusion
+along every other metropolitan watercourse. Such of them as issue from
+storm sewers will be eliminated when a solution turns up for the problem
+of runoff water. The others, and they are numerous, will not. Even if
+the bureaucratic and political tangles that help to perpetuate
+them--which will be mentioned again--are dealt with, the sheer
+mathematics of possibility in a great city, plus the frequent difficulty
+of fixing responsibility, make the overall problem of these
+miscellaneous leaks and dribbles a very tough one, not likely to be
+resolved with the wave of anyone's hand. Except in visible and
+well-defended watercourses like Rock Creek, they will probably persist
+for a long while, even though in reduced quantities, together with some
+storm runoff and some periodic discharge from combined sewers, not a
+major component in estuarial pollution but a stubborn one.
+
+A final great contaminant against which weapons are meager is acid mine
+drainage. Its sources along the North Branch are numerous, as we have
+seen. They have been and are being minutely studied, but present
+technology does not furnish any clear and effective means of dealing
+with each source individually and returning the upper river and its
+branches to health, and such source rectification would be the only
+really adequate answer.
+
+Surface strip mines are deservedly notorious for the destruction of the
+rugged green landscapes that are one of Appalachia's greatest resources.
+Because of the public disgust they arouse, they have had a lot of
+attention, and methods for conducting this sort of mining less brutally
+and for reclaiming old minesites have been worked out. These methods
+have notable effect on silt and acid production. Because State laws to
+regulate strip mining have been generally scarce and weak, however, and
+because the reclamation of old mines is very expensive, such action is
+mainly more honored in the breach than in the observance.
+
+However, strip mines produce only a tenth to a quarter of acid mine
+pollution, and if they were all under control the problem would still be
+huge. The active or abandoned underground mines that give out the great
+bulk of the acid and other pollutive substances have so far almost
+totally resisted satisfactory management, despite tremendous efforts.
+Among techniques that have been tried are neutralization with limestone
+and other materials, air sealing to cut down on the oxidation that helps
+form the acid, sealing of mine openings to prevent outflow, mining
+methods designed to prevent exposure of sulfuritic materials, and
+chemical inhibition of acid generation. Regardless of the hope that some
+have aroused, none has worked well and economically, and the search is
+hindered by a continuing lack of data and scientific knowledge
+concerning the complex physical and chemical processes by which the
+pollutants are formed.
+
+A number of agencies are researching this whole problem, among them the
+Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, the Geological Survey,
+the Bureau of Mines, the Soil Conservation Service, INCOPOT, and some
+State government bodies. Sooner or later an answer or a set of answers
+must come out of these efforts. But nothing presently conduces to a
+belief that the acid problem on the North Branch or anywhere else is
+going to find quick and dramatic alleviation at its sources.
+
+Dilution of this acid pollution helps to minimize its effects, not
+actually neutralizing them but reducing their severity in periods of low
+river flow. It can be accomplished by impounding mine drainage for
+release only during periods of high flow, though where sources are many
+as on the North Branch this would be difficult. Or fresh water can be
+held in bulk storage for release during low flow. In helping acid
+conditions along the lower North Branch, therefore, the authorized
+Bloomington reservoir may play a part, though it will do nothing for the
+upper reaches of the river and the reservoir water itself will be acidic
+if nothing is done to neutralize it. Under INCOPOT auspices, a promising
+inquiry is being conducted into the possibility of instream acid removal
+above the reservoir, using an energy process possibly powered by
+electricity generated at the dam. If it works out as well as seems
+probable, the benefits can be huge.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+There is little point, of course, in getting the acid out of the lower
+North Branch unless the other pollution in that area is dealt with too.
+This compounded trouble, involving a considerable number of towns and
+industries with insufficient waste treatment or none at all, is made to
+order for a pilot application of the regional or sub-basin type of waste
+management authority mentioned earlier in this chapter. Not only is the
+problem on the North Branch bad enough to warrant special overall
+measures, but the area's topography is well suited to collection of
+wastes and their conveyance to first-rate centralized treatment plants.
+This approach too is being studied out by INCOPOT, not only for the
+North Branch but for other well-adapted problem watersheds such as
+Antietam Creek. Like similar systems in Germany that have long been
+admired, it would pool the resources of all sub-basin waste producers,
+get appropriate government funding, and subject all the pollution of a
+given drainage area to intensive and comprehensive correction.
+
+
+Machinery
+
+Though its spread-out economic benefits are almost incalculably great,
+good waste management unfortunately is seldom a money-making affair for
+those who sponsor it. Therefore, it is not usually so much the concern
+of private enterprise as of citizens in general and the various levels
+of government that look after the citizens' desires and wellbeing. It
+depends on laws to back it up, and on institutions and programs
+established by law. These are the only machinery by which it can be
+adequately stimulated, unless we assume that all waste producers are
+altruistic to a point of self-sacrifice, an assumption which history
+does not encourage.
+
+Thanks to thoroughly justified public anxiety over the state of American
+waters, there is presently on hand the best assortment of such legal
+machinery that has ever existed, much of it so new as to be mainly
+untested. The Key Federal item is the Water Quality Act of 1965, which
+established the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and set
+into motion a national program to clean up interstate and tidal waters.
+In the program the States were allotted primary responsibility for
+setting standards of cleanliness and were given until June 30, 1967, to
+work them out and submit them to the Federal Water Pollution Control
+Administration for review. Later came the Clean Waters Restoration Act
+of 1966, which authorized funds for F.W.P.C.A. construction grants to
+help communities build waste treatment facilities. Programs under other
+government agencies are also aimed at helping towns and cities deal with
+wastes.
+
+In May of 1966 the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was
+transferred from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the
+Department of the Interior, with a good many changes in personnel. A
+valuable move toward the longrun unity of Federal environmental study
+and action, this change has meant that the agency's shakedown period in
+its new surroundings has come during the latter part of our Potomac
+work, and that some large questions of policy and procedure are only now
+being answered. Furthermore, the fact that our study has coincided with
+the inevitably lengthy shaping of the State standards, and with their
+review and their coordination on specific interstate streams like the
+Potomac and its main tributaries, has somewhat blurred our view of this
+most significant legal machinery of all. For it is through these
+standards and their enforcement that the fundamental action toward a
+clean Potomac will be taken. The emphasis in formulating them and
+reviewing them has been on vast improvement, not on a rationalization of
+existing conditions, and behind them there is going to be legal muscle
+for enforcement.
+
+Erosion and sedimentation, particularly from urban and industrial
+sources, will be of concern in these State programs, and in fact some
+Basin States already have powers for use against them that have never
+been brought fully to bear, but undoubtedly will be with the new
+impetus. At the Federal level, going programs of the Department of
+Agriculture--primarily under the Soil Conservation Service but also
+involving the Forest Service--are the best machinery we have. Their
+techniques of soil protection and runoff detention have been described
+earlier, and are often applied in a coordinated way to whole small
+watersheds. Mainly they are put into practice through the voluntary
+cooperation of landowners, watershed associations, and local or State
+governments, stimulated by Federal technical assistance and
+cost-sharing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was noted earlier that these techniques can also be effective against
+careless urban land shaping and other new concentrated sources of silt
+such as strip mines. But in terms of legal machinery, these areas
+present problems, chief among which is the matter of incentive on the
+part of those who must cooperate if the programs are to work. In an
+agricultural watershed, the effect of soil conservation practices and
+flood control measures on the health and productivity of the land is
+sharply evident to rural landowners and others in the neighborhood, who
+all benefit from it and usually are eager to cooperate. But strip mine
+operators and urban developers and road contractors and such folk seldom
+have to live personally with the erosion and mud and trouble that may
+result from the way they move earth and change the landscape. To them,
+sediment control and respect for the way watersheds work, even with
+cost-sharing, is likely to loom as simply an extra expense.
+
+Under these circumstances, only stiff controls are going to make
+watershed programs and other devices work right. Local sediment
+ordinances are acutely needed, but are generally lacking or inadequate
+or poorly enforced, perhaps mainly because silt, in common with other
+pollutants, has some of its worst effects at points far removed from
+where it originates and local governments prefer not to stir up local
+developers and mine operators. It is a facet of what we called earlier
+the philosophical source of pollution.
+
+[Illustration: Small Watershed Projects Boost Economy of Communities]
+
+This being so, the good of the Basin and the Potomac as a whole is going
+to require the exercise of State and interstate and Federal power
+against silt as well as against other pollution, especially around
+populated areas, until such time as the populated areas have developed
+the political maturity to take firm hold of their responsibilities in
+such matters. Laws and ordinances of themselves solve nothing. For
+example, many of the pollutive dribbles along Rock Creek and other
+metropolitan watercourses are based in clearly illegal practices and
+hence slovenly inspection and enforcement of existing regulations.
+Others occur because of defects in the sewer system that could and
+should be found and repaired. A shortage of manpower is one reason for
+such trouble, but poor philosophy is a bigger one.
+
+States, interstate bodies, and municipalities, however, can exert no
+control over another and rather shameful set of pollution sources noted
+earlier in this chapter. These are the delinquent Federal installations
+in the Basin, generally but not always in the neighborhood of the
+capital, that are contributing to the river's problem. Recent publicity,
+much of it deriving from aspects of this present study, has been
+bringing about some improvement, as has President Johnson's Executive
+Order 11288, which directed that Federal facilities set the best example
+in the matter of pollution control. But the order has obviously not been
+obeyed with uniform enthusiasm in all quarters, defective philosophy and
+short waste-disposal budgets being no exclusive property of local
+governments. Sometimes this is because limited funds force agencies to
+put waste treatment far down on their list for spending, and little is
+left over for it. Whatever the reason in individual cases, a
+continuation of persuasion and enforcement by the F.W.P.C.A. within the
+Federal establishment is going to be essential, and Federal
+installations ought to be required at least to equal or excel the
+quality of treatment provided by other waste producers on the same
+streams or bodies of water. Furthermore, all the diverse pollutive
+activities dependent on Federal aid and cost-sharing--such as road
+construction, for instance--ought to be brought under similar controls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Certain major changes in public policy are needed if different
+techniques of water quality improvement are to be combined in such a way
+as to give the most economical, appropriate, and effective protection to
+specific streams or river systems. The most important of these needed
+changes concerns the role of flow augmentation as a tool, for inclusion
+of water quality storage capacity in Federal reservoirs is a fairly new
+and uncertain practice, and some rather deep pitfalls are becoming
+evident.
