d prime responsibility in studying the
central problem of creating a planning and administrative body to handle
Potomac water and related land problems hereafter.

In addition, a blue-ribbon panel of distinguished planners and
specialists, assembled by the former president of the American Institute
of Architects at Secretary Udall's request and subsequently known as the
Potomac Planning Task Force, undertook a separate study of Potomac
questions, both in general and with specific focus on the metropolis.
Their independent report, The Potomac, was lately published. It makes a
detailed, wise, and instructive plea for considering the river and its
landscape as a whole and meaningful thing, for proceeding with their
development and protection according to high esthetic and ecological
principles, and for a distinctive form of management.

Existing private, public, and semipublic organizations with an interest
in the Potomac or in the type of problems it presents have joined in the
present effort by sponsoring public meetings and publishing discussions
or otherwise doing their part to help. Among them may be mentioned
INCOPOT, the Conservation Foundation, the Metropolitan Washington
Council of Government, Resources for the Future, Inc., the League of
Women Voters, the Potomac Basin Center, the National Parks Association,
and a number of local planning or action bodies. Through these meetings
and other media, public comment on the Federal Task Force's work has
been voluminous and often helpful, particularly since the publication of
its _Interim Report_ in January of 1966, which made certain proposals
for immediate action to begin providing for short-term metropolitan
water needs, to protect specific scenic treasures, and to get moving on
the long task of cleaning up the river.

With so many viewpoints somehow included in the planning process,
opinions have often diverged as to how much of what ought to be done
about the Potomac, and how soon, and in what order. Well they may
diverge. In a time of economic expansion and population growth
unparalleled in human history, predictions about the economy and the
population of the distant future--necessary to full planning--verge
perilously near to crystal gazing even when the best available
yardsticks are applied. And this is only one uncertainty. Among the
others which will be examined later in this report are the prospect of
drastic technological change that may soon offer cheaper