take a good deal of time. The detailed features of the
institution that may emerge cannot be precisely known at this point,
and a specific Federal recommendation for its establishment is not
yet possible. Nonetheless, the compact draft's essential
principles--adequate authority, accepted responsibility, and protection
of the interests of the participant jurisdictions while moving toward
coordinated Basinwide accomplishment--are sound and needful ones, and
offer the best kind of hope of implementing and continuing the sort of
flexible, coordinated planning and action that we have advocated in this
report.

The members of the Potomac Planning Task Force, the A.I.A. group, in
their recently published independent report, have made a strong
recommendation for a new type of Federal institution, a Potomac
Development Foundation, which would be headed by a Presidentially
appointed administrator and would have a planning staff and a
top-caliber professional advisory board. It would not engage in
construction, operation, or management of projects, but would be
liberally financed over a period of five years out of Federal funds and
would emerge as a self-sustaining agency with power to assist in Basin
planning, to acquire land, to make grants for various purposes, and to
sponsor appropriate development of the Basin's resources with
low-interest loans. With a strong orientation toward ecological values,
scenic preservation, architectural amenity, and recreation, it would
emphasize a long-range approach to coordinated Basin planning.

A Development Foundation of this kind would obviously harmonize with the
main principles enunciated in this present report. It is also envisioned
by the A.I.A. group as compatible with a compact commission or other
management agency, though they have recognized that the relationship
between the two would need to be studied out at length.

The proposal is a bold one and an appealing one, with much promise,
particularly in its potential for giving full weight to ecology and the
amenities in planning. We are hopeful that its basic idea will get
serious consideration during the period of institutional study and
review that is coming up.

In the period before permanent planning and management machinery for the
Potomac materializes, the Basin will get much protection against major
disruptive change through the continuing interest of Federal and State
agencies made aware of its problems during this first