+
+One pitfall has to do with Federal Cost-sharing and the way it affects
+the freedom of choice of the States and localities on which the primary
+responsibility for eliminating pollution must rest. In building
+treatment plants to lessen the load of wastes discharged to streams,
+they can presently obtain Federal grants of up to 55% of the facilities'
+total cost. But if storage capacity for water quality--i.e., for flow
+augmentation--is provided in a Federal reservoir upstream, prevailing
+Federal policy based in a 1961 amendment to the Federal Water Pollution
+Control Act has been requiring them to pay nothing at all for it, though
+before such storage is authorized they must certify that an adequate
+standard of conventional treatment will be maintained downstream.
+Obviously, if this continues to be so, when the inevitable choice comes
+between improving on that adequate standard by investing in better
+treatment, either at the beginning or later, and seeking river dilution
+from a reservoir, they will be forced by sheer economics toward the
+latter, whether or not it is the right thing to do or in an overall
+sense the cheapest.
+
+Like other aspects of flow augmentation already discussed, this
+situation is analogous to that of flood control, where communities have
+to pay a good part of the cost of local protection works or of
+controlling flood plain development, but can get reservoir protection
+free. In both cases, local authorities are stimulated toward choices
+that are not necessarily the right ones, taxpayers in general are forced
+to bear the weight of essentially local responsibilities, and the public
+may forever lose scenic or recreational amenities of great worth. The
+Department of the Interior, with a central interest in the problem, is
+taking the lead in an attempt to arrive at a better flow-augmentation
+policy that will permit right choices, put costs where they belong, and
+make certain that at the local level where pollution takes place there
+is sharp incentive to do something about it.
+
+The other main difficulty has to do with the fact that river water has
+many uses, which augmentation may enhance or even stimulate. Water
+released from above during dry periods to increase and steady the
+river's flow and to help it handle wastes may also help navigation and
+hydroelectric power generation downstream, though neither of these is
+any longer a main factor in the flowing Potomac. Augmentation of flow
+can make the river prettier and more useful for recreation, and it can
+have stout beneficial effects on fish and wildlife. And under present
+conditions it constitutes a large increase in water of improved quality
+for free use by irrigators and industries and municipalities, which may
+so burgeon as a result that increased water consumption and waste
+production will cancel out the water quality effects of the reservoir
+releases in short order.
+
+The need here, of course, is for some agency that can solidly guarantee
+that water released for quality control will be allowed to achieve that
+purpose and not be diverted to other uses that conflict with it. Where a
+river runs within a single State, and the State's constitution permits,
+the State may be able to adjust its powers of control and provide the
+guarantee. But where more than one State is involved, as on all the main
+rivers of the Potomac Basin, a good forceful river basin agency is
+clearly needed to coordinate water supply with water demand, and to
+ensure that benefits and cost responsibilities of any necessary
+reservoirs are meted out where they belong.
+
+In terms of legal and institutional machinery, in fact, such a river
+basin agency is the most basic and urgent unfulfilled need along the
+Potomac, for the coordination and continuing supervision of water
+management in all its phases--assurance of supply, flood protection,
+quality improvement, recreation--in the vast physical unit of land
+drained by the river. And because land's condition is so often
+influential on the quality and utility of water, the agency's concern
+and authority must encompass some fundamental matters of land use as
+well.
+
+No clearer illustration of the potential of such a body could be found
+than the achievements of the present Interstate Committee on the Potomac
+River Basin--INCOPOT--during the quarter century of its existence.
+Minimally financed and staffed, granted only advisory powers, toward the
+cure of a vast and growing sickness, it has managed in many ways to hold
+the line and even to improve things on the Potomac in a time when
+conditions on many American rivers were growing drastically worse and
+worse. Much credit accrues to some of the Basin States as well, but
+without the continuing focus and hard work of the INCOPOT people,
+dedicated to Basin thinking, it is doubtful that State efforts would
+have added up to much help for the Potomac as a whole. Our present
+strong hope of being able to clean up the river and its tributaries and
+to make them what they ought to be is perhaps mainly due to this
+organization's efforts.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The scope of the job to be done is becoming clear. A far-reaching and
+well-financed Federal pollution control program is getting under way,
+even if some elements of policy and procedure need refinement and a
+great deal of research toward the best answers to certain technical
+problems remains to be done. The four Potomac Basin States and the
+District of Columbia are poised for action at the level where it will
+count the most, with new water quality standards to guide them and
+Federal money and technical assistance for fuel. At the local level,
+incentive to do things right has never been stronger than at present,
+and it ought to grow still stronger as the sticks and carrots of the
+Federal and State programs come into use and pressure from citizens
+disgusted with dirty water builds up.
+
+Things are moving. The chances are that they will move quite fast during
+the next few years, as new technology and new understandings ease the
+way toward solution of stubborn pollution problems. They are going to
+have to move fast, for threats are proliferating fast as well. And if
+things are going to move not only fast but right in the Potomac Basin,
+they are going to need the guidance of a continuing and authoritative
+body that concerns itself with them specifically like INCOPOT, focused
+on Basin matters and dedicated to their study, but with a wider realm of
+interest and stronger powers of coordination and enforcement to make
+certain that the things that are done are the right things, in the right
+order and the right places for the whole good of the Basin and the
+river.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+IV A GOOD PLACE TO BE
+
+
+Stream water comes from the surface of the land or out of its porous
+underlayers, then flows seaward through its creases and folds, affecting
+the land and the land's creatures along the way and being affected by
+them. Thus, as we have already noted in more than one way, the
+management of land and the management of water are closely intertwined,
+from the way human use of a flood plain may demand structural
+interference with a river's old habits, to the way erosive farming in
+some West Virginia valley may help to make it harder to navigate Swedish
+newsprint into Alexandria by ship.
+
+In a like way, "practical" and "esthetic" considerations as to how both
+land and water are treated are not easily disentangled from each other.
+How much of the rising tide of public concern over American rivers and
+lakes, for instance, comes from an awareness of what dirtied water costs
+the economy, and how much is rooted in simple disgust over a monstrous
+ugliness that should not be? Gullied and abandoned land grown up to
+scrub and weeds is not only useless as it stands but also a sadness on
+the landscape, a reminder of how far from the naive, often sentimental,
+but lastingly powerful 18th century ideal of oneness with nature men
+have wandered in their progress. A belching factory in the wrong place
+can perform such multiple functions as blighting a countryside,
+polluting a stream, lowering subdivision property values, and increasing
+the local rate of emphysema.
+
+Only lately has it begun to grow clear that in the traditional concern
+with market exploitation of resources, moderns have not even evolved a
+language or a scale to evaluate the loss to them inherent in a wrecked
+landscape, a spoiled stream, and such things, or the positive worth of
+an unspoiled section of countryside. But it is becoming obvious enough
+that objections to environmental destruction are not necessarily
+sentimental, naive, or impractical. A bit late, realization is growing
+that the world has a certain longstanding wholeness with which people
+interfere massively at their own peril. Landscape in the widest
+sense--the sense of the integrity of a place to look at, to be in, to
+use and to know and to know about--matters to human beings, and the
+terms in which it matters involve incentive, fulfillment, and sanity.
+And while human beings are soaking in this fact, the American landscape
+is being rapidly gutted by human activity.
+
+A stately avenue rots to slums before everyone's eyes. A pastoral valley
+fills with houses gable on gable in six months' time; its stream runs
+red with mud, floods wildly out of banks with every heavy shower,
+shrinks to a foul dribble in time of drought, and finally is concreted
+over into a storm sewer to subdue it and get it out of sight. The stone
+cottage that a town's founder built with his own hands two hundred years
+ago gets in the path of a new highway and is pushed down, and its rubble
+used for fill beneath an exit ramp. What was once, when someone was
+fifteen, a secret clearing in the woods beyond a city's edge, may hold a
+hamburger stand or several dozen stacked car bodies when he comes back
+to seek it out at the age of twenty. A secluded section of estuarial
+shoreline, where eagles nest and Colonial patriarchs once brooded over
+the rights of man and a few families now make a living from oysters and
+crabs, is sold off to a development corporation headquartered in Chicago
+or Houston or somewhere, which, in accordance with certain current
+rights of man, divides it into 25-foot vacation lots with 250-gallon
+septic tanks, and within four years anyone who wades out of his boat
+there stirs up blue clouds of mellow sludge, and where did the oysters
+and the eagles go? We Americans are inevitably progress-minded,
+practically all of us, but we are beginning to wonder if progress needs
+to cost so much.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Potomac landscape matters particularly, for certain reasons. One is
+that we hope to make a model of it, commencing here processes of
+preservation and restoration to show the rest of the country that modern
+ways of being need not eat up everything whole and green and old and
+meaningful and right. Another--not really separate, for it justifies
+that model status--is that the Basin's landscape, not only around the
+capital but far down the estuary and up along the flowing main river and
+its tributaries, is both physically and spiritually a national
+landscape, filled with national memories and meanings.
+
+In the diverse kinds of country it holds and the ways of life they have
+fostered--Tidewater, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Great Valley, and rugged
+Appalachia--it sums up much of the old Eastern, pre-Revolutionary
+America that people left behind when they shoved off toward the Ohio and
+the cotton South and the plains and the Rockies and the Pacific. A
+reasonably conscious Oregonian or Iowan or Texan seeing it for the first
+time knows that a part of what he is was sculptured there. Its map is
+textured with a richness of names that call up remembrance of what
+Americans used to be like and what they did, and how all of that led
+toward their becoming what they are today. Names of Indian
+tribes--Seneca, Piscataway, Dogue, Tuscarora, Anacostia--and Indian
+objects and activities by the hundreds. Names tied to men and events
+that carved history--old Saint Mary's where Calvert's Catholics came,
+Stratford of the Lees, Wakefield and Mount Vernon of the Washingtons,
+Braddock Heights, the Shenandoah, Harpers Ferry where John Brown lit a
+fuse, Manassas and Antietam and Gettysburg, and a multitude of others.
