plicated by the deep-seated pollution
of their stream system and the scenic and economic disruption of their
watershed lands. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a handsome town in a
prosperous farming district of the northern Great Valley, is approaching
a critical point in the relationship between the water available to it
and its demands. Far south in the Valley, Augusta County, Virginia,
which contains the thriving towns of Staunton and Waynesboro, is
experiencing an upward surge of industrial development that seems
certain to continue and is going to call for a great deal more water
than can be counted on from present sources. Public awareness of this is
shown by the fact that county citizens voted in a referendum in November
of 1966 in favor of construction of a Federal reservoir at Verona near
Staunton on the Middle River, which had been strongly opposed when it
was presented as a part of the Army 1963 plan.

On the Monocacy in Maryland's Piedmont, the old agricultural center of
Frederick has begun to come under the changeful, expansive influence of
Megalopolis as a result of easier access from both Baltimore and
Washington, and has been brought abruptly face to face with a looming
water shortage. Recent studies by the Maryland Department of Water
Resources indicate that the dependable flow of the Monocacy will not
serve the town for more than another seven or eight years even if the
flow needed to maintain adequate water quality is left out of account,
and the summers of 1965 and 1966 made even those figures seem slightly
optimistic. Both city and State have declared themselves in favor of an
upstream major reservoir at Sixes Bridge, also a 1963 proposal. And
elsewhere throughout the Basin, a good number of smaller places face
similar dilemmas.

Possible Answers

Except for acid mine drainage, most of the Basin's main problems are
found at metropolitan Washington. Because they are primarily people
problems and more people live there than anywhere else, the problems
tend to be bigger, including that of water supply. A conceivable
shortage of several tens of millions of gallons of water per day within
the near future is not a small shortage, and small measures are not
going to cope with it.

A number of possible measures have been considered and weighed. Some
seem undesirable for one reason or another, even in terms of the distant
future. Others are unusable now, but have promise for later, when more
is known, or t