The Nations River | Page 3

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