The emphasis in formulating them and
reviewing them has been on vast improvement, not on a rationalization of
existing conditions, and behind them there is going to be legal muscle
for enforcement.

Erosion and sedimentation, particularly from urban and industrial
sources, will be of concern in these State programs, and in fact some
Basin States already have powers for use against them that have never
been brought fully to bear, but undoubtedly will be with the new
impetus. At the Federal level, going programs of the Department of
Agriculture--primarily under the Soil Conservation Service but also
involving the Forest Service--are the best machinery we have. Their
techniques of soil protection and runoff detention have been described
earlier, and are often applied in a coordinated way to whole small
watersheds. Mainly they are put into practice through the voluntary
cooperation of landowners, watershed associations, and local or State
governments, stimulated by Federal technical assistance and
cost-sharing.

* * * * *

It was noted earlier that these techniques can also be effective against
careless urban land shaping and other new concentrated sources of silt
such as strip mines. But in terms of legal machinery, these areas
present problems, chief among which is the matter of incentive on the
part of those who must cooperate if the programs are to work. In an
agricultural watershed, the effect of soil conservation practices and
flood control measures on the health and productivity of the land is
sharply evident to rural landowners and others in the neighborhood, who
all benefit from it and usually are eager to cooperate. But strip mine
operators and urban developers and road contractors and such folk seldom
have to live personally with the erosion and mud and trouble that may
result from the way they move earth and change the landscape. To them,
sediment control and respect for the way watersheds work, even with
cost-sharing, is likely to loom as simply an extra expense.

Under these circumstances, only stiff controls are going to make
watershed programs and other devices work right. Local sediment
ordinances are acutely needed, but are generally lacking or inadequate
or poorly enforced, perhaps mainly because silt, in common with other
pollutants, has some of its worst effects at points far removed from
where it originates and local governments prefer not to stir up local
developer