losses of fertile top soils, which would be a really enormous 

 benefit; increase of the productivity of protected cultivated 

 soils; increase of crop yields generally because of a more 

 stable supply of underground and surface waters, and of 

 practices incidental to land and water conservation; reservoirs 

 for individual-farm, supplementary irrigation of valuable 

 crops; increase of fish, wildlife, and other biological items 

 of benefit; increased availability of fresh water for cities, 

 villages, and agricultural communities; water for recreational 

 purposes; hydropower; flood control; and a more substantial 

 basis for handling the problem of pollution by sewage and 

 industrial wastes. 



Perhaps the greatest benefit would be the intangible 

 collective benefit; the restoration of the productivity and 

 culture of a great and important part of the people of the 

 United States. 



2. LINES OF ACTION 



IT SHOULD be repeated, and because of its importance can 

 hardly be too frequently repeated, that the lines of action, 

 whether by the individual farmer, the community, or an 

 entire drainage area, should aim at certain fundamental 

 things which may be summed up as an effort to reestablish, 

 insofar as is practicable, Nature's arrangements for the 

 natural circulation of waters. These fundamental things 

 are: 



First, the promotion of absorption and infiltration at the 

 raindrop, trickle, and rill stage, by maintenance of a reason- 

 able proportion of vegetative cover; by wise rotation of crops 

 and proper methods of plowing, cultivating, and other treat- 

 ment on lands generally tilled and grazed; and by making 

 waters "walk, not run", at the stage of creeks and other 

 small streams by means of check dams and similar devices. 



Promotion of infiltration is the basis of constructive 

 action; first, because measures that promote infiltration at 

 the same time help to prevent erosion, and second, because 

 ground storage is our most important source of water supply. 



So far as the fruitfulness of the land is concerned, the essential stage 

 in the natural circulation of water is that of the temporary lodgment in 



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