Chapter V: Complexities and Priorities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public attitudes toward environmental action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pecuniary matters

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

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

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

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

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

The implications of complexity

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

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

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

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

The question of an agency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE NATION'S RIVER--AN ACTION PLAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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