142 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



My bed is too narrow, the dumps are too wide, 



I flee man's folly on every side, 



He's damming and sluicing me down through the plain 



Far from the gullies of Habersham, 



Far from the gutters of Hall. 



On today's waterfront, we deal with two parts hydrogen, one part 

 oxygen, three parts unregulated self-interest. Strip off all natural 

 protection, add an uncontrolled population, and you get the ex- 

 plosive mixture which confronts this conference today. 



Our purpose is to get nature back into the equation; to control 

 man's reckless exploitation of waters and the lands to them contribu- 

 tory; and to recommend to the President of the United States specific 

 ways and means. 



My task is to look first far upstream at the sources of waters ; and 

 then to introduce our panelists who will carry us rapidly downstream 

 from one recommendation to the next, pausing to look scathingly 

 perhaps, constructively, and not too long, at the waters, banks, adja- 

 cent lands, views and prospects and to recommend precise measures 

 to improve the quality of that environment. 



We begin, as do the waters, deep in some wooded glen or in the 

 hollow of a hillside where water pure and undefiled gushes from the 

 ground. We are here at the incomparable spring, God-given source 

 of a mighty river. Such sources of all significant rivers should be 

 identified, mapped, and then protected as unique and often his- 

 toric elements of the landscape. They should not be drowned, de- 

 stroyed, or sequestered for private purpose. Protect them we must 

 by easements, purchase, leasehold, or other methods. If the city 

 of Paris can protect the source of the Seine high in the mountains 

 north of Dijon, cannot we do the same with sources of our great 

 rivers? I recommend that such a national policy should begin at 

 once with the source of the Potomac River, that the District of 

 Columbia enter upon a joint venture with the appropriate Federal 

 and State agencies to do this. 



Next, in all that we do, we should encourage waters to walk, not run 

 to the nearest gravitational exits; to percolate, insoak, infiltrate. 

 Water has much more to do where it falls. 



In this respect I hope we can devise techniques for urbanizing 

 the lessons and methods of the Soil Conservation Service. This will 

 require us to expand the provisions of the Watershed Protection and 

 Flood Prevention Act (Public Law 566) ; to set up regional versions 



