The Nation's River
U >>
United States Department of the Interior >> The Nation's River
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 THE NATION'S RIVER
A report on the Potomac from the U.S. Department of the Interior,
with recommendations for action by the Federal Interdepartmental
Task Force on the Potomac.
LETTERS OF TRANSMITTAL
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240
October 1, 1968
Dear Mr. President
The enclosed report, _The Nation's River_, is submitted in response to
your February 8, 1965, request that we prepare a program for your
consideration which would assure that the Potomac would serve as a model
of scenic and recreation values for the entire country.
This is the final report of your Potomac planning team. In my opinion,
the study contributes significantly to a more complete understanding of
both the opportunities and the problems of this magnificent river. The
proposed program of action, when implemented, will move the area a long
step forward toward the challenging goals identified in your directive.
Your call for a broadly based conservation plan for the Potomac has
stimulated a wide range of useful actions by citizens' groups and by the
Federal, State and local governments during the course of our studies.
While these are too numerous to recite, the participation and
involvement of citizens in decisions affecting the future of the Basin
are most promising and deserve recognition and encouragement.
Our recommendations for action cover three broad aspects:
... those related to present and future water resource problems in the
Basin; ... those related to the protection and restoration of the
Basin's scenic and natural assets; ... those to ensure that future
planning and action will proceed in a wise and coordinated manner.
I call particular attention to the following recommendations:
... to protect the mainstem Potomac River and its banks from Washington
to Cumberland, Maryland, and to make it accessible to the public, the
report calls for prompt legislative authorization, funding and
establishment of a Potomac National River consisting of Federal, State
and local components. The proposed legislation to establish the Potomac
National River which you sent to the Congress on March 6, 1968, and
which was introduced as S. 3157, is based on the new and exciting
concept that the urgent objectives of Potomac River conservation can and
should be accomplished through cooperative action by all levels of
government;
... to achieve the water-quality goals established as State standards,
the report recommends coordination of Federal, State and local powers to
achieve the waste treatment measures required, within five years, and
effective action toward meeting similar requirements in handling wastes
at all Federal establishments in the Basin. It calls, also, for
immediate reconvening of the 1957 Enforcement Conference on the Potomac
to focus attention on the timetables for controlling pollution in the
estuary;
... to provide a measure of drought insurance, the report calls for
early completion of Bloomington Dam and Reservoir;
... to meet growing needs for municipal and industrial water to achieve
anticipated economic growth in upstream areas, the report identified six
reservoirs which are consistent with other aspects of the report. The
river management afforded by operation of the reservoirs could also meet
the water supply needs of the Washington metropolitan area for at least
20 years. The report urges continuing research and study of alternative
sources for the metropolitan area supply, including use of the upper
estuary to meet critical short-term demands;
... to assure continuity of comprehensive planning and management, the
report recognizes the need to mobilize the skills and authorities of
all levels of government and support therefore by alert and informed
citizens and citizen groups. The Governors of the Basin States and the
District of Columbia have proposed a Federal-Interstate Compact for the
Potomac and arranged to have a draft prepared by the Potomac River Basin
Advisory Committee. The Water Resources Council will continue to work
with the States in this effort--anticipating that proposals will emerge
which merit both State and Federal support.
Your assignment, Mr. President, has been exciting and challenging. We
hope that our effort has contributed to achieving your dreams for this
magnificent valley.
Respectfully yours,
[signature]
Secretary of the Interior
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Enclosure
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20240
October 1, 1968
Dear Mr. Secretary:
Since early February 1965, when President Johnson asked you to develop a
program which would make the Potomac "a model of scenic and recreation
values", there has been a continuing joint effort to achieve this
exciting objective.
The Interdepartmental Task Force, which you and your fellow Cabinet
officers established, has coordinated the Federal effort. When the four
Basin State Governors and the Commissioner of the District of Columbia
acted to establish the Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, we had a
genuine opportunity to achieve useful and effective Federal-State
cooperative relationships. As you know, our two groups have worked
together in a cordial and productive way.
We have listened carefully to the views of individual citizens and
citizen groups in a real effort to sense the needs and aspirations of
the people who live in the valley and the millions who visit our
Nation's Capital and the historic and beautiful Potomac valley.
Publication of an Interim Report two years ago proved to be a useful
means for obtaining citizen participation.
This report summarizes a series of studies made in response to the
President's directive. Although it is our final report, we urge that it
be looked upon as the next step in a continuing planning process. It
points to action to meet present and near-term needs and to the
desirability of continued planning to provide sound bases for the
further resource-use decisions which citizens of the Basin will be
called upon to make as those decisions become more timely.
The body of the report is a Department of the Interior document, couched
whenever possible in nontechnical language in the hope that it may find
a wide lay readership. The program for action, which constitutes the
final chapter, is concurred in by the Federal agencies on the
Interdepartmental Task Force. Comments of the Potomac River Basin
Advisory Committee are set forth in the attached letter from its
Chairman, Mr. James J. O'Donnell. Responsibility for leadership in
proceeding with the proposed actions is identified, as appropriate, to
specific Federal agencies, States or local governmental entities.
Other reports have been or will be issued which form integral parts of
this endeavor. These include the following:
_Potomac Interim Report to the President_--January 1966 ... _The
Creek and The City_--Urban Pressures on a Natural Stream--Rock
Creek Park and Metropolitan Washington--January 1967 ... _The
Potomac_--The Report of the Potomac Planning Task Force--Assembled
by the American Institute of Architects--September 1967 ... _Report
of the Chief of Engineers, United States Army Corps of Engineers,
Potomac River Basin, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia_ (This report, now in
the process of official review, will provide a basis for action on
water supply and related matters.)
