d
for when it is essential to act against them.

But we have not shaped a rigidly complete, prescriptive plan identifying
exact measures for the cure of all present and future ills of the
Potomac Basin. For a variety of reasons, we have concluded that such a
rigid plan would not only be self-defeating in the long run, but that it
is actually undesirable. We are aware that this conclusion is going to
arouse criticism among those who during the past three years have
consistently demanded that we provide a total answer, for the purpose
either of unseating the governing principles of the 1963 plan or of
reinforcing and amplifying those principles. Nevertheless we are certain
that the conclusion is right.

[Illustration]

It would be right even if the development of new technology were the
only uncertainty confronting planners. Barring a complete breakdown in
the present impetus of research and discovery, radical change in the
technology of water supply and water quality control appears to be
extremely probable within the next few decades. Some of the best of the
emerging tools, there is reason to hope, may permit men to deal with
water problems in ways that are more harmonious with natural ways and
less structurally imposing than present methods. Possibly the present,
often essential reliance on large storage reservoirs, for instance, is
going to be modified, though how much the ultimate way of doing things
will have to combine old and new technologies is something that cannot
be guessed.

If it cannot yet be guessed, it cannot be incorporated in a rigid plan,
which has to deal in technological certainties--i.e. in present
technology--and must therefore impose that present technology on the
future, whether or not the future is going to need it. If we are right
in believing that from this generation on, people are going to be
increasingly jealous in the preservation of their natural heritage,
future Americans will not be likely to thank this generation for having
unnecessarily robbed them of choices as to how to handle the
streamwaters of a superb river basin like the Potomac's. Any more than
they would thank us for having done nothing at all and leaving them to
scramble for water, and filthy water at that. Quite simply, no one has
the right to do either of these things to them.

It is our belief that if genuinely conservationist values are
established as the ruling principles in a flexible, properly paced,
continuing