Taken as a whole, however, these people with a sense of the imponderable human value of natural ways and natural things may constitute the most powerful support available for thoughtful planning and conservation. In a precipitate and voracious society plunging on into its future, they look back and seek to retain the best of what has always been, for conservationism at least in this sense is conservatism too. Upon their increase in numbers, in broad understanding and in political forcefulness, upon the arrival of their basic values at a point of publicly accepted respectability at least equal to that presently enjoyed by time-hallowed exploitation and the profit motive, hope for a decent future must heavily depend.
All of these ways of looking at man's problematical relationship with the crust of the planet he inhabits, plus a number of others, are at work within the minds of conscious people in this region and in the great cauldron of its politics. Here they mingle with State and regional and local loyalties and private self-interests into a fine American soup of eagerness and reluctance, faith and apprehension, awareness and befuddlement, chicanery and square dealing, altruism and frank greed, rage and reasonableness, that is as real as any mountain in the Basin and as inevitable a consideration for realistic planning as the river's own characteristics of flow. For any proposal or set of proposals for action in the Basin that does not take into account what the Basin's people are like, and how their idiosyncrasies and preferences and sympathies find political expression, is foredoomed to failure, be it ever so ideal in anyone's abstract terms.
Pecuniary matters
Then there is money. Restoration and protection of the scheme of things and its adjustment to needful human use, on the scale we are considering in the Potomac Basin, is expensive, often involving many millions of dollars for action against only one phase of deterioration or threat or shortage. In accordance with the breadth of overall aims, much of this money must be Federal. Where benefits or responsibilities are clear, as in relation to sewage treatment plants and sources of water supply, states or communities or institutions usually pay a share. If Federal policies regarding flood protection and river flow augmentation for pollution control are made more logical in the ways sketched earlier in this report—as seems likely—such sharing will increase. Private investment or philanthropy may often play a part, as in the purchase of municipal bonds, the donation of scenic property for public use, or—a hopeful trend of recent date—a private organization's use of its money to facilitate high public purposes. The main example of this last service on the Potomac is the recent purchase and interim retention of important wildlife and park lands on Mason Neck by the Nature Conservancy, for later resale without profit to public agencies when needed authorizations and funds have been obtained.
Nevertheless, most such projects do have a public purpose with diffuse benefits, and sooner or later most of their cost has to be paid out of public dollars deriving from collected local, State and Federal taxes. Sometimes it is dispensed through Federal grant programs created by Congress to meet pressing needs, or from other special sources fitting the occasion. More often it must be sought in the standard established manner: concrete proposals for action shaped and presented, with a computation of the cost and the value of expected benefits, to Congress, State legislatures, or local governments for examination and authorization, and funds or bond issues later voted for carrying them out.
The cash available for both regular programs and special proposals from year-to-year will vary according to the state of the economy, the number and severity of other demands on government budgets, and their relative apparent urgency. This imposes on planners not only an obligation to make sure that what they propose has public value that fully justifies its price, but also a need to gear immediate priorities and projects realistically to the amount of money there is some hope of getting for them. It is an unhappy fact that there is often less than no point in presenting even fine proposals for legislative consideration at a financially inappropriate point in history. Once defeated, whatever the reason, they may forever languish in limbo.
At this particular point in history, this country has been for some time involved in a tough, costly conflict in Southeast Asia which inexorably absorbs much of the available Federal money. Americans are a rich people, riding a wave of prosperity, and much is left over for other things. But in this turbulent and questing era, they also have a good many other urgent and expensive problems and projects on their hands besides those dealing directly with natural resources and conservation. The problems are familiar words on the front pages of newspapers and in evening conversations: poverty, urban crisis, transportation, national defense, public health, world hunger and unrest, space exploration, schools, and the rest. All cost hugely. And, though individual conservation proposals of clearly critical importance most often receive fair and full consideration, one or two or more of these other realms for action usually loom larger to the eye of the public and the Congress than do environmental programs in general. Therefore they get first shot at the funds available for spending year by year.
Most people have a bias in favor of their own chosen field of interest. To some, the right use of the natural earthly framework of things matters supremely. They tend toward a conviction that sooner or later it will stand very high on any list of priorities for spending, as the magnitude of what is being lost and diminished is borne in on the consciousness of the general public. Yet, as of now, it faces heavy competition for limited funds, and this is another reality for consideration, as solid for the moment as the Basin's physical problems, as solid as the politics of which it is a facet.