In addition to the published documents, each of the four Sub-Task Forces
established by the Interdepartmental Task Force prepared reports which
constituted invaluable working documents on several aspects of Potomac
Basin planning. These include the following:
_Report of the Water Supply and Flood Control Sub-Task Force_ ...
_Report of the Water Quality Sub-Task Force_ ... _Report of the
Sedimentation and Erosion Sub-Task Force_ ... _Report of the
Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force_.
Copies of these working documents will be distributed to concerned
local, State and Federal agencies and will be on file in those offices.
You will note particularly that the attached report emphasizes the
urgent need for a continuing and broadly based planning effort. If we
are to fully achieve the objective of making the Potomac a model, and we
must, resource planning and management must mobilize the authorities and
the skills of the Federal Government, the States, the local
jurisdictions and the citizens. I am convinced that the Potomac Basin
needs:
... an alert, active, basinwide citizen organization with the
perspective to see the area's total needs and the determination to
make certain that action is taken to meet those requirements;
... a formally established relationship between the various levels of
government to continue comprehensive planning--and to make certain that
action at all levels is consistent with the established objectives.
Sincerely yours,
[signature]
Kenneth Holum
Assistant Secretary
Honorable Stewart L. Udall, Secretary
Department of the Interior
Washington, D.C. 20240
Enclosure
POTOMAC RIVER BASIN ADVISORY COMMITTEE
1025 VERMONT AVENUE, N.W.,
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005
MARYLAND
PENNSYLVANIA
VIRGINIA
WEST VIRGINIA
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
September 15, 1968
Dear Mr. Holum,
The Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee was pleased to have the
opportunity to review the recommendations compiled by the Federal
Interdepartmental Task Force for inclusion in the forthcoming Report to
the President. These recommendations represent the culmination of
intensive studies in the areas of water supply and flood control, water
quality, sedimentation and erosion, and landscape and recreation. As
such, they are of the utmost significance to the people of the Potomac
River Basin.
We note in particular that the recommendations
(a) Highlight today's most pressing problems and propose feasible
solutions;
(b) Recognize the interrelationship of the separate needs of the
urban and rural areas of the Basin, and propose action by federal,
state and local governments;
(c) 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 at the Fall Line today. Above
there in the upper Piedmont, and then across the Blue Ridge in the Great
Valley, the westering waves of migrant English met other waves of
Scotch-Irish and the Germans coming down from Pennsylvania, and before
the American Revolution the combined breeds of men had built up enough
pressure to push Indians almost entirely out of the Potomac Basin and to
occupy all the good farmland, even in the Basin's ridged western areas.
Since then their successors have used the land for farming and for other
purposes. In using it they have changed it, and the changes have
registered in the river system that drains it. For land, water,
vegetation, wildlife, minerals, and men's habits are not separable from
one another in the natural frame. So that if the early planters, using
methods of hoe tillage scarcely less primitive than those of the
Indians, mined the Tidewater soils for tobacco production in a way that
required new fields every few years, one result was that those soils
tired and thinned and finally stopped supporting the social magnificence
that had grown up there, for production and prosperity moved inland and
west. And another result was that the Potomac estuary itself grew
shallower and different with the silt that washed down off the land, and
many a tributary bay that once served as harbor for oceangoing ships is
now a rich, reedy marsh with a single narrow gut of shoal water
wandering down across it to the Potomac.
And if later generations of men cut down the forests on the mountains in
the western Basin, and fire followed the cutting, thousands of years of
soil washed down from those slopes too to change both mountains and
river, and elk and panther vanished. And if along the Potomac's North
Branch there was once a fine coal boom, there is now the boom's legacy
in the form of gray dour towns and dark sad streams corrosive with mine
acids.
And if old Alexandria and Georgetown and all the land around them have
burgeoned into one of the nation's great cities, there has been a price
to pay for that also. The stately upper estuary on which they front is
often turbid with silt and sometimes emerald green with algae nourished
on sewage and other septic riches, and the hills stretching back from
the river are spiky with tall buildings linked by urban and suburban
clutter, where life lacks the natural elbow room that the old Tidewater
folk--planters and yeomen and bondsmen and slaves alike--were able to
take for granted.
These are facets of an Age of Problems, of course. They and other
related troubles have been growing apace lately as men have grown in
numbers, in the demands they make on the natural environment that shaped
and nourished their species, and in their technological power to enforce
those demands. The troubles pose a threat to men of flavorlessness and
grayness and the loss of essential meanings, a threat of diminished
humanity. For dependence on that environment, intricate and deep-rooted,
psychological as well as physical, has not grown less with the human
advance toward power and sophistication.
Yet in the Potomac Basin as a whole the threat so far is mainly still a
threat, not a reality. Where men's employment of the land has been
reasonable, as it has in the Great Valley almost from the start, the
land not only remains useful and pleasant but has a specific traditional
beauty dependent on man's presence. Where new comprehension of the
processes of destruction has been attained and shared, as in soil
conservation and forestry and such fields, much damage done in the past
has been repaired.
Most of the Potomac river system's flowing waters are unnaturally
polluted to one degree or another, but only in spots does the pollution
even approach the sort of poisonous hopelessness to be found along some
more heavily populated and industrialized American rivers, and on the
Potomac its spread is already being slowed. Water shortages loom, but
have not yet seriously materialized. Floods threaten, but only at
certain definable spots. Human beings boom outward from the Washington
metropolis and the other centers of population in search of a fuller
life, and the consumptive sprawl and sameness of the 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.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15