BETTER GROUND-WATER MANAGEMENT 289 



standing of the geology and the present use of the area under 

 consideration. This is not a hit-or-miss enterprise, but one 

 which would require the highest level of professional com- 

 petence, and long periods of geologic and hydrologic explora- 

 tion. Such information is available for few areas in the coun- 

 try at present. Controlled recharge also requires a land-use 

 and management program which varies from insignificance in 

 such regions as the Baltimore area to tremendous importance 

 in the San Joaquin Valley and in the Gila River Basin. 



A third effort naturally lies in importing or supplementing 

 by other means water for recharging underground reservoirs. 

 Such a program requires, again, a maximum of professional 

 understanding, coupled with fiscal, legal, and administrative 

 supports. In few instances are all of these elements either 

 potentially or actually operative. Without them, however, no 

 reasonable integrated management is either possible or sus- 

 ceptible of successful operation. 



To meet the problems, for example, of the major water- 

 courses, such as the Illinois River in the Peoria area, demands 

 high ingenuity, skillful land management, as well as con- 

 trolled withdrawals. And it cannot be overemphasized that in 

 no two instances of such watercourse problems are the same 

 solutions or practices indicated. 



In all of these endeavors the controlling principles are clear 

 and simple. The practices translating such principles into ac- 

 tion are complex and difficult. Complaints regarding declin- 

 ing water levels, recklessness in withdrawal, siltation of re- 

 charge areas, contamination of water, and abuses in land prac- 

 tice serve no useful purpose unless they are paralleled by the 

 introduction of both administrative machinery and budgetary 

 sinews to provide continuity of professional diagnosis, by the 

 development of adequate hydrologic, and geologic, geographic 

 data, by the creation of devices by which to manage total en- 

 terprises, and by providing the taxation procedures to support 

 management programs. In most instances none of these neces- 

 sities can be provided in too limited areas or under private 