+
+As time goes in the United States, the Potomac Basin has been populated
+by our restless people for a long while, and very little of it has not
+been affected as a result--the deep exhaustion of the Tidewater when the
+tobacco bonanza ran out, the lumbering off of the mountains, the grubby
+continuing reign of coal along the North Branch, and now the explosive
+growth of the Washington metropolis and the other centers of industry
+and people. But still the Basin in general is not like Long Island,
+swarmed upon by daily and weekly waves of millions, hard put to save
+even traces of the natural magnificence it once had. It is not like much
+of Southern California, packaged and delivered over whole to automobiles
+instead of to human beings. It is nine million acres or so of still
+mainly rural and agricultural, Eastern, temperate, humid North America
+with a resident population of only about 3.5 million people, some
+two-thirds of whom live in a relatively few square miles around
+Washington. It has had and still has many ardent protectors, ranging
+from small-town ladies' garden clubs to Presidents.
+
+In consequence of these grateful facts, it has been able to recover from
+most of the damage done in the past, and much of what it has always been
+and always possessed still exists. There is enough natural harmony
+combined with diversity, enough forward human movement combined with a
+sense of what has gone before, to make the Basin's residents and those
+who visit glad to be alive in such a world, insofar as the times, their
+temperaments, their bank accounts, and their view of the human dilemma
+may permit. In general it is still a beautiful and satisfying piece of
+country, a good place to be.
+
+But not all parts of it, and not for everyone, and most certainly not
+with any guarantee that it is going to stay a good place to be of its
+own accord, without any help. It is no privileged wonderland removed
+from the dissonance and change of a crowded technological age.
+
+
+The Basin's amenities
+
+Of all the region's pleasant features, none exceeds the river system
+itself, for it ties the others together and shares and adds to their
+meanings. We have glanced at some of its "practical" aspects in
+preceding chapters, though even there intangibles came into
+consideration. It is the river's power to evoke human response and its
+relationship to the wholeness of the Basin landscape that most
+powerfully make it worth cleaning up, and also impose on planners a duty
+to make certain that their proposals for making it serve human ends are
+apt and needful ones.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A river system draining the basin it has carved out over geological eons
+of time is one of the more meaningful units in nature, but within it
+there may be great variety. The Potomac starts as a multitude of diverse
+trickles and oozes in the high green places of Appalachia, where spruce
+forests and berry meadows and bogs know the tread of bear and deer,
+beaver and bobcat, hunter and hiker and logger. The clear cold
+streamlets formed there join together in their downward rush and form
+strong whitewater creeks and rivers slicing down through canyons and
+out into the troughs of the strikingly corrugated Ridge and Valley
+Province, growing ever larger by the process of union and addition.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The two main rivers formed thus are the North Branch, which collects a
+plenitude of troubles in its progress as we have seen, and the South
+Branch, which is treated more gently by the farmers and small townsmen
+who live along it, has no developed coal resources, and is a delightful
+fishing stream in a fine rural valley. Coming together at Old Town where
+Thomas Cresap took over a Shawnee site and set up a fortified
+headquarters in the upper Basin's legendary days, these two form the
+main stem of the river, which works across the Ridge and Valley
+washboard by intricate slicings and loopings that shape great bends
+among the forested hills. Deer and turkey outnumber people in most
+places there, and always alongside the river or not far away lie the
+towpath and the dry channel and the occasional stone locks and
+aqueducts of the old C. & O. Canal. Despite railroad competition and
+floods and all the other troubles, its barge traffic in coal and flour
+and whiskey and iron and limestone and other things was the focus of a
+whole roistering way of life from Washington to Cumberland in the 19th
+and early 20th centuries.
+
+Collecting the water of pristine mountain tributaries like the Cacapon
+and growing as it goes, cleansing itself of the North Branch's load of
+trouble, the river finds its way at last out of the washboard and
+meanders among silver maples and great sycamores across the productive
+populated expanse of the Great Valley that runs athwart the whole Basin
+from north to south. The Potomac is in thickly historic country now as
+it flows under the contemplative eyes of fishermen and past old villages
+and the relics of generations of human activity going back before
+written records, for here and there the funnel shapes of stone Indian
+fishing weirs can still be seen at shallow places and the durable
+fragments of their way of life can be scratched up along high shores. Of
+many Civil War clashes in the valley, Antietam was the most crucial; the
+Potomac shaped Lee's strategy there, and still ripples across fords by
+which his troops came to that violent place and afterward escaped it.
+
+At Harpers Ferry on the Valley's eastern edge, the river is reinforced
+by the waters of its greatest tributary, the Shenandoah, rolling north
+out of the limestone country that fed the gray armies till Sheridan put
+a stop to that. Then it rams through the high wall of the Blue Ridge
+and out of the Valley into the Piedmont, and still gathering strength
+from tributaries like the Monocacy, dotted with big islands and
+frequented by waterfowl and good fish, moves powerfully downcountry past
+further mists and layers of history to Great Falls and the rushing,
+crashing descent through the gorge to tidewater at the capital.
+
+From there down it is, as we have seen, a different thing, an arm of the
+sea and a sluggish extension of the river, shading from fresh to salt,
+called a river still but neither river nor sea in its ways, affected
+rhythmically and obscurely by both of them and subject to its own
+complex laws as well. In Indian and Colonial times this estuary was the
+part of the river that counted most for men, because of the bounty that
+came from its waters, the fitness of its shores for farming, and its
+navigability for boats and ships in a region where land travel was
+laborious and whose colonists depended on commerce with a European
+homeland. Its shores and those of the big tributary embayments--"drowned
+rivers," they have been called--are thickly sprinkled with traces and
+remembrances of three and a half centuries' people and events. Mount
+Vernon, old Fort Washington, Gunston Hall on Mason Neck where quiet
+George Mason lived and thought ... Aquia Creek where George Brent took
+his Piscataway bride to live apart from the Marylanders, Potomac Creek
+where John Smith found the river's namesakes living and another wily
+captain later tricked Pocahontas into captivity, Port Tobacco and
+Nanjemoy with memories of brokenlegged Booth, Chotank that gave its
+name to a whole forgotten way of life, Nomini of the Carters, the
+Machodocs and the Wicomico and the Saint Mary's and the historic
+rest.... Some of the big creeks are silted in now with mud washed down
+off the land in the old days, but in the flatter country toward the Bay
+most of the larger ones are still pretty and useful harbors for pleasure
+boats and for the fleets of varied commercial craft that go out to
+gather the estuary's crabs, oysters, clams, perch, striped bass, shad,
+and other edible creatures, including even eels for the European market.
+From hillsides, mellow mansions look down on the water that used to be
+their highway to the outside world, some crumbling, others proudly
+maintained.
+
+Aquatic life in the upper freshwater stretches has been somewhat
+diminished and changed by pollution and silt, by dredging and filling,
+and by other activity. Runs of spawning shad and herring and perch still
+arrive there in spring, fortunately a season when heavy river flow keeps
+oxygen levels high. Along the whole estuary there is an abundance of
+air-breathing creatures, most noticeably birds, that reflect the wealth
+in its waters. They are strikingly numerous in the marshes that occur
+here and there next to the open river but more commonly up the
+tributaries, perhaps the richest biological areas in the whole river.
+Herons and egrets, ducks and geese, coots and grebes, hawks and ospreys
+and even a few bald eagles--a stirring sight so near to Megalopolis--are
+among the larger birds that congregate to live directly or indirectly
+off the life in the water, dependent on it.
+
+Productive, healthy in its lower reaches even if under the shadow of
+change, its fishery intelligently and effectively regulated after the
+destructive and bitter "oyster wars" that persisted up into the 1950's,
+the Potomac estuary offers over 230,000 acres of water and some 750
+miles of shoreline for human use and enjoyment and for the sustenance of
+a complex and valuable segment of the natural world. It is a fitting
+culmination of the river system that feeds down into it.
+
+Of the Basin's remaining scenic and natural and historic wealth, nearly
+all of it associated to some degree with a part of the river system,
+much has stayed intact or has come back to good condition, accidentally
+or by someone's forethought. Well over a million acres are in public
+ownership of some kind, about a fifth of this being dedicated primarily
+to scenic preservation and public enjoyment as parks and recreation
+areas. These range from the great recently authorized Spruce Knob-Seneca
+Rocks National Recreation Area in the Basin's western highlands and the
+spectacular narrow Shenandoah National Park along the Blue Ridge, to
+local and county parks of smaller size and special function. In and
+around metropolitan Washington, good sense and good will on the part of
+many people in years past has resulted in a fine assortment of parks in
+an area where they are most needed and used, though with urban expansion
+more are needed all the time.
+
+They are also harder to come by all the time. A recent and instructive
+example of this growing difficulty in creating public areas occurred at
+Mason Neck, a richly scenic and natural bootshaped peninsula projecting
+into the estuary not far below Mount Vernon, where George Mason's old
+home and a part of his estate are immaculately preserved by the National
+Society of the Colonial Dames of America and the Commonwealth of
+Virginia. The Neck has twelve miles of riverfront and 6500 acres of
+undeveloped land only eighteen miles from the center of Washington, and
+though the river here is part of the eutrophic upper estuary, often
+thick with algae in summer, the place is a wildlife paradise, with
+forests of mature and stately trees and a Great Marsh of around 1000
+acres. Incredibly, bald eagles still roost and even nest there, a fact
+which provided the initial spark for heavy public opposition to recent
+proposals for residential development of the Neck.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Supported by the Potomac Task Force whenever possible, the defenders of
+the peninsula organized as the Conservation Committee for Mason Neck
+and fought its cause almost inch by inch, with many setbacks and much
+expense of time and energy and money, through referendum elections and
+political hanky-panky and high levels of government. They won;
+development was forestalled and the nearly certain prospect is for a
+large composite public holding for park and wildlife refuge use, made up
+of Federal, state, and regional acquisitions.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In many parts of the Basin, old human excesses that in their time were
+not at all beneficial or protective have contributed paradoxically to
+the present good condition of the landscape. After boom had lifted her
+skirts and moved on elsewhere from the weary Tidewater, for instance,
+the region's long subsequent drowse on the fringes of action and history
+meant that it escaped many modern troubles, at least until recently. Not
+very long ago, many parts of it were more easily reached by slow boat
+than by car or train. Partly as a result, big tracts of military land
+there acquired mainly when acreage was cheap--57,000 acres around the
+Marine Corps Schools at Quantico, Virginia, are one example--form a
+valuable public asset for potential future use. And throughout Tidewater
+here and there, old estates in private hands guard their woods and
+fields and shores against increasing development, though more and more
+each year crumple before pressure and the temptation of speculators' and
+developers' cash.
