The Nations River | Page 7

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