these types of
agreement can have wide or quite limited powers in regard to planning,
construction, management, and such things, depending on the specific
agreement itself.

Two kinds of Federally-directed bodies with primary emphasis on planning
are in operation in various river basins. _A Title II river basin
commission_, as defined in the Water Resources Planning Act of 1965, is
formed by the President to carry out comprehensive basin planning, with
a Federal chairman and members from Federal agencies, Basin States, and
approved interstate or international agencies with jurisdiction in the
Basin. A _Basin inter-agency committee_ is created by agreement among
Federal agencies for an assigned mission, usually the coordination of
Federal and State planning through the exchange of information about
programs and projects.

The main work of the Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the Potomac
has been done at the same time that the new Water Resources Council has
been studying out its powers and putting them to use. Formed before the
Water Resources Council, the Task Force was assembled as a unique entity
rather than as one of the categories of Federal planning organizations
mentioned above. But, having been shaped after a directive from the
President and having worked in cooperation with the Basin States'
Governors' Advisory Committee, the Task Force together with that
Advisory Committee has been exercising some of the main functions of a
Title II river basin commission. These commissions can plan flexibly, in
stages, if this is desirable. They make recommendations for
comprehensive development which can quite compatibly be implemented by a
separate basin management authority, perhaps of a type recommended by
the commission.

In these terms, the water-related recommendations that accompany this
Interior Department report, which have been concurred in by the other
Federal agencies on the Task Force and by the Governors' Potomac River
Basin Advisory Committee, can be considered a first stage in a new
approach to comprehensive planning for the Potomac. Hence it is time not
only to undertake these recommended initial actions toward the balanced
development and preservation of the Basin, but also to consider an
agency or agencies to take over such coordinative planning, management,
and operation as may be necessary. From the start, it has been
recognized that a long-term management agency was going to be desirable,
and