quantities of water for cooling and such processes. All water supply
planning must consider it, for to build against any conceivable shortage
would be prohibitively expensive. Pricing of water so as to cut down on
waste without curtailing ample legitimate use may well be a longrun
tool, as has been suggested. But in terms of general municipal and
industrial water, any great degree of calculated shortage hardly seems
appropriate for a humid-zone city which has a fine river at its doorstep
and happens also to be the national capital, so that a scarcity would be
of national concern in a number of ways. Federally established and
maintained parks and open spaces, for instance, with their carefully
tended vegetation, would be one of the first things to suffer.

Desalting of sea water, another reality now in arid zones and one of
immense importance, has a certain degree of planned scarcity built into
it by way of its price, at least at present. Some people believe that in
time this process will be refined to the point that it can furnish
abundant cheap water to all the world's seacoast cities. Certainly as it
develops it may well have a potential for marginal drought-proofing at
Washington, an emergency source to be drawn upon if needed. But the day
seems distant when it will be truly competitive in price with riverine
sources in regions of adequate rainfall.

Inland arid regions and perhaps other places as well are undoubtedly
going to find one answer to water shortages in the recirculation of
their treated waste waters through municipal systems. In one form or
another such recirculation is already working at certain places in the
United States on an emergency basis, and its full potential for
industrial use has yet to be explored. However, the indications are that
towns' and cities' reliance on it during anything but temporary
emergency conditions is going to depend on expensive methods of
refinement and "fail-safe" overdesign, plus dilution with new water,
which means again that it will probably not be competitive in price with
natural water where enough good natural water can be had. To this may be
added the observation that the consuming public presently has a few
definite lingering qualms about the idea involved, particularly if there
is other water around.

The underground rocks and sands of the Basin hold huge reserves of water
with a fundamental relationship to the whole river system, whose basic
dependable source