I direct these informal remarks to two popular myths, closely interrelated here in the Potomac River Basin. First is the myth that there is or soon may be a serious shortage of water in the eastern United States. We have hardly begun to tap the vast potentialities of water resources in the humid East. Development will be necessary. But the water is available.
Second is the myth that water management problems are primarily engineering problems. Although engineering has an indispensable role, its problems are of considerably lesser magnitude than others which require resolution … Engineering difficulties are subordinate, for example, to other issues in the controversy over River Bend Dam, hydropower installations on the Potomac, the inundation of farmland in the Shenandoah Valley …
Pollution is indeed a serious problem in this Basin. But is this because sanitary engineers have been unable to devise practical ways of abatement? Or, rather, because of difficulties in reaching agreement on how much abatement is justified, and in getting the political jurisdictions to agree on objectives and a coordinated program?
Water development is part of the total physical and economic environment of a region. It deals in many ways with values not susceptible of measurement through the conventional benefit-cost analysis …
Thus, in final analysis, the development of the Potomac is, and by right should be, a political problem. May I express the hope that the government agencies under the leadership of the Corps of Engineers will recognize that they are not qualified to decide what is the best plan? I believe that several alternative plans, each evaluated as objectively as possible, should be presented for public determination through the political process.
—Irving K. Fox, in a talk at the Washington Sanitation Conference
A version of this article appeared in print in the February 1960 issue of Resources magazine.
