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Show Introduction A National Water Resources Policy Including Summary of Recommendations AMERICA IS A COUNTRY richly endowed with natural resources: fertile land, extensive and varied forests, an abundance of mineral wealth beneath the soil. All these things are gifts of nature, which our people have used to build a civilization unmatched in human history for its material productivity. From the products of our land, our forests, our mines and oil fields, we have raised great cities and spanned a con- tinent with railroads and automobile highways. But without one key resource, water, none of these miracles of human achievement would have been possible. Water has unique characteristics. Time does not change it. It is the same today as it was 10,000 years ago. Water is active, and affects all other things. It has molded our mountains, carved our great valleys, nourished our forests, created our alluvial plains, played a major part in creating the fertility of our land, and carried off our topsoil. Changes in its quality are only temporary; it does not change in quantity but only in its location and form as it pursues nature's eternal cycle from the raindrop to the land, thence to the sea, and back again to the clouds. Throughout history, water has dominated human life. The earliest civilizations appeared in the great river basins of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Settlements were limited to coast lines and river banks; trading centers arose at the confluences of navigable streams. Rainfall and drought have set the stage for the drama of human existence. Rivers, with their life-giving waters, changing at times to swollen monsters bent on destruction, have been principal actors in that drama. Until recent times, man has not attempted to control water, except in a limited measure for water supply and irrigation. He has for the most part been forced to adjust his ways to its vagaries as nature gave or withheld rain for his crops or overwhelmed him with raging floods. Prayer, magic, and propitiation marked his early gropings for control. Today, on the American continent, centuries of human history coexist. On their western lands, Indian rain makers dance their age-old dances while overhead airplane pilots are seeding the clouds. The attempt to use science and technical skill to force water from the clouds is symbolic of the modern determination to control and use water, rather than to submit to it. It is an expression of the same scientific deter- mination to use the forces of nature to serve man's purposes as is embodied in such great river basin programs as that for the Columbia, which will ultimately provide 50 million horsepower and bring millions of new acres under cultivation. In the brief span of a century and a half, American farms and cities have spread over the land from the Appalachians to the Pacific. Great harbors have been built, navigable streams maintained and improved; large cities have been 1 |