ncalculably great,
good waste management unfortunately is seldom a money-making affair for
those who sponsor it. Therefore, it is not usually so much the concern
of private enterprise as of citizens in general and the various levels
of government that look after the citizens' desires and wellbeing. It
depends on laws to back it up, and on institutions and programs
established by law. These are the only machinery by which it can be
adequately stimulated, unless we assume that all waste producers are
altruistic to a point of self-sacrifice, an assumption which history
does not encourage.

Thanks to thoroughly justified public anxiety over the state of American
waters, there is presently on hand the best assortment of such legal
machinery that has ever existed, much of it so new as to be mainly
untested. The Key Federal item is the Water Quality Act of 1965, which
established the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration and set
into motion a national program to clean up interstate and tidal waters.
In the program the States were allotted primary responsibility for
setting standards of cleanliness and were given until June 30, 1967, to
work them out and submit them to the Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration for review. Later came the Clean Waters Restoration Act
of 1966, which authorized funds for F.W.P.C.A. construction grants to
help communities build waste treatment facilities. Programs under other
government agencies are also aimed at helping towns and cities deal with
wastes.

In May of 1966 the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration was
transferred from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the
Department of the Interior, with a good many changes in personnel. A
valuable move toward the longrun unity of Federal environmental study
and action, this change has meant that the agency's shakedown period in
its new surroundings has come during the latter part of our Potomac
work, and that some large questions of policy and procedure are only now
being answered. Furthermore, the fact that our study has coincided with
the inevitably lengthy shaping of the State standards, and with their
review and their coordination on specific interstate streams like the
Potomac and its main tributaries, has somewhat blurred our view of this
most significant legal machinery of all. For it is through these
standards and their enforcement that the fundamental action toward a
clean Potomac will be taken.