CHAPTER 7 



WATER AND WATERFRONTS 



3:30 p.m., Monday, May 24 



The Chairman, Mr. CLAY. Water is the great giver of life. Close 

 to its banks and shores men have raised their greatest cities. Without 

 water, civilizations wither and men perish. It is the flyway for 

 ducks, the great distributor of raw materials, and also common car- 

 rier of contamination, of the wastes of bodies human, governmental, 

 and corporate. 



Concerned as we are with water, concerned we must therefore be 

 with the total environment and not merely with its bits and pieces. 

 More than any other at this White House conference, I think, this 

 panel must be especially concerned with relationships between men, 

 and between all the elements of their environment and the goals we 

 believe this environment should attain. 



In an earlier America, poets have measured their waters and found 

 in them, not contamination, but inspiration. High in the north 

 Georgia hills, Sidney Lanier lived and wrote his incomparable "Song 

 of the Chattahoochee." The years have dealt gently with that lovely 

 poem, but not with the waters of that urbanizing river. I hope Mr. 

 Lanier's memory will not be offended if I offer a contemporary 

 version : 



Out of the gullies of Habersham 

 Out of the gutters of Hall, 

 I try in vain to reach the plain, 

 Before the bulldozers get at it again, 

 Silted, polluted, deprived of the rain, 



Members of the Panel on Water and Waterfronts were Repre- 

 sentative Frances P. Bolton, Henry P. Caulfield, Jr., Grady Clay 

 (Chairman), Representative John Dingell, Leonard Dworsky, Carl 

 Feiss, Senator Philip A. Hart, Christopher Tunnard, and Conrad L. 

 Wirth. Staff Associate was Allan Hirsch. 



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