The Nations River | Page 5

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.
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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 of Agriculture, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (where the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was then located), and the various concerned bureaus and services of the Interior Department itself. Shortly after this, Secretary Udall met with the governors of the four Basin States and the commissioners of the District of Columbia to ensure that State and local interests would have a hand in the planning process. Out of this came the Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, composed of State and District representatives, which has conferred often with the Interdepartmental Task Force on overall questions and has assumed prime responsibility in studying the