At times during the hot months of drouthy 1966, the climax of a dry cycle that had begun to develop five years earlier, the Washington metropolis was not too far from the bottom of its water barrel. The situation was not as bad as in some other Northeastern regions, nor as bad as some local analyses claimed, but it was bad enough. The highest daily withdrawal of the year was on June 26, when the metropolitan water intakes in the Potomac sucked out approximately 380 million gallons. Of this some 30 million gallons had to do with a pumping pattern pertinent to adjustments within the system, and the other 350 million went for the use and refreshment of a metropolis afflicted by summer's heat. The total figure represented less than half of the river's flow at that time. [Illustration: GROUND WATER LEVELS WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA] For a couple of days in September, however, the Potomac's flow reached an all-time low of about 390 million gallons a day. Even if the demand on those days had risen as high as in June, which it did not, there would still have been an excess, but not a very safe one. Heavy storms shortly thereafter eased the situation, and rainfall since then has definitely broken the long drought pattern, returning stream and groundwater levels to normal. The sober fact is that the Washington metropolis is nearing the point where its traditional main dependence on the Potomac's free and fluctuating flow for water supply--with supplementary quantities from Occoquan Creek, the Patuxent, and a few wells--is not going to work during prolonged dry periods. Total flow even in a drought year remains impressive, but dependable daily flow--which is what counts for supply--varies tremendously. Other centers of population in the Basin are up against water supply problems or are going to come up against them shortly. The towns and industries along the North Branch, around Cumberland and upstream, are strongly aware of a water need complicated by the deep-seated pollution of their stream system and the scenic and economic disruption of their watershed lands. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a handsome town in a prosperous farming district of the northern Great Valley, is approaching a critical point in the relationship between the water available to it and its demands. Far south in the Valley, Augusta County, Virginia, which contains the thriving towns of Staunton and Waynesboro, is experiencing an upward surge of industrial development that seems certain to continue and is going to call for a great deal more water than can be counted on from present sources. Public awareness of this is shown by the fact that county citizens voted in a referendum in November of 1966 in favor of construction of a Federal reservoir at Verona near Staunton on the Middle River, which had been strongly opposed when it was presented as a part of the Army 1963 plan.