These are not the only uncertainties and complexities that confront anyone who would act toward restoring and preserving the waters and landscapes of the Potomac and making them serve man, but some of the more specific and potent ones not dealt with earlier in this report. Others have been discussed in former chapters or at least have received cursory mention. Among them are water technology's state of flux that offers a strong if hazily defined hope of being able to do things better and better as time passes; the need for more and better data; the problems for which workable solutions simply do not yet exist; the inequities or inconsistencies created by certain present Federal water policies; the dubiousness inherent in forecasts of future human pressures and problems; the frequently crossed purposes of high agencies regarding environmental action; the difficulty of feeding true esthetic and recreational values into cost-benefit computations; and the paralytic tangle of motives and loyalties in regard to planning at the local level. And a great many others could be found.
Taken all together and linked to the assumption—fundamental in this report—that the Potomac and its landscape deserve rescue and coordinated right use, these areas of doubt, changefulness, and difficulty add up to a strong body of argument for flexible continuing planning on a Basinwide scale and for a specific, authoritative Potomac Basin institution to guide it and put it into effect.
There are two main alternatives to such flexible planning and coordination and they both, under present and probably future conditions, point toward slightly modified chaos. The first would be to allow going or incipient Federal and State programs for water quality improvement and erosion control and such things to take their overall course, while water supply, landscape protection, and other problems are dealt with in the traditional, piecemeal, localized manner as conditions here and there become bad and force action, or as "fall-out" from non-Basin programs takes casual effect. This relinquishment of coordination would make the task of clean-up immensely harder and less effective in the long run, and it would turn over most of the Basin's unprotected scenic amenities to exploitation on the basis of their short-term utility and the profit they could be made to yield.
The second alternative would be to shape a rigid overall plan for the Basin prescribing definite solutions, feasible in terms of tried and true technology, for all its problems that exist today and are expected to materialize in the future, and then to seek authorization and funds to put the plan into effect. This procedure has disadvantages already noted in detail in this report. It makes large irreversible decisions that future generations, stuck with the results, may find less than totally attractive, especially since they very probably will have better ways of doing things. It pins itself to fallible assumptions about those future generations, and must be formed in terms of present laws and policies, which are not always ideal. Physically, a plan of this kind could be worked out that would function with reasonable efficiency, at least in water matters, for there is nothing primitive about today's technology. But esthetically it would leave much to be desired even by present standards, and politically, furthermore, its very wholeness and rigidity would mean that it would have to be sold as a complete package or else be doomed to fragmentation, which would lead to much the same sort of piecemeal expedient development as no plan at all. Quite aside from the budgetary difficulties of the moment, the Potomac Basin's political complexity makes whole acceptance and implementation of such a plan extremely doubtful.
The question of an agency
If flexible coordinative planning's advantages for a place like the Potomac Basin are recognized, and it is accepted as the most reasonable and hopeful way to approach problems there, the question arises as to what kind of agency is best suited to carry it forward and to act on it. Besides certain unique agencies like the Tennessee Valley Authority several types of institutions are available that can be oriented toward a whole interstate river basin.
An interstate compact is a detailed agreement between two or more States to act toward a common specific goal. It needs the approval of Congress, but the Federal government usually takes no formal part in the compact commission's activities, nor are Federal activities in the basin subject to compact commission control. A Federal-interstate compact, on the other hand, does have Federal participation and provides for some limitation on Federal freedom to act on basin problems without compact commission consent. Compact commissions under either of these types of agreement can have wide or quite limited powers in regard to planning, construction, management, and such things, depending on the specific agreement itself.
Two kinds of Federally-directed bodies with primary emphasis on planning are in operation in various river basins. A Title II river basin commission, as defined in the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965, is formed by the President to carry out comprehensive basin planning, with a Federal chairman and members from Federal agencies, Basin States, and approved interstate or international agencies with jurisdiction in the Basin. A Basin inter-agency committee is created by agreement among Federal agencies for an assigned mission, usually the coordination of Federal and State planning through the exchange of information about programs and projects.
The main work of the Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the Potomac has been done at the same time that the new Water Resources Council has been studying out its powers and putting them to use. Formed before the Water Resources Council, the Task Force was assembled as a unique entity rather than as one of the categories of Federal planning organizations mentioned above. But, having been shaped after a directive from the President and having worked in cooperation with the Basin States' Governors' Advisory Committee, the Task Force together with that Advisory Committee has been exercising some of the main functions of a Title II river basin commission. These commissions can plan flexibly, in stages, if this is desirable. They make recommendations for comprehensive development which can quite compatibly be implemented by a separate basin management authority, perhaps of a type recommended by the commission.
In these terms, the water-related recommendations that accompany this Interior Department report, which have been concurred in by the other Federal agencies on the Task Force and by the Governors' Potomac River Basin Advisory Committee, can be considered a first stage in a new approach to comprehensive planning for the Potomac. Hence it is time not only to undertake these recommended initial actions toward the balanced development and preservation of the Basin, but also to consider an agency or agencies to take over such coordinative planning, management, and operation as may be necessary. From the start, it has been recognized that a long-term management agency was going to be desirable, and we have been inquiring toward its definition. From the start also, it has seemed obvious that some form of Federal-interstate compact offered the most promise, for various reasons.