+
+Similarly, after the mountains of the upper parts of the Basin were
+logged bare and in many places burned off in the late 19th and early
+20th centuries--"Cut out and get out" was the slogan--their stripped and
+eroded state and their effect on the streams made it possible, and
+essential, for the Federal and state governments to buy up wide areas
+there as public forest land in the 1930's and to nurse them back to
+beauty and usefulness. The Shenandoah National Park dates from that same
+time, as do some state parks in the mountain regions. Some private
+owners of forest land in that area, though not enough, have taken their
+cue from the government agencies and seek a safe sustained yield of
+timber and pulpwood rather than a quick cash-in.
+
+In many rural reaches of the Basin, for that matter, the kind of use
+private ownership gives the land is still an enhancement of the
+landscape rather than a smear on it. The beauty of farm land and
+pastures and old structures is as much a part of this country's heritage
+as is wilderness, for in its traditional forms farming has shaped a
+kind of wholeness and beauty all its own, blending with nature and
+working with it. The limestone soils in the huge trough of the
+Shenandoah Valley, for example, have been tilled and grazed during about
+two and a half centuries' occupation by white men. But for the most part
+agriculture there has been devoted to continuing productivity rather
+than to exploitation, and the rolling terrain, intersected by stream
+valleys and wooded ridges, has prevented much application of the massive
+techniques of fence-to-fence cultivation that prevail on the "factory
+farms" of the Midwest and West nowadays. The miles on miles of varied,
+carefully managed fields and pastures, with fat herds and handsome old
+stone houses and barns, nearly always against a backdrop of dark
+mountains and with a pleasant river or creek running at hand, among
+trees, have a potent storybook appeal that sticks in the memory of
+anyone who ever saw them.
+
+The long narrow valley down which the South Branch flows is similar on
+its scale, as are many other arable strips and patches of the upper
+Basin that remember Shawnee days and Civil War guerillas. Near
+Washington, farms are waging a losing rearguard action against
+speculation and sprawl, but in the Piedmont to the north and west of the
+city lie some of the most pleasant rural landscapes in the United
+States. Up the drainages of the Catoctin and the Monocacy north of the
+Potomac, these are still functional landscapes, used mainly for dairy
+farming. In Virginia they tend to be less so, for this is the hunt
+country, where cosmopolitan gentry raise purebred stock on curried
+pastures, ride to hounds in red coats on frosty mornings and by great
+expenditure of money not garnered from crops or cattle have tastefully
+restored and maintained whole neighborhoods of venerable estates, as
+well as some superb old towns like Waterford, in traditional dignified
+beauty.
+
+As these people have grasped--and others like them scattered throughout
+the Basin--most of the pull of farming landscapes and old houses and
+towns is nostalgic, rooted in a sense of the past and of the way the
+look and feel of a stone fence or a portico or a boxwood hedge can fill
+out understanding of people who were there long long before. This is
+what has been called "the scenery of association," and it is more deeply
+ingrained in the Potomac country than in newer parts of the nation,
+where "scenery" is most likely to denote the aspect of wild and natural
+places. With a history going back deep into the 1600's and long
+occupation by Indians before that, the Basin in many places has
+archaeological layers of such meaning. It tugs powerfully at the
+imagination of anyone with a sense of human continuity, and is woven in
+with the natural framework of things, as for instance the grove of
+chestnut oaks in the Bloody Angle at Gettysburg is inextricable from an
+awareness of the mighty rebellion that reached that far and no farther.
+
+Most major historic sites and shrines in the Basin have received
+protection of one sort or another. The core portions of the great Civil
+War battlegrounds are owned and maintained by the National Park
+Service, as are Wakefield and Harpers Ferry and the C. & O. Canal and
+other such places. States, municipalities, organizations, and
+individuals have saved many others from destruction and decay and
+sometimes have built them back to what they were--Mount Vernon,
+Stratford, Gunston Hall, Fort Frederick and one or two of the smaller
+bastions that George Washington helped to set up against the Indians in
+the western Basin, and scores of other mansions and cabins and patches
+of historic soil.
+
+There is still a wide sense of the past's weight among a population of
+whom many were born where they live and intend to die, and whose
+ancestors did so too. This sense is shared by many other people who move
+to the region, and in a few spots--mainly again in Virginia--it has led
+to a degree of protection for the appearance of whole towns or historic
+districts, as in Loudoun County with its admirable scenic regulations.
+Under the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, states are conducting
+surveys of such assets and studying means of encouraging their
+preservation. But funds are still short even for the Federal part of the
+program, and thus only individuals or accidents are still partially
+guarding some fine old places--Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for
+instance, or in Maryland the towns of Sharpsburg, Middletown, and
+Burkittsville--against adornment with chrome and neon and fake-stone
+veneer. Even in these places, some changes for the worse are taking
+place.
+
+
+Troubles and threats
+
+All these things, then, are a part of what the Potomac Basin has to
+offer in the way of environmental blessings. They form an endowment of
+national value and importance, and a detailed examination of them would
+take up more space than we can give them here, though some will come in
+for more discussion later in this report and others are examined in the
+corollary report of the Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force.
+
+Some of them are in trouble now, and nearly all are faced with trouble
+as bad or worse if the forces of change are allowed to move as blindly
+and hoggishly forward as they have been moving during the decades behind
+us, ever faster and on ever wider fronts. The role of Jeremiah is not an
+agreeable one in a traditionally optimistic and forward-thrusting
+society, but those of us who care about the health of the world around
+us seem to be forced into it often in these times. Therefore let us look
+at somber matters.
+
+We have catalogued the pollution of the river system and the ways in
+which it diminishes this most fundamental and valuable resource. We have
+seen how it varies through the Basin's streams according to the
+concentrations of people and the kinds of activities they engage in, and
+have noted that it is truly bad--deep-rooted, past a point of easy
+return--on the North Branch where coal and industry prevail, and in the
+upper estuary where the population is heaviest, with localized serious
+conditions on the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, and a number of smaller
+streams. And because land and water depend on each other and reflect
+each other's condition, these tend to be the places where the general
+environment is having the most trouble too.
+
+
+The metropolis
+
+Washington and its environs have always been a cynosure for American
+eyes, a place people have wanted to be proud of and have fought to keep
+"right." Many of its defenders have been powers in the land, and for a
+long time in the past the battle was generally a winning one. Even aside
+from the city's planned monumental Federal center with its government
+buildings, memorials, formal parks, malls and avenues--largely traceable
+to the ideas of Pierre L'Enfant and the sporadic respect paid them by
+the founding fathers--it has amenities undreamed of in and around most
+American cities: things like the Potomac Great Falls and gorge with the
+C. & O. Canal alongside, Arlington Cemetery, Mount Vernon, the
+Georgetown neighborhood where private taste and determination have
+brought a near-slum back to 18th-century grace and function, Roosevelt
+Island, several fine local and regional parks, the George Washington
+Memorial Parkway along the Potomac, and incredible Rock Creek winding
+down its natural valley through the Maryland suburbs and the District to
+the river.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Yet the rampaging growth to which the metropolis, in common with other
+American centers of population, has been subject during the past two or
+three decades means not only that these pleasant places are being
+pressed upon by many more people than anyone thought they would ever
+have to serve, but also that some of them are in danger of destruction
+or irreparable damage, and the tone of the city as a whole has been
+changing for the worse. The once magnificent upper estuary, as we have
+seen, is afflicted with complex and ugly pollution that shuts it off
+from the pleasant use it might otherwise sustain, and makes it a
+detraction from the Federal splendor along its northern shore rather
+than the enhancement it used to be. In places like the Alexandria and
+Georgetown waterfronts, industrial dilapidation on the shorelines more
+appropriately matches that pollution in mood, and on the Virginia side
+here and there undistinguished, often jerrybuilt highrise clutter has
+taken the place of the calm and wooded hills toward which the capital
+city once could look.
+
+Parks and open areas within the metropolis and out from it are often
+crowded, trampled, and belittered during most times when people can get
+away from making a living to visit them, and thus can furnish only a
+little of the quiet and elbow room that might be their main contribution
+to urban peace of mind. They are also subject to pressure and often
+damage from outside, stemming from the economics, the politics, the
+governing mood of restless growth. The blowtorch roar and black oily
+exhaust of jet airliners coming and going at National Airport, for
+instance, diminish and cheapen all the green space and monumental beauty
+so purposefully arranged along the Potomac shore. And only the
+bitterest kind of fight can occasionally save a park or a stream valley
+or the river itself from a projected addition to the spaghetti network
+of freeways and beltways and bridges and other high-use traffic channels
+along which flow swirling, never-ending currents of cars. Or from
+standard suburban development.
+
+Rock Creek is a complex example of how the city threatens its own
+amenities. We have glanced at it already--polluted by casual spurts and
+dribbles of waste from hundreds of thousands of people, its basic
+hydrology and therefore its very existence as a stream dependent on the
+proper use of the rural upper third of its watershed. For it has already
+suffered the loss of many tributary runs and branches in the lower
+two-thirds during the process of solid development.
