204 
My personal feeling * * * is that the real endangered species in the overall 
ecosystem is man himself. Those who now scream that Biscayne Bay is being 
ruined by the warm water will be the first to rail against the power company when 
a power brownout or blackout occurs. The problem then is one of the conflicting 
uses of a resource held in common—in this case the estuaries of our coastal zone. 
At the very heart of the problem of coastal zone management lies conflict between 
those who would use the waters for the cooling of electrical power generating 
plants and those who would keep our estuaries in their pristine, pre-man, condition. 
Some mutually agreeable meeting ground must be reached. It must not be con- 
sidered as a case of power or estuaries, but rather a case of how to develop the 
power we require and still have estuaries that are needed for the development of 
fish and for the many uses to which our growing coastal population wishes to 
put them. (12) 
Certainly this constitutes an accurate expression of the central issue 
at stake; yet more and more we are finding, to our dismay, that the 
multiple uses that we would like to see supported by our natural 
environmental systems are so incompatible that use for one purpose 
often must necessarily preclude use for many others. When we are 
confronted with basic dilemmas of this sort, we can only make deci- 
sions based on the relative weights of perceived value judgments of 
society as a whole. | 
We can now summarize the primary land use issue regarding the 
siting of electric powerplants in the following way: we are running out 
of usable inland fresh water cooling capacity; we are running out of 
coastal and estuarine land resources for recreation and conservation 
(let alone for powerplant siting); and we are running out of patience 
with regard to the harmful side effects that power generation imposes 
upon our environment. Perhaps it is with the words ‘“‘we are running 
out” that we can begin every discussion of the allocation of all our 
precious environmental resources. 
So, having examined these difficulties facing the power industry, 
it is small wonder that we are now facing the prospect of serious 
power shortages. The most immediate issue we face today is not 
one of reducing high power costs or of choosing between particu- 
lar methods of generation (although this is certainly of great 
importance from a resource-consumption standpoint and other long- 
term considerations of national concern), but ‘‘the vital one of 
persuading the American people that a crisis exists right now” (13) in 
satisfying the present needs of our highly power-dependent society. 
Sometime in the near future drastic new approaches must be taken to 
alleviate the “‘saturation” problem (of which power production is an 
integral part) before we exhaust our technological capabilities to 
hold back disaster, before we exceed the ability of our environmental 
resources to disperse waste, or before we run out of usable land for 
recreation or powerplant siting. It is mevitable that we face in the 
long-run some of the serious tradeoffs (such as that between undis- 
turbed estuaries and power generating plants as described by Mr. 
Stewart) given that we continue with our present patterns of exponen- 
tial growth in so many areas. | 
Perhaps we must eventually try to cut back on consumption by 
buying fewer air conditioners, televisions, and cars, although this 
would seem socially unacceptable in our present democracy. The only 
really effective long-run solution to all congestion-related problems is 
to attack the source of congestion—continued population growth. 
Yet solutions are also needed in the short run; the vanguard of crisis 
is here and now. We must find measures to avert dangerous power 
