There is still a wide sense of the past's weight among a population of whom many were born where they live and intend to die, and whose ancestors did so too. This sense is shared by many other people who move to the region, and in a few spots—mainly again in Virginia—it has led to a degree of protection for the appearance of whole towns or historic districts, as in Loudoun County with its admirable scenic regulations. Under the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, states are conducting surveys of such assets and studying means of encouraging their preservation. But funds are still short even for the Federal part of the program, and thus only individuals or accidents are still partially guarding some fine old places—Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for instance, or in Maryland the towns of Sharpsburg, Middletown, and Burkittsville—against adornment with chrome and neon and fake-stone veneer. Even in these places, some changes for the worse are taking place.
Troubles and threats
All these things, then, are a part of what the Potomac Basin has to offer in the way of environmental blessings. They form an endowment of national value and importance, and a detailed examination of them would take up more space than we can give them here, though some will come in for more discussion later in this report and others are examined in the corollary report of the Recreation and Landscape Sub-Task Force.
Some of them are in trouble now, and nearly all are faced with trouble as bad or worse if the forces of change are allowed to move as blindly and hoggishly forward as they have been moving during the decades behind us, ever faster and on ever wider fronts. The role of Jeremiah is not an agreeable one in a traditionally optimistic and forward-thrusting society, but those of us who care about the health of the world around us seem to be forced into it often in these times. Therefore let us look at somber matters.
We have catalogued the pollution of the river system and the ways in which it diminishes this most fundamental and valuable resource. We have seen how it varies through the Basin's streams according to the concentrations of people and the kinds of activities they engage in, and have noted that it is truly bad—deep-rooted, past a point of easy return—on the North Branch where coal and industry prevail, and in the upper estuary where the population is heaviest, with localized serious conditions on the Shenandoah, the Monocacy, and a number of smaller streams. And because land and water depend on each other and reflect each other's condition, these tend to be the places where the general environment is having the most trouble too.
The metropolis
Washington and its environs have always been a cynosure for American eyes, a place people have wanted to be proud of and have fought to keep "right." Many of its defenders have been powers in the land, and for a long time in the past the battle was generally a winning one. Even aside from the city's planned monumental Federal center with its government buildings, memorials, formal parks, malls and avenues—largely traceable to the ideas of Pierre L'Enfant and the sporadic respect paid them by the founding fathers—it has amenities undreamed of in and around most American cities: things like the Potomac Great Falls and gorge with the C. & O. Canal alongside, Arlington Cemetery, Mount Vernon, the Georgetown neighborhood where private taste and determination have brought a near-slum back to 18th-century grace and function, Roosevelt Island, several fine local and regional parks, the George Washington Memorial Parkway along the Potomac, and incredible Rock Creek winding down its natural valley through the Maryland suburbs and the District to the river.
Yet the rampaging growth to which the metropolis, in common with other American centers of population, has been subject during the past two or three decades means not only that these pleasant places are being pressed upon by many more people than anyone thought they would ever have to serve, but also that some of them are in danger of destruction or irreparable damage, and the tone of the city as a whole has been changing for the worse. The once magnificent upper estuary, as we have seen, is afflicted with complex and ugly pollution that shuts it off from the pleasant use it might otherwise sustain, and makes it a detraction from the Federal splendor along its northern shore rather than the enhancement it used to be. In places like the Alexandria and Georgetown waterfronts, industrial dilapidation on the shorelines more appropriately matches that pollution in mood, and on the Virginia side here and there undistinguished, often jerrybuilt highrise clutter has taken the place of the calm and wooded hills toward which the capital city once could look.
Parks and open areas within the metropolis and out from it are often crowded, trampled, and belittered during most times when people can get away from making a living to visit them, and thus can furnish only a little of the quiet and elbow room that might be their main contribution to urban peace of mind. They are also subject to pressure and often damage from outside, stemming from the economics, the politics, the governing mood of restless growth. The blowtorch roar and black oily exhaust of jet airliners coming and going at National Airport, for instance, diminish and cheapen all the green space and monumental beauty so purposefully arranged along the Potomac shore. And only the bitterest kind of fight can occasionally save a park or a stream valley or the river itself from a projected addition to the spaghetti network of freeways and beltways and bridges and other high-use traffic channels along which flow swirling, never-ending currents of cars. Or from standard suburban development.