-stage planning
effort, through improvement and preservation programs already in
movement or initiated by this report, and perhaps most of all through
aroused and informed public interest. There is room for a broadly based
citizens' watchdog organization to keep tabs on Basin affairs and to
exert leverage in such critical fields as local planning. It might be
formed as a new group or might be built around an existing organization
such as the new Potomac Basin Center, whose function has been to comment
impartially and intelligently on Basin planning and prospects.

Action now

In the different chapters of this report, various things stand out that
need to be started quickly, either to satisfy looming demands for water
development and water quality control, or to restore or protect scenic,
ecological, and recreational assets which, if not attended to quite
soon, are going to either disappear or suffer irreparable damage. A few
recommendations for action on certain of these immediate problems were
made in our _Interim Report_ of two years ago, together with
recommendation on one or two noncontroversial items clearly not in
conflict with any conceivable ultimate Basin aims. In abbreviated
essence, the main Interim recommendations, made with Interdepartmental
Task Force and Interstate Advisory Committee approval, were as follows:

(1) That a decision on the construction of Seneca dam and reservoir
on the Potomac main stem be indefinitely deferred, but that the
site be preserved as much as possible against further encroachment,
in case it is ever needed;

(2) That three relatively small reservoirs be built on tributary
creeks in the Paw Paw Bends area of the upper Basin, in addition to
the authorized Bloomington reservoir on the North Branch, to begin
providing a safe margin of water for metropolitan Washington and to
serve Basin recreational needs;

(3) That a permanent "green sheath" of protection for the Potomac
main stem, together with major recreational opportunity, be assured
by means of a new kind of composite park of varying width along
both shores from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland;

(4) That the Cacapon River and the West Virginia portion of the
Shenandoah be given Wild River status by Congress to protect their
shores against excessive and inappropriate encroachment;

(5) That water quality programs and research