+
+In 1966, the critical upper third of the Rock Creek basin was very
+nearly turned over to suburban developers as a playground for bulldozers
+by a lame-duck Montgomery County Council on a rezoning spree. When
+protests against these actions, as well as against the general
+degradation of the stream, culminated in the issuance of our report The
+Creek and the City and then in a public meeting under INCOPOT auspices,
+people who had long been fighting the Creek's battle became the nucleus
+of a revived public effort. It now appears that under a new Council the
+upper watershed may be developed in some accordance with the
+Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission's protective plan
+for the area, so as to keep much of its surface covered with the grasses
+and humus through which rainwater percolates underground into aquifers
+that feed the creek through dry periods, and with some safeguards
+against the customary terrific siltation that careless development
+produces. And pressure has been generated to deal with the creek's other
+pollution, which is certain to be a long and laborious job.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Suburbanization itself is based in social forces, and this is not a
+sociological report. The knotted, often bitter, sometimes violent tone
+of contemporary American cities does not come within our province, but
+some consideration of it is inevitable. Not only must any planning for a
+decent environment--like planning for water use--take into account the
+needs and interest of the majority of the Basin's citizens who live in
+and around Washington, but it needs to be based in some understanding of
+the way they are. For in part the way they are is what determines the
+pattern of urban growth and much of the restless shifting and wandering
+that makes the city's people a strong influence to the limits of the
+Basin and beyond. In part also, however, the pattern of urban growth
+makes the people the way they are--it has been observed, for instance,
+that if suburban Americans were better satisfied with their manner of
+life, they probably would not spend so much of their time in automobiles
+getting away from it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Within Washington itself, children may be born to erstwhile rural
+parents and may come to adult years with only a scant sense of the
+peace and beauty that can be found a few miles away, and often with
+little sense of anything else but the crumbling, teeming, stifling,
+noisy, sooty slums where they live--the other side of the monumental
+splendor along the Federal riverfront. Not all urban frustration is an
+outgrowth of the physical environment by any means, but much is. And
+this frustration, plus the pattern of exodus for some and sour jammed
+imprisonment for the rest, has within the past few years been killing
+off one by one all the special satisfactions and delights that cities
+from time immemorial have furnished their inhabitants.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+This 26 square-mile section of the Rock Creek watershed, just above the
+District line in Maryland, was rural in 1913, with many small
+tributaries fed by springs and seeps. Ensuing development based on
+little knowledge of natural processes covered most of the old aquifer
+recharge areas with pavements and rooftops, so that more precipitation
+ran rapidly off the land instead of soaking in and flowing out gradually
+into streams. Flooding during storms and loss of flow at other times
+caused most of the tributaries to be covered over as storm sewers, so
+that out of 64 miles of natural flowing stream channels that existed in
+1913 in this section, only 27 miles can be found above ground today.]
+
+Fleeing the dissonant center--or avoiding it from the start when they
+move to the metropolis from elsewhere--citizens who can afford it move
+into suburbs carved in the outlying countryside by gargantuan machinery,
+sometimes in compliance with a plan that preserves some trees and airy
+open space and a sense of the things that were, but more usually not.
+Here the fugitives place themselves one against the other in the
+hugeness of their numbers so that very quickly in many places the
+countryside hardly exists except in leapfrogged forlorn patches or
+farther out, where its ownership in speculatively held blocks--the old
+farm houses gone to pot, their fields in weeds or casually tilled or
+grazed to merit agricultural taxation--avouches the certainty of
+continuing sprawl. It is a much-documented process with two decades of
+history behind it now. It is cancerlike in its effect on the region, and
+disillusioning in its effect on many of those who participate, for
+often it forces them into the position of being mass destroyers of the
+very things they seek--air and wild greenery, quietness and the elbow
+room to be themselves.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A growing body of knowledge as to what kind of terrain can stand dense
+development, and what kind cannot, and how streams and woods and
+wildlife and even farms can be physically retained among urban
+populations, and why they ought to be, is becoming available. Its
+principles are more or less ecological, which simply means that they
+seek to maintain right uses of different elements of the landscape under
+urban conditions, in order that these elements may function with a
+reasonable degree of naturalness, remain compatible with one another and
+with human purposes, and be available for people's enjoyment. Flood
+plains make good hay fields or parks, for instance, but poor sites for
+homes or shopping centers. Porous areas that recharge aquifers ought to
+be kept as much as possible under vegetation rather than pavements or
+buildings, if people are to have streams later and not capricious drains
+that are better off covered over. Steep slopes, if carved severely,
+usually exact a later revenge. House clusters and townhouses and
+apartments rightly spaced and located can let the country function even
+while settling on it numbers of people equivalent to those who would be
+there if it were hacked into a solid expanse of tiny lots. And so on.
+
+Much remains to be learned if the application of these principles is to
+be ideal. For example, urban hydrology--precisely what happens to the
+water cycle during various kinds of development, and how it might be
+adjusted--is a relatively new branch of study and still needs much
+research. But even with present knowledge, great improvement over
+present patterns is possible. In the hands of a few emerging experts,
+planning which pays attention to soils and topography and climate and
+special landscape features and values can be a subtle art, prescribing
+villages and farms and factories in the right places, making the most of
+native vegetation and views and places where George Washington slept and
+the breezes of July. Its form on a map tends toward curved lines rather
+than the orderly straight ones abhorred by nature.
+
+Yet in one simple form, this kind of land use planning has been
+practiced for many years in rural America by millions of farmers, who
+have cooperated with one another to their own mutual benefit in soil
+conservation programs to reduce erosion and to slow down the wasteful
+and destructive runoff of precipitation. We noted earlier a pilot urban
+adaptation of such programs on Pohick Creek on the metropolitan fringe
+in Virginia, where an effort is being made to develop a whole stream
+basin in accord with soil conservation principles, not only to avoid
+future flood damages and sedimentation and pollution but to retain
+natural areas, living streams, and many of the other features the land
+had before the city engulfed it. Even with the gaps in present knowledge
+and the probability that developers and builders are not going to
+cooperate as fully and eagerly as farmers, it offers much hope. For it
+may well betide a time when urban planners in general will have the
+vision and authority, together with the reinforced knowledge, to subject
+all new development to its basic guiding precept--a respect for the way
+the landscape works. It is getting to be far more possible now than it
+was in the past to say, in relation to a given place: "This is how
+development ought to proceed."
+
+In the ring of counties nearest Washington, all of them much lacerated
+by sprawl that has been gobbling up some 24,000 acres of peripheral
+countryside each year, respect for the way the vanishing landscape works
+has been growing by leaps and bounds. The authority to translate it into
+good practices, however, is much hampered by the complexities of
+metropolitan reality. Officially endorsed plans exist for these
+counties, or for parts of them, which show quite a lot of regard for
+soils and topography and their appropriate use. But frequently these
+plans are of necessity a mass of compromises. They have had to be
+adjusted drastically to fit in with existing development, road networks,
+sewage lines, and such things, which seldom are located in accordance
+with an ecological ideal. They are encrusted with concepts from older
+plans not based in landscape principles. Differing views or interests on
+opposite sides of municipal or county boundary lines may gut them. Money
+to buy needed open space--the only way to ensure its protection--is
+usually short. And legal institutions that ought to be on the side of
+good planning sometimes get in its way.
+
+Zoning, for example, is an indispensable tool for implementing planning,
+but too weak for some metropolitan situations and often too inflexible
+to meet certain needs. If essential open space has been protected only
+by zoning, astronomical increases in its speculative value may generate
+enough pressure on zoning boards to change the category, as happened
+last year on upper Rock Creek. This is particularly true in view of
+metropolitan plans' inevitably hodgepodge nature, which makes them
+somewhat arbitrary and vulnerable to attack. Bribery and
+personal-interest scandals often are rooted in zoning matters.
+Furthermore, residential zoning of the standard minimum-lot-size sort,
+not adapted to cluster housing and such sophistications, may actually
+encourage sprawl and rectilinear violation of the landscape by
+restricting the density of people in a place where the density of
+buildings and pavements is what really matters.
+
+[Illustration: THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE]
+
+Tax systems can be troublesome in various ways--discouraging public
+purchase of needed parks or conservation areas because officials don't
+want the land to go off the tax rolls, preventing renewal of blighted
+areas by penalizing improvements, running farms out of business by
+taxing their fields as subdivision land, promoting leapfrogging and
+sprawl (in the case of Federal capital gains taxation) by rewarding
+speculative retention of tracts. And other government programs and
+policies at various levels work against good planning or have done so in
+the past, either by failing to encourage good types of land use or by
+actively promoting bad types. Traditional Federal mortgage insurance and
+home loan practices oriented toward standard suburban development are an
+example, and so are many highways and roads subsidized and routed by
+experts in higher realms of government.
+
+With so much economic and legal muscle arrayed on the side of chaos and
+a whole army of enterprising folk dedicated to its perpetuation--some
+holding seats on planning and zoning bodies--the wonder is that the
+metropolitan counties have been making any headway at all with improving
+their planning process. And they have been, especially since they have
+begun to work together in such organizations as the Metropolitan
+Washington Council of Government. But, as elsewhere throughout America,
+the progress is somewhat dwarfed by the population pressures and
+untrammeled expansionism planning must deal with. Radical measures may
+be needed; there has been sober talk of counties' issuing bonds,
+condemning all vacant land within a wide radius of the city, and buying
+it up for gradual resale and development in an orderly and sensible way,
+thus eliminating at one stroke the speculative pressures and torsions
+that are the root cause of much of the trouble.
+
+For under metropolitan conditions fee ownership, either of land or of
+its development rights, seems to give the only certainty of control over
+land's use. Obviously its potential employment by government is limited
+in a free economy, and such things as zoning and subdivision
+controls--strengthened and made rational--are going to have to continue
+as main tools, together with devices like scenic easements, which
+usually, however, again involve a form of purchase.
+
+Fee ownership is the kind of control that is being exercised--by private
+interests rather than by government--in the promising "new towns," where
+certain individuals and groups are attempting to use industrial-type,
+long-term financing in the purchase and development of large tracts on
+which strong and careful planning, involving everything from industry to
+fish ponds, can be enforced from scratch. Perhaps the most famous single
+example of this kind of thing is Reston, Virginia, which is being built
+on over 7000 acres of pleasant Piedmont countryside in northwestern
+Fairfax County. It has aroused hope across the nation in people
+concerned with such things, for if private capital can go to work in
+this enlightened fashion and still come out with a profit, the
+implications for the future are enormous. Like any pioneering venture,
+it has run into some troubles, and it lately suffered a shift in
+management. But it is still being steered toward the same goal of
+environmental grace and decency and seems likely to arrive there.
