A river basin is a good functional unit of topography, admirably suited
for study and for certain types of resource planning. Because of this,
there is a temptation for those who undertake such study and planning to
assume that river basins have, or ought to have, human unity as
well--unity in politics, economics, and culture--with a consequent
"basin public" inclined to think in basin terms. Basin identity of this
sort would facilitate conservation, development, and management. It
would "make sense," and clearly enough a a great deal of sense needs to
be made, and soon, if people are going to have any hope of balancing
their use of resources against the inevitable continuing requirements of
the long future.
Small watersheds often do have unity of this human sort, but very few
major river basins. And usually the question of whether they ought
ideally to have it or not becomes irrelevant in the face of the
rock-hard reality of the forces working against it. In the Potomac
Basin, the boundaries that ramble among the various political
subdivisions--the District of Columbia and portions of four separate
States, with all or part of some 39 counties and a number of independent
cities--only accidentally and occasionally follow watershed ridges. More
often they reflect the caprice of Stuart kings and Fairfax lords, the
accidents of history, the fortunes of war, and the trampings of young
George Washington and the Messrs. Mason and Dixon and hundreds of less
renowned linemakers. These boundaries, some of them sanctified by
centuries of existence, are one of the Basin's most fundamental sets of
facts, creating genuine differences in the interests, activities,
viewpoints, and even accents of the people. And they emphasize a healthy
political diversity and complexity that in many ways is simply not
amenable to change.
None of the capitals of the four Basin States lies within the Basin's
limits. This means that some of the strongest political loyalties and
energies of the region are directed outward toward Richmond and
Annapolis and Charleston and Harrisburg, and that much action relating
to the Potomac must be sought in those cities, or is decided on
incidentally there by legislators, many of whose strongest interests may
lie along the James or the Susquehanna or the Ohio or other streams.
The fact that the capital of the United States, together with its
attendant metropolis, is located solidly within the Basin at the Fall
Line is of immense if problematic significance. For one thing, it
fosters a concentrated Federal interest in the Potomac and the Potomac
region, in both esthetic and utilitarian terms and at both legislative
and administrative levels, which have led to some special amenities in
the way of parks and such things and to some Federal efforts to treat
the river in "model" terms, however these terms may have been defined at
various points. On the other hand, it has also led to a special concern
with the river on the part of the almost innumerable interest groups
that possess leverage in Washington, from wilderness conservationists to
industrial lobbyists, who exercise pulls in a number of different
directions.
And the presence of the capital has set up other special currents of
influence and sympathy that bypass normal political channels. Many Basin
towns and counties look more toward Washington for certain kinds of
action than toward their State agencies and legislatures. Federal
programs have long been active here close to the main-office sources of
expertise and cash, building up respect and trust through local agents,
and Basin Congressmen who hardly have to leave home to exercise their
legislative function have further strengthened these ties.
The metropolitan jurisdictions, especially, in many ways find more
common cause with one another and the Federal Government than with
communities and governing bodies elsewhere in their own States.
Politically, this sense of collective identity gets official expression
in the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, a regional body
which, like its counterparts in other urban conglomerations throughout
the country, is geared to work directly with the Federal Government in
dealing with its own regional problems rather than having to come at
Federal programs and agencies along the more lengthy traditional route
through the States. The implications of this new kind of alignment are
still a matter for debate and conjecture.
Other forces at work along the Potomac similarly have less to do with
boundary lines, drainage limits, or Basin thinking than with human ways
of being. There are a number of kinds of country here, as we have seen,
in various stages of development and with various sorts of people
inhabiting them. Yeoman tillers of the Shenandoah's limestone soils may
find scant occasion to identify their interests with those of the
Washington slums, or even with those of the fox-hunting Piedmont gentry
just across the Blue Ridge. Coalmining Potomac Appalachia has more
common economic and cultural outlook with eastern Kentucky than with the
Potomac Tidewater; southern Maryland and the Northern Neck and the
Monocacy's dairy farmers all have their own ways of interpreting human
existence and defending themselves against its pitfalls. Within the
county governments and the Congressional and State-legislative
districts, these local and regional viewpoints choose political leaders
who joust for them in higher arenas, often aligning there with forces
from outside the Basin. Hence a metropolitan Maryland Congressman may
vote in the House with kindred souls from Long Island and Pasadena, and
his Basin colleagues with agricultural constituencies may oppose him on
some issues in alliance with representatives from Wyoming or Arkansas.
Despite the Basin's special ties to the Federal Government, many rural
Basinites are suspicious of Washington and the metropolis, often out of
a traditional distrust of "big government" and sometimes because they
see the accumulation of city folk at the head of the estuary as a menace
to rural modes of existence. Thus they may oppose water projects
designed to help the metropolis, or recreational development that
threatens to bring down on them large numbers of pleasure-bound
outsiders, though local businessmen's hope for a boom sometimes offsets
such opposition. The reapportionment of legislative districts now in
progress, plus the growing political muscle of metropolitan areas, is
probably going to cut down on the power of rural areas and rural
viewpoints--though just how much and in what way no one is yet sure.
Some prophets claim that these influences are going to erode rural
influence utterly; others that they will merely shape an alliance
between middle-class suburbs and rural areas against the beleaguered
central cities with their slums and other huge specific problems.
Worth noting also is the fact that many erstwhile "rural areas" are
getting less rural by the year. With population pressures and industry
and pollution and looming water deficits, they have more and more in
common with the Washington metropolis, and more need for "big
government" programs. In the long run, an overwhelming majority of the
Basin's future population will probably be city-dwellers, with a
consequent effect on general attitudes toward Basin planning and
projects--though exactly what effect is not at all certain.