ution takes place there
is sharp incentive to do something about it.

The other main difficulty has to do with the fact that river water has
many uses, which augmentation may enhance or even stimulate. Water
released from above during dry periods to increase and steady the
river's flow and to help it handle wastes may also help navigation and
hydroelectric power generation downstream, though neither of these is
any longer a main factor in the flowing Potomac. Augmentation of flow
can make the river prettier and more useful for recreation, and it can
have stout beneficial effects on fish and wildlife. And under present
conditions it constitutes a large increase in water of improved quality
for free use by irrigators and industries and municipalities, which may
so burgeon as a result that increased water consumption and waste
production will cancel out the water quality effects of the reservoir
releases in short order.

The need here, of course, is for some agency that can solidly guarantee
that water released for quality control will be allowed to achieve that
purpose and not be diverted to other uses that conflict with it. Where a
river runs within a single State, and the State's constitution permits,
the State may be able to adjust its powers of control and provide the
guarantee. But where more than one State is involved, as on all the main
rivers of the Potomac Basin, a good forceful river basin agency is
clearly needed to coordinate water supply with water demand, and to
ensure that benefits and cost responsibilities of any necessary
reservoirs are meted out where they belong.

In terms of legal and institutional machinery, in fact, such a river
basin agency is the most basic and urgent unfulfilled need along the
Potomac, for the coordination and continuing supervision of water
management in all its phases--assurance of supply, flood protection,
quality improvement, recreation--in the vast physical unit of land
drained by the river. And because land's condition is so often
influential on the quality and utility of water, the agency's concern
and authority must encompass some fundamental matters of land use as
well.

No clearer illustration of the potential of such a body could be found
than the achievements of the present Interstate Committee on the Potomac
River Basin--INCOPOT--during the quarter century of its existence.
Minimally financed and staffed, granted only advisory powers, toward the
cure of a vast an