+
+The attractiveness of such places to people disillusioned with standard
+sprawl is attested by the fact that other developers, having
+incorporated some of the Reston techniques--some recreational water,
+some clustering of dwellings with communal open space between, some
+amenities like underground wiring--are tending to call their latest
+subdivisions "new towns" too. Many of them want to do things right, and
+if it can be proved that doing things right will pay off as well as
+doing them wrong, a certain amount of automatic improvement in the
+quality of suburbanization can be expected. However, it must be noted
+that the scale on which most developers can afford to operate, and the
+market scarcity of suitable large tracts of land even when major capital
+is available and the aims are noble ones, do not often give them control
+of adequate natural units of territory in which whole planning can mean
+what it should. Most such planning is going to have to continue to come
+from governmental bodies, and the main hope must be that it will keep
+improving, find stronger tools, and be reinforced and stimulated by laws
+and programs from higher up.
+
+
+Sprawl as a problem farther out
+
+Throughout the Basin where centers of population and industry are on the
+jump, sprawl is also gnawing away at the countryside. Given our present
+pace of change, many Basin towns will soon become Basin cities, and
+around each, if they are left to grow in the rudimentary traditional
+patterns, the devastation that has taken place around Washington will
+reproduce itself. In many places it already has a good start.
+
+Some rural counties and small towns have developed a satellitic
+relationship to the larger centers of population, and even around others
+that are distant from urban uproar, sprawl is beginning to find a
+congenial form for itself in vacation colonies of "second homes" in
+scenic places whose remoteness, together with a smaller and more settled
+population of Americans, used to be their staunch protection. Under the
+stimulus of State and Federal encouragement, mainly quite recent and to
+some extent tied in with this Potomac effort, most counties in the Basin
+have arrived at some awareness of the need for land-use planning. In
+many farming communities, the seeds of this awareness were planted long
+since by the Soil Conservation Service. But rural folk often lack a
+sense of the urgency of the need, an understanding of dangers and aims
+under urban or semi-urban conditions, money with which to operate, and
+the detachment that is requisite for making right decisions.
+
+Planning in most such places ought to be relatively simple and
+acceptable, for in the long run most people would be better off for it,
+economically and in terms of the surroundings. But it is still hard to
+sell to average rural and small-town populations, who have always been
+able to take trees, views, clean water, and elbow room for granted, and
+hence can maintain the staunchly individualistic view that anyone ought
+to be able to do whatever he likes with his land, that growth is good,
+and that anything that interferes with any manifestation of it is bad.
+Therefore, too often the planning, if any, that goes into effect before
+the bulldozers move in like hungry behemoths from another planet is
+likely to be meager and heavily weighted in favor of the easy, standard,
+massive sort of development that local governments close to the centers
+of trouble are beginning to comprehend and, in the face of immensely
+greater odds, to take measure against.
+
+Though the ugliness and dreary crowded sameness with which standard
+sprawl replaces decent landscapes are reason enough for opposing it,
+other good reasons exist as well, perhaps especially in rural counties.
+It has been customary for local promoters of such development to
+celebrate the additional tax revenues that new inhabitants are going to
+pour into the community's coffers. But community services in such
+areas--things like sewage collection and disposal, water supply, trash
+collection, roads and streets, schools, libraries--are seldom extensive
+or elaborate, because they do not need to be in a rural stage of things.
+If a subdivider erects, however, some 1500 new homes on a patch of
+countryside, providing them with an inadequate supply of well water and
+with individual septic tanks, and then shoves along to other fields
+before things start breaking down and the protests start rising from the
+1500 families who came there for lyrical but convenient country living,
+the ensuing results for the county's finances can be catastrophic.
+
+In some parts of America already, around $17,000 worth of community
+services are said to be needed for every new family that moves in, a sum
+which from one viewpoint amounts to a subsidy furnished by taxpayers to
+land speculators and developers. Even assuming that those services
+provided by the developer are adequate, and that some aid in providing
+the rest can be obtained by the community through State and Federal
+programs--thereby passing on a part of the cost to other taxpayers--a
+rural county proud of its traditionally low tax valuations and of the
+Jeffersonian simplicity of its local government, as most are, flatly
+cannot dig up the remainder without a big revision of its old way of
+being.
+
+In bad cases, the alternatives to digging it up may be water pollution,
+health hazards, siltation and perhaps floods, sour public discontent
+among new elements unsympathetic to Jeffersonian simplicity, and the
+rapid deterioration of the new suburbs into rural slums--a combination
+of factors that in itself may bring about drastic change in the
+community. Thus in one way or another contemporary rural individualism
+tends to bury itself, but often too late for the salvation of the woods
+and pastures and clear waters and human dignity it took for granted and
+placed so little value on.
+
+Vacation colonies are a rather distinct consideration, for they are
+independent of ordinary and predictable population growth and they tend
+to spring up in places of special natural beauty and value. There is no
+reason why they should not be pleasant additions to a community or to a
+landscape, and a good many are--well planned in terms of both practical
+details and esthetic values, unobtrusive, and pretty. Unfortunately,
+though, this kind is not the rule, for in many spots in the Basin such
+colonies are a sort of haphazard mushroom growth with miserable side
+effects.
+
+Local forms of this phenomenon have always been around, but have seldom
+been extensive enough to seem anything but picturesque. A farmer sells
+off a few riverside lots, for example, because he can't plow that part
+of his land anyhow, and is happy enough to make a little money and at
+the same time oblige some county-seat acquaintances who want a place to
+loaf and fish on weekends. So a few tarpaper shacks go up with privies
+for sanitation, and perhaps someone hauls in an old school bus and props
+it on concrete blocks for his own vacation home. Here a jolly time is
+had by all with full knowledge--since they are locals, aware of how
+things around them work--that sooner or later the river is going on a
+rampage and will carry away the whole little community, with small loss
+to anyone.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Exploitation changes the picture, however, as exploitation is wont to
+do. If a whole neighborhood of farmers seeks such profits, or if real
+estate men get into the act, or big development corporations that may be
+operating from almost anywhere in the country, the scale enlarges and
+purple prose may appear in the metropolitan newspapers to lure nostalgic
+suburbans out to examine an assortment of lots sliced fine for maximum
+yield and priced most often according to their proximity to water. Water
+is usually involved, for it is the fundamental outdoor attraction,
+whether it is a mountain creek or a river or a made pond or a deep bay
+off the lower estuary. Its ultimate pollution is often involved as well,
+for sanitary arrangements tend to be rudimentary and inadequate for
+concentrations of people, especially when the "second homes" start
+turning into permanent homes with the retirement of their owners or
+their sale to younger locals. This latter process, too, sometimes leads
+to a future demand for schools and other services whose need was not
+foreseen by local governments when they permitted the development.
+
+In some places along the estuary and the Potomac main stem and the
+Shenandoah, the creation of such communities has already led to
+wholesale, ugly, unsanitary clutter along considerable stretches of once
+beautiful shoreline. It is beginning to shape up even on remoter
+waterways like the Cacapon and the South Branch, and in some parts of
+the mountains. As new interstate highways and other avenue of access are
+opened from Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Richmond, and many other
+cities, the process may be expected to blight most shorelines throughout
+the Basin unless something is done to control it. And not only the
+county councils and boards of supervisors but the rest of us as well are
+going to inherit the problems associated with it, for these waters and
+shores are of more than local concern, in terms of the loss of amenity,
+in terms of pollution, and in terms of the quite frequent certainty of
+future flood damages, a demand for protection at general public expense,
+and possibly the loss of further amenities and resources at the site of
+a protective reservoir upstream.
+
+From an abstract point far outside the boundaries of these rural
+counties, it is easy enough to condemn the frame of mind that lets such
+things take place. But the fact is that people in rural local
+governments and those who elect them often have even more respect and
+love for the landscape around them than the most esthetic of
+metropolitans. They may take it too much for granted, but they have
+grown up close to it and they can feel the loss acutely when it
+deteriorates. Some of the usual obstacles to their doing anything to
+prevent the deterioration were mentioned earlier--money is short, and so
+is planning know-how. Probably the greatest obstacle, however, is the
+matter of personal relationships. Not in terms of outright corruption,
+which is far more likely in the anonymous atmosphere of great cities,
+but in terms of the need of people in small communities to get along
+with one another, combined with traditional profit motives.
+
+Suppose a local planning or zoning board is taking action to determine
+whether or not a big corporation from elsewhere can buy and subdivide
+some flood-plain land belonging to a well-liked fellow townsman, a
+hardware dealer whom all of them have known from childhood and with whom
+they will be doing business the rest of their lives. Despite the
+inappropriateness of the land for human occupation and the mess that is
+going to be established along their pretty river, is it to be reasonably
+expected that a voting majority of them are going to decree that a
+friend be deprived of a half-million dollars' profit? The dilemma is a
+serious one, perhaps the weakest point in the land-use control at this
+local level, and it may mean that higher levels of government will have
+to take over some of the responsibility and get local governments off
+the hook.
+
+
+Industry in the landscape
+
+Another matter about which small communities can seldom feel impartial
+is the prospect of attracting industry. With the growth of the great
+cities here and there, perhaps a majority of small towns are faced now
+with flagging agricultural prosperity, a lack of jobs, and the resultant
+departure--often reluctant--of most of their energetic young people for
+the new centers of action. The mere rumor that an industry is
+considering setting up a plant in such a place is likely to set off
+shock waves of delight and establish a general mood in which almost any
+concession will be offered to tempt the corporation--to the point that
+authorities, in some places, have issued bonds and built the requisite
+factory themselves.
+
+In a good many cases, this particular cure for the community's ills has
+proved to be worse than the sickness, leading to total community
+dependence on a fallible and perhaps capricious enterprise, pollution of
+air and water, noise and flood-plain clutter, and frequently the
+destruction of the local riverside where industries tend to locate
+unless directed elsewhere. Little of this is necessary now, as a number
+of examples of responsible industry in the Basin demonstrate. But it
+continues, and will continue as long as communities keep looking on
+industry as a source of payrolls only, free of sin: "It smells like
+money," some residents of one Shenandoah town say of their factory's
+miasmal odor, though other natives phrase their description
+differently....
+
+The full legacy of an older time when industry neither knew how to avoid
+pollution and other troubles nor saw any reason to try, and no community
+leaders saw any reason to bring the subject up, is found in prime
+fettle along the North Branch, whose pollution is a sympathetic
+reflection of the general state of that region's environment. Though
+certain industries there--most notably the huge but aging pulp and paper
+mill at Luke, Maryland--have managed at considerable expense to cut down
+on the wastes they discharge to the river, the prevalent philosophy
+elsewhere in the neighborhood would seem to be that both land and water
+are already so afflicted that no single community's or industrial
+plant's attempt at betterment could do much good.
