improvement, flood protection, power generation, and such things attain
general use.

That day, however, has not yet dawned, nor is the interim before its
arrival calculable. It is necessary to face present reality with present
tools, and the reality at the Washington metropolis and elsewhere in the
Basin is that a good deal of water is going to be needed rather soon,
and that no reasonably economic alternatives with any clear esthetic and
ecological advantage over reservoirs are presently available to furnish
it.

Nor, if planners and designers are aware of the whole set of problems,
do reservoirs necessarily have to be weighty in their impact on the
natural scene and the public interest. The quantities of stored water
needed for the Basin's near future are relatively modest in comparison
to potential supplies, and a multitude of good reservoir sites exist to
be chosen from. There is no reason why, with present knowledge, a
minimum of necessary reservoirs cannot be planned and designed for a
maximum of beauty and pleasure. It is a notable fact that a very large
number of Americans prefer boating and fishing and other aquatic sports
on reservoirs to any other form of recreation, and another notable fact
that in the upper Potomac Basin there are very few places where even
small numbers of Americans can thus indulge themselves at present.

In terms of metropolitan Washington's water supply, considered apart
from other Basin water problems, the best reservoir site by far in the
whole Potomac drainage would be the old River Bend site or the one
proposed in 1963 at Seneca, both just upstream from the Falls above the
metropolis. In one package, either of them would impound enough water to
take care of any likely municipal and industrial demands of the
metropolitan region for more than a half-century, besides trapping most
silt from upstream to keep it out of the estuary, and providing a good
measure of protection for flood-susceptible metropolitan shores.
Furthermore, the proximity of such a reservoir to the city would ensure
a great deal of aquatic recreation for people there and would somewhat
simplify water management problems.

Thus, it is natural that Seneca, the latter proposal of the two, has
found strong champions among metropolitan administrators, water
engineers, and planners whose thinking has to be primarily in terms of
sure and efficient water supply and flood protection. It has found
equally strong opponents