planning process, there will be no need to fear that future
generations are going to be either stuck with large mistakes on our
part, or cursed with shortages, floods, and pollution. With this report
we hope to initiate such a process for the Potomac.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

II TOWARD A MORE USEFUL RIVER

If the Potomac has been much studied, it has nevertheless been subjected
to only meager "development" over the centuries of its service to
civilized men. Most past attempts to alter it significantly for man's
use have either failed or have not led to lasting results, though their
changing purposes over the years summarize, to a degree, America's
shifting attitudes toward the utility of flowing water. Early projects
under George Washington and others to assure the navigability of the
main river above the Fall Line, which they saw as an artery for eastward
and westward currents of trade, left only some quaint ruined locks and
flowing bypass canals around falls and rapids. The later C. & O. Canal,
which ran alongside the river and was replenished by its water above
occasional low dams, required over two decades of toil and death and
heavy expense to complete upriver to Cumberland, Maryland, which it
reached in 1850. There had been some public opposition to the project
and it was never a great success even after completion, for the railroad
era had begun and the Canal suffered periodic heavy damage from Potomac
floods, being finally abandoned to picturesque decay after a mighty
inundation in 1924.

Largely because of a stalemate between public and private power
advocates, the early 20th century heyday of small-scale hydroelectric
power development of rivers mainly missed the Potomac, though at one
time a power company acquired land at Great Falls in anticipation of
such development. Other modern water projects in the Basin have been
relatively modest or have run afoul of strong opposition. Therefore,
today a sprinkling of small channel power dams and water intake
structures, some levees and improved creek channels, and a few
unimposing reservoirs of various sizes and types high up on small
tributaries are the sum total of the development to which the Potomac
water resource has been lastingly subjected, if we disregard for the
moment its waste disposal function and the maintenance of navigation in
its estuary.

In general this is undoubtedly a fortunate thing, for the application o