Many programs can be adapted to such purposes. One interesting example in the Potomac Basin is a study being undertaken in the Georges Creek valley of western Maryland by Frostburg State College. Under an educational grant from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, members of the college's faculty have embarked on research aimed toward a demonstration project of economic, social, and landscape restoration in the whole Georges Creek watershed as a unit. Action resulting from the study will involve a number of their State and Federal programs. Often, of course, the benefits of such practices are "intangible" in terms of the market values that have traditionally been used for justifying government projects, and adequate ways of giving them their true weight against other values that may be in conflict with them have not yet really been worked out. Nevertheless, the fact that they have strong and sometimes overriding benefits is being recognized. Insofar as such programs encourage Basinwide landscape improvement and protection and major recreational opportunities, they are instruments for accomplishing overall Basin aims, usable as such now by Federal and State agencies and at the future disposal of any Basinwide coordinative organization that may evolve. Insofar as they permit and stimulate counties and municipalities to do better environmental planning and give them money and morale to implement and enforce planning, they are available at this indispensable level of action where--as we have seen--the obstacles to doing things right are often huge. The programs put within reach of local officials the principles of good planning and management, and help them to achieve its details, from wildlife refuges to neighborhood parks, from the maintenance of riverside beauty and the restoration of historic shrines to the construction of small reservoirs. As knowledge of their existence and their advantages gets around, they are beginning to have much effect, especially at larger centers of population. Nevertheless, it is impossible at present to be sure that any given locality is going to take meaningful steps toward staving off blight and landscape destruction, and a great many of them in the Potomac Basin have not done so. Partly this is because the imperative need for planning is only now beginning to dawn upon many smaller communities. But even where it has dawned and planning has been undertaken by men of good will, the great obstacles still exist and often block their efforts--the lack of money to match Federal or State program funds, the inability to convince fellow citizens who have to approve actions, the fat profits in real estate, the pervasive influence of personal relationships.