ooperation
from communities, but also more authority at higher levels of government
to guard against at least the worst types of landscape abuse. In terms
of water, this kind of authority will shortly be operative with the
enforcement of the new State water quality standards. In terms of the
other elements of the landscape, it is equally justifiable.

[Illustration]

And, just as in water management in all its phases, central and
continuing Basinwide coordination of practices to restore the landscape,
to protect it, and to make possible its pleasant use by the public is
going to be needed. If landscape problems could be divorced from water
problems it might be a good deal easier, at this point in time, to
identify a fairly full range of "right" measures that could be taken to
achieve such restoration and protection for a long, long period into the
future than it would be to do the same thing for water problems.
Restoration and protection are not irreversible actions in the sense
that some of the technological measures associated with water management
are, and the main danger of rigid landscape planning would not be that
it might go too far, but that it might not go far enough to save all
that ought to be saved.

But, as we have observed time and again in these pages, no divorce is
possible between land and water. They are interdependent, and whoever
concerns himself with one must perforce concern himself with the other.
Much of the action in regard to both is going to have to be long-term,
continuing into the future. New threats are going to arise, some of them
quite possibly based in a divergence of aims among various government
programs with environmental effects. Thus, if a Basin-oriented agency is
required--as we strongly believe--to oversee continuing action to clean
up the Potomac river system and keep it clean, and to develop it for
man's use in a wisely flexible and coordinated manner, that organization
is going to have to take on a degree of responsibility for landscape
matters as well, and is going to need some authority over them.

Many things can be identified that need doing now if irreplaceable
assets in the Potomac environment are not to be lost, and if people are
to be given a full chance to enjoy what is there. Some of these things
that need doing have been named in this chapter or previously, and
others are implicit in the report's discussions. We have worked out
recommendations for action that can