On the Monocacy in Maryland's Piedmont, the old agricultural center of Frederick has begun to come under the changeful, expansive influence of Megalopolis as a result of easier access from both Baltimore and Washington, and has been brought abruptly face to face with a looming water shortage. Recent studies by the Maryland Department of Water Resources indicate that the dependable flow of the Monocacy will not serve the town for more than another seven or eight years even if the flow needed to maintain adequate water quality is left out of account, and the summers of 1965 and 1966 made even those figures seem slightly optimistic. Both city and State have declared themselves in favor of an upstream major reservoir at Sixes Bridge, also a 1963 proposal. And elsewhere throughout the Basin, a good number of smaller places face similar dilemmas. Possible Answers Except for acid mine drainage, most of the Basin's main problems are found at metropolitan Washington. Because they are primarily people problems and more people live there than anywhere else, the problems tend to be bigger, including that of water supply. A conceivable shortage of several tens of millions of gallons of water per day within the near future is not a small shortage, and small measures are not going to cope with it. A number of possible measures have been considered and weighed. Some seem undesirable for one reason or another, even in terms of the distant future. Others are unusable now, but have promise for later, when more is known, or technological processes involved have been perfected, or cost have been brought within reason. Still others, undoubtedly, cannot even yet be discerned. And some will work now at prices that can be paid. Ultimately, it seems certain, the super-Metropolis of the future will depend on a mix of sources for its water, getting part of it by one means and part of it by another and so on, as technology makes new means possible, and as economy, safety, and other factors may dictate. Therefore, there is no single "right" answer for the long run, and an attempt to prescribe one inflexibly would compound confusion over the years and undoubtedly perpetrate an injustice on future citizens in ways already mentioned. We need to do them the favor of believing that they will be able to cope with their own immediate problems at least as well as we can do it for them, and probably in ways better suited to their tastes. Nevertheless, it is imperative that the city be given a margin of drought insurance for two decades or more, and for this margin some source definitely feasible in present terms must be identified and guaranteed.