The Nations River | Page 5

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