+
+This impression is illusory; people along the North Branch, as
+elsewhere, are aware of what has been lost. But restoration is going to
+be hard. In some of the deep valleys layered, stinging smog prevails
+through most of the year. Most of the waters are acid from far up toward
+their source, as we have seen, and downriver this acid is enriched with
+other things, a situation that has existed for so long that hardly
+anyone recalls when the streams were much different. Most of the
+villages along them have a gray and weary look, with a good deal of
+unemployment among the hardy people, and empty stores and houses that
+remember a less ramshackles time when the area's coal mines needed many
+workers and the air was alive with action, including old-fashioned
+vigorous labor strife.
+
+High up above the towns and the dark streams, the strip-mine bulldozers
+and power shovels that have replaced most of the workers chew away at
+the green flanks of mountains named for Indian chiefs and pioneers and
+things that happened long ago. Where they have scraped out all they
+economically can and have moved on, huge gray scars and spoil heaps
+remain behind and ooze more acid to the streams below, as do hundreds of
+the old deep mines. It is a pitted and hard-used landscape, where
+occasional more or less ordinary farming valleys, and mountains and
+streams that have escaped change, stand out as strikingly beautiful in
+contrast.
+
+Concentratedly typical of this landscape in general, perhaps, is the
+Georges Creek valley, a hundred square miles of drainage extending
+between two long scarred ridges from the neighborhood of Frostburg down
+to Westernport. Here coal has a venerable and even romantic history, for
+it has been mined in the valley since 1808, and the laid-out Scottish
+orderliness of depopulated old "Company towns"--Lonaconing is said to
+have been the first such in the nation--clashes with the grimy reality
+of what has happened in modern times.
+
+This natal section of the river system cannot be walled away from the
+rest of the Basin, written off to coal and industry, and disregarded. It
+is integral with the rest; its troubles are Basin troubles. And if the
+ingrained landscape sickness compounded there by the old consumptive way
+of doing things, blight begetting blight, cannot be healed, scant hope
+glimmers through of healing the same sickness in other parts of the
+nation where it is even worse.
+
+
+Other Basin landscape problems
+
+New roads and highways, regardless of what traffic they carry and where
+they carry it, are too often planned and constructed as gashes of
+destruction across the landscape and across the "scenery of
+association," and frequently fertilize subsidiary ugliness in the form
+of billboards and commercial clutter. Attempts to mitigate the worst
+aspects of this have had some effect, but have not been widespread or
+strong enough to keep up with the growing numbers of cars and the
+growing demand for facilities on which to operate them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Much could be done at the local level to erase roadside
+ugliness--Loudoun County, Virginia, is again a shining and rare example
+of a place where the right thing has been done. But more of the trouble
+comes from higher up, for it involves the routing and design of the
+super-roads, and stubborn considerations of strict engineering
+efficiency have usually tended to prevail over esthetics and such
+things, despite growing objections. Regardless of their beauty as roads,
+the sheer quantity of strip concrete Americans require nowadays is a
+basic problem. It has been said that an extraplanetary observer at first
+glance might well conclude that this continent was populated primarily
+by large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains. Certainly in many
+places nowadays the earth is beginning to look as if it were arranged
+for the bugs rather than for the brains, if that is what we humans are.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When the bugs die they go to junkyards. These many-colored necropolises
+occupy wide acres of land near every center of population in the region,
+occurring quite commonly along the main entrance highways to neat and
+historic towns. Their stark and extensive ugliness has made them the
+subject of much high-level investigation, most of which has sought to
+make their conversion into usable scrap metal a profitable process.
+Undoubtedly this will be achieved sooner or later, but in the meantime
+the old cars, together with a wealth of other discarded items in
+roadside fields and along fencelines and stream channels throughout the
+Basin, form a scabby legacy from the recent past, and a less esthetic
+"scenery of association."
+
+Major electric powerlines and other utilities routed arrogantly with
+only straight-line distances in mind, up hill and down dale and with
+their cleared rights-of-way kept brownly dead with herbicides, can
+intrude starkly on the beauty and mood of historic or pleasantly natural
+landscapes. In the name of public service, private utility companies in
+all the Basin States have wide powers of condemnation as emerged to view
+recently when the Potomac Edison Company proposed to hack out a strip
+for a new line along a route that included country associated with the
+campaigning around Antietam Battlefield in the Civil War, without an
+adequate attempt to find alternative routes.
+
+In this instance, public protest shaped up a fight against the line, in
+which the Interior Department has become involved because of the
+Federally owned battlefield and the nearby C. & O. Canal. But often
+elsewhere, the great skeletal towers linked by thick transmission cables
+march where they please, indifferent to local objections. What is
+certain is that modern America needs the electricity transported thus,
+and the gases and liquids that run through great pipelines. Hope for the
+long run is offered by research that may open the possibility of putting
+high-voltage transmission lines underground, but in the meantime what is
+needed is an awareness on the part of utilities planners that scenic and
+historic values have to be given full weight in their computations.
+
+The kind of agriculture that has so much to do with the Basin's scenic
+appeal is not entirely healthy these days. We have mentioned the
+difficulty created near Washington--and around other Basin centers of
+population and in many places where vacation colonies are burgeoning--by
+skyrocketing speculation and a general absence of strongly based and
+well-defended plans of preservation. As the development value of land
+rises in such places, local systems of taxation based on that value
+rather than on actual use may drive farmers out of business whether they
+want to stay in or not. Since 1945 in Fairfax County, Virginia, for
+instance, the number of commercial farms has dropped from 1788 to about
+200, and it is still going down.
+
+Even where the tax trouble has been recognized, as in Maryland, and
+taxation adjusted to reality for people who want to go on farming, few
+tillers of the soil are devoted enough to their acres to hold onto them
+in the face of the kind of cash that is often dangled before their eyes,
+for the flat and fertile tracts that make the best farms are also the
+easiest to subdivide and build on in standard fashion. For that matter,
+the usual form of tax relief on agricultural land can be used as a tax
+loophole by speculators. Thus, whenever tract values rise and
+development impends, good productive land, which the country may well
+miss later as populations grow and food supplies for them thin out, goes
+permanently under pavements and construction. Even though it is just in
+such places that protected, scenic, connotative rural landscapes might
+have the most meaning for the most people in the long run, their
+preservation presents some tough questions. Patterns of growth that
+would spare them could easily be worked out and would fit in well with
+watershed protection and open space needs, but the economics of
+compensating farm owners for the loss of the big money they might have
+received for them is another thing.
+
+In some other parts of the Basin, the implications of a modern unified
+economy are a threat to traditional farms and farming methods. Labor
+costs, the need for expensive machinery, superior methods of storage of
+foodstuffs and easy transport over long distances have put Potomac
+farmers into competition with other regions, even other countries, where
+the same products they supply can be raised on an industrial scale of
+investment and profit. Thus the worth of a field of tomatoes in the
+Northern Neck of Virginia is affected by massive irrigated production in
+the Central Valley of California, and thus a Shenandoah farmer may
+barely break even or suffer a loss on a rather good crop of wheat in the
+old "bread basket of the Confederacy."
+
+Such influences, even though dulled a bit by protective State and
+Federal farm programs, are putting a premium on specialization, ever
+larger farms, and an "agribusiness" approach, with high capital and
+operating expenses. Their effect on many family farms in the Basin's
+mountain regions, places with limited acreage of marginally productive
+land, is severe. These may have supported the clans that own them
+reasonably well for a century or more, but they cannot compete with
+Ohio. Unless their owners are willing to keep on farming while holding
+down a job in town for supplementary cash, they often move away and the
+places go out of cultivation. Some are consolidated into grazing or
+forestry units or bigger farms, some stand abandoned, some go on the
+market as vacation retreats and "hobby farms" for wide-ranging
+metropolitans.
+
+Richer regions share the troubles. In the classic valley of the
+Monocacy, some of whose dairy farmers have to import feed now from the
+Midwest because they cannot raise it cheaply enough themselves, the size
+of the optimum farm, one that can compete effectively in today's market,
+has swelled in the past few years from about 150 acres to about 600,
+according to a study by the State of Maryland. The problem is compounded
+by rising land prices influenced not by productive value but by the
+presence of Megalopolis just over toward the Bay. Sprawl throws a long
+shadow.
+
+Eyeing this array of difficulties, many farmers' sons are prone to seek
+another livelihood, and the average age of the men who do the farming
+grows higher all the time. Tiring, many sell out, and thus the family
+farms that make up the greater part of the Potomac's much-loved rural
+landscape dwindle in number and change in use. It is not necessary to be
+mawkish to see this as a loss. In part it is inevitable, but in part too
+it may be rooted in policies that can be altered and adjusted to keep
+the farms productive.
+
+Wildlife, along the Potomac as elsewhere, is dependent on whatever
+habitat it occupies--that is to say on the state of the landscape. If
+the rivers are cleaned up and kept flowing even during times of drought
+and heavy use of water, they will support better populations of fish and
+a greater variety of species. If the subtle interrelationships and the
+immense value of the estuary's varied nooks and crannies are recognized,
+studied out to full understanding, and protected--and in time--not only
+fish and shellfish but ducks and eagles and herons and all the other
+wild users of the shores and wetlands will benefit. Government refuges
+and other devices are badly needed for these purposes in that region,
+now that it is no longer remote and the kind of protection many private
+owners have traditionally furnished wildlife is diminishing.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Upland populations of deer, turkey, grouse, quail, raccoon, fox, and
+other sporting and non-sporting species thrive in parts of the Basin
+suited to their habits and still in good condition, and shrink
+elsewhere. Many stretches of private forest land could support much
+higher densities of game and other wildlife, if they were put in better
+shape by practices that are available and feasible. Of the more than
+three million acres of such land scattered throughout the Basin in small
+holdings, much is in poor condition. It is therefore but spottily
+productive of game or timber or anything else, and often causes high
+runoff and erosion in critical watersheds.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Recreation
+
+Many of the things we have called amenities here are subject to
+full-fledged economic uses necessary to the region's wellbeing and not
+usually in great conflict with scenic and ecological values if they are
+carried out right. Farming and commercial fishing and logging used to be
+generally exploitative and hard on the natural scheme of things in this
+country, for instance, but they no longer need to be and in most cases
+are not. Using the Potomac's water for towns and factories and power and
+navigation entails some interference with natural processes, but it does
+not have to be widely destructive of them. Discharge of treated wastes
+to streams is still necessary to a degree, and up to that degree not
+badly harmful, though as we have seen, it is far too often excessive.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Urban expansion is necessary also with present population pressures. It
+is an irreversible exploitation of the landscape, but if the type of
+land-use principles mentioned in this chapter were to get wider
+employment, urbanization would quite certainly not have to be as
+destructive of natural and human values as its present usual form is.
+The same thing is true of industry in its many manifestations, including
+mining, and of the woven network of roads and utilities. The public
+needs them, and the people responsible for them need to be aware of the
+great value of the natural framework within which all men must exist.
+
+Average people's direct use of the natural world is most often of the
+kind summed up as "outdoor recreation," an umbrella phrase under which
+are lumped a diversity of satisfactions found by widely differing
+persons in many types of more or less natural places. Muscular hunters
+and elderly birdwatchers, water-skiers and bank-fishermen, Sunday
+drivers on crowded highways and lean backpackers on dim trails in the
+South Branch highlands, baseball players and people who take naps on
+the grass beside the C. & O. Canal, amateur archaeologists and stock-car
+racing fans--all these and many other kinds of folk depend somehow on
+the Potomac outdoors for their pleasure. They use it.
+
+How much they use it and how much pleasure they get out of it are
+governed by the time on their hands, the availability of their chosen
+recreation, and whether it is good of its kind. A would-be hunter who
+cannot escape from the District of Columbia is out of luck unless his
+mobility improves. An Alexandria water-skier can divert himself on the
+metropolitan estuary during the summer months, but under ordinary
+conditions at present it is something less than what is known as a
+"quality experience," as is fishing there or any other water sport. A
+West Virginian has to have some time to spare if he wants to enjoy
+beaches and ocean breezes; so do Tidewater residents with a penchant for
+mountain trout fishing.
+
+Nevertheless the Basin holds a great deal for almost all tastes, and
+most of what it holds is of excellent quality. The main recreational
+needs are fairly clear: to protect and restore the Potomac outdoors from
+the deterioration noted in this and earlier chapters, to spread the
+chance at different kinds of pleasure around as much as possible, to
+guard against clashes between different kinds of use and against the
+destruction of the quality of quiet and natural places that occurs when
+too many people are jammed together in them, to make the Basin's
+pleasant corners and shores and byways easier to get at, and--not least
+important--to encourage uses that contribute to appreciation and
+preservation, helping to make sure that in the long run outdoor
+recreation in this region will be possible.
+
+People's need for outdoor activity in their spare time varies a good
+deal. An oysterman-crabber working out of the Yeocomico through the
+progression of seasons and weathers, a Shenandoah plowman turning earth
+his great-great-grandfather turned at the foot of the blue-green
+mountains, a timber cruiser in the high forests--such individuals are
+not as likely to need to go looking for added outdoor satisfactions as
+most other kinds of people, for whom ordinary life tends to be more
+separate from pleasure in the open air. Maybe if the cities can be
+brought back to health and their growth shaped to fit in better with
+human needs, this will change. But with more and more people coming on,
+more and more leisurely and affluent as technology cuts down on work,
+more and more urban, outdoor recreation as a specific goal is going to
+be an ever more important consideration in planning. It is already
+important--and already, as we are reminded with statistics, big
+business.
+
+
+City recreational needs
+
+Recreation in and around the central city of Washington has to be a
+primary aim. The most people are in this area, many of them through
+poverty or habits of life not given to farflung pleasures but
+constrained to seek them where they live, or near at hand. The worst
+environmental threats are here as well, despite the foresight and pride
+that have saved much more open space and pleasant park land than most
+other American cities can show.
+
+The metropolitan river has to be cleaned up and made attractive. It used
+to be the city's most supremely valuable amenity and potentially it
+still is. Measures within reach can realize much of the potential inside
+of a reasonably short time, so that productive and varied fishing and
+good boating and a beautiful wide body of water will be within strolling
+distance for people in the central parts of the metropolis on both sides
+of the Potomac, and the recreational value of the lands already
+preserved along its shores will be incalculably multiplied. Safe
+swimming and other water contact sports in the open metropolitan
+estuary, often mentioned as an aiming point for clean-up programs, may
+be a somewhat more distant future prospect. Our studies in the past
+three years have made it clear that pollution here is more complex and
+diffuse in origins than had ever been supposed, and that sources of
+dangerous bacteria are probably going to continue to exist for a good
+while despite all efforts against them. The goal of swimming is a worthy
+one and will probably be reached, but not quickly. In the meantime, more
+public pools in the City and easy transportation to public areas farther
+down the estuary may be required.
+
+Some recreation areas within the city, like Rock Creek Park, presently
+get too much use for their own good and for people's full pleasure in
+them because they are superior to anything else accessible to many of
+the city's people. This is a local manifestation of a national problem,
+for even sections of the great national parks, like the one at Yosemite,
+are presently being battered by overuse by a generation of city-dwellers
+anxious to come in touch with natural and basic things. In such places,
+people's very numbers shut them off from those basic things and coarsen
+the quality of their experience. The only really satisfactory answer
+will be to put additional, equally attractive places within reach of the
+same people. In Washington this means developing other pleasant areas
+within the city and making it easier for the city's people to get to the
+other parks and natural places farther out. Improvement of the river,
+development of extensive new parklands along the Anacostia including the
+Kenilworth Dump site, more neighborhood playgrounds and swimming pools,
+and other such action will all help to relieve the situation, which is
+getting much official attention and is a specific subject in the report
+recently published by the Potomac Planning Task Force, the group formed
+under auspices of the American Institute of Architects.
+
+The array of Federal, State, regional and county parks and other public
+areas ringing the metropolis will be more accessible as public transit
+improves. Another means to this end, and an especially organic and
+appropriate one, will be the urban stretches of the Basinwide network of
+hiking, bicycling, and horseback trails which will be discussed a little
+farther along.
+
+If, as prophets reiterate, ever-increasing percentages of the American
+public in the future will be living in the great cities, a great deal
+of nature and conservation education is going to be needed if the mass
+of people are not to lose all understanding of natural things and all
+sympathy with their working and their preservation. It cannot be
+entirely a classroom sort of thing, no matter how many films and
+preserved or caged wildlife specimens may be provided. There is need
+now, and there will be more need hereafter, for rich nature preserves
+and study centers within reach of Washington and specifically dedicated
+to such use.
+
+In general, suburbanites have more freedom of choice regarding the
+places they play in and the ways in which they play there than do people
+at the urban center. Many of them live fairly close to outlying parks
+and open areas, and if good planning gains in strength and effectiveness
+as the metropolis spreads, this neighborhood availability of outdoor
+pleasures will increase, with more Rock Creeks and Pohick Creeks to put
+stream-valley parks and pleasant small lakes and streams and such things
+within reach of everyone, and more green open space just outside
+people's doors. They are going to be needed, for public pressure on the
+available recreation areas around the metropolis is already heavy.
+
+Suburbanites also, however, are more mobile than almost any non-nomadic
+civilian population in history. A great variety of things to do are
+within driving distance of their homes on an afternoon off, or a
+weekend, or a vacation. Therefore, the question of providing and
+improving outdoor recreation for them, as well as for more mobile
+residents of the central city, merges with the wider question of outdoor
+recreation on a Basinwide scale, for residents and visitors alike.
+
+
+Basin recreational needs
+
+If the things are done that need to be done to reverse the environmental
+deterioration that has been the subject of so much of this report, the
+public's chance to enjoy widespread, high quality outdoor recreation in
+the Potomac Basin will be tremendously increased. Recreation and
+preservation are not separable subjects. If a river is cleaned up and
+its shoreline protected against clutter and ugliness, its use by
+fishermen and boatmen and others will be enhanced. If a park is
+established to protect a unique natural asset, people's enjoyment of
+that asset will be assured. Most preservation leads to more recreational
+opportunity; many things that are done to provide outdoor recreation
+afford some measure of protection for the environment as well, but the
+emphases are sometimes different.
+
+Among specific recreational problems, access is a major one. For those
+who can afford cars, getting around the Basin grows easier all the time
+as roads proliferate, but getting at the agreeable things to do is hard
+in many places. Here and there important parts of the public lands in
+the National or State forests, for instance, are cut off from easy use
+by private inholdings. But the main amenity that is usually hard to
+reach is water, which happens also to be the major magnet for outdoor
+recreation of many kinds.
+
+The estuary's 200,000 acres of superb recreational potential are a case
+in point. It has a few drawbacks that can and ought to be dealt with,
+like the thousands of old sunken pilings and stakes that make boating
+dangerous in many places, and some others that may be tougher to
+eliminate, like the great annual summertime incursions of stinging
+jellyfish in its lowest reaches, the milfoil weed that sometimes clogs
+its tributaries, and the erosion of its shores by winter storms. But
+even as it stands, it offers fishing and boating and hunting of the
+finest sort in its lower part, with excellent swimming higher up where
+salinity drops and the jellyfish cannot come--a zone whose useful length
+will increase upstream as metropolitan pollution diminishes. Yet along
+the estuary's shores, except at certain historic sites like Wakefield
+where types of use have to be limited, there are only two major public
+parks at present and very few other public areas of any size where
+people can launch boats, fish, camp, or merely get at the open water.
+Some of the great military bases there are closed to the public, while
+others permit limited use.
+
+The main stem of the flowing Potomac is parallelled on the Maryland
+shore by the C. & O. Canal in Federal ownership, a unique resource. But
+the bulk of the land between the canal and the river--7200 acres out of
+10,000--is privately owned. Along most of the 120 miles where the canal
+property touches the Potomac it is much too narrow to permit heavy use,
+so that public enjoyment of the river except at occasional spots is
+limited to hikers, cyclists, and boatmen. Maryland's Fort Frederick
+State Park, which joins the canal property and forms a much-frequented
+node of public use, is the only such park on any of the main rivers of
+the upper Basin.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Nation's River, by 
+United States Department of the Interior
+
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+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #20503 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20503)