The Nations River | Page 8

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.

